Clark Merrill

The only reason I would agree to redact a record would be a still living former US agent who is living in Cuba. So if we employed somebody in the 60s and let them go. If they are still alive, giving their name or identifying information would be a death sentence. Besides that, I agree everything should be released. And to be honest how many records could there be that fit that narrow corner case. But I just saw the following story: 'I will be releasing ALL JFK files': Trump pivots from earlier decision to redact records So there may be hope Clark Merrill

I am not happy with the missing documents. We will have to deal with what is there. But if Trump is true to his word, he wants a detailed reason why a document should be withheld. From his language he makes it sound like the only thing that will keep something out is something like a spy of ours from the 60s who is still alive in Cuba. I will judge him in 180 days. I love the age of the Internet. Everything is easy to find and look at. Much easier than when I used to research this stuff in the 80s and 90s. I have been looking at it for a few hours. Nothing has leaped out at me as surprising. I am done for the night. But I will give some help to make looking at what is there easier. Or maybe all of you know this already. I have only been here a week. Download the spreadsheet: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/jfkrelease-2017-dce65d0ec70a54d5744de17d280f3ad2.xlsx Open the spreadsheet Select Column F Open the data tab in excel Select text to column. Select Next until you hit Column Data Format. Select Date with MDY and hit finish. This will allow the filter to work for all but 126 of the new records that have zeros as one or more of the date columns. Good luck Clark Merrill

I want to say thank you to Don Jeffries for finding the following: http://archive.org/details/RobertFKennedyAtSanFernandoValleyStateCollege Listen starting at 39:15 for the part we are interested in. The one thing that bugged me for years was the order of the quotes and how much time was between them. And based on what is there. I am going to change the facts to the following. Who: Robert Kennedy What: "Nobody is more interested than I in knowing who is responsible for the death of President Kennedy." "I would not reopen the Warren Commission report". "I have seen everything that's in there. I stand by the Warren Commission." Where: San Fernando Valley College When: March 25, 1968 I left out the nobody is more interested in knowing quote based on the stories I read, I was never sure of the order. In my opinion based on the closeness of the quotes in the tape. This is him making a public declaration of his support for the Warren Commission. I also think that if you are just using the first quote to prove something, you are taking it out of context because of the proximity to the next 2 quotes.. I am not a mind reader, my goal is only show what he said publicly. Please read the entry 1 in this thread. The first entry by Guest Robert Morrow in this thread asks the following as shown in bold: I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death." —Robert Kennedy, June 3, 1968, two days before he was assassinated Folks, what book or article did this RFK quote come from? Could you give me a book and a page number. Or an article, column title, date, source? Do you know the context of Robert Kennedy making this quote (very probably on the campaign trail right before the June, 1968 Democratic primary)? I think I have pretty conclusively proven that the statement never occurred. That is my only purpose. Anything else to me would be off topic for this thread. Please go ahead and listen. Clark Merrill

I joined this forum this week for the specific reason of adding my research to this post. It has been awhile since I have been interested in the JFK assassination. It would not surprise me if the Cubans had something to do with it, but I have seen nothing that sways me from the lone nut position. I did not even know that Vincent Bugliosi had included me in his end notes until a friend asked me why my name was in it. In prep for the release of the documents, I finally bought his book last week. He found the post I made to alt.conspiracy.jfk dealing with this subject. Most of the time when I posted there, I only showed a little of my work. I expected debate on facts, I got ridiculed for who I was. That being said, I feel I should provide you with my research into this specific area. Before 1994, the information for this quote was always very consistent. I kept seeing it over and over again. "I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death." —Robert Kennedy, San Fernando Valley College, June 3, 1968, two days before he was assassinated. I had seen both San Fernando College and San Fernando Valley College used with the quote. Who: Robert Kennedy What: "I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death." Where: San Fernando Valley College When: June 3, 1968 Even I believed it. But at the same time, it was too perfect of a quote. Like everything in the assassination mess, in order to see what is really there you need to go to the original sources. I thought it would be easy to go to the original sources find out what was really said. I thought it was going to be the quote enhancement problem. Take a perfectly good quote and modify enough to make it look better for your cause. A simple exercise that should take an hour to figure out in a 1995 first rate research library. I worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute so I had access to the Johns Hopkins library. I first saw this problem when I was in college and was writing a research paper in my English class about the assassination. We had to have a Xerox documenting all of our quotes. My rough draft used a Xerox from 6 Seconds In Dallas for the John Connolly quote. My professor made me go to the NY Times for the original and I found the following: Quoting from Connolly's interview from the November 28th New York Times with Martin Agronsky as published in SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS: We heard a shot. I turned to my left. I was sitting in the jump seat. I turned to my left in the back seat. The President had slumped. He had said nothing. Almost simultaneously, as I turned, I was hit, and I knew I'd been hit badly, and I said -- I knew the President had been hit - and I said, "My God, they're not going to kill us all" (The New York Times, Nov. 28, 1963). The original quote from the NYT is in one paragraph of the NYT, it had not been split, But I will leave it here for so you can compare against the Six Seconds In Dallas version: We had just turned the corner, we heard a shot, I turned to my left, and the the President had slumped. He had said nothing. As I turned, I was hit, and I knew I had been hit badly, I knew the President had been hit and I said, "My God, they're not going to kill us all." Then there was a third shot and the President was hit again. (The New York Times, Nov. 28, 1963, page 28 Col. 1) Notice the bolded additions to the quote by Thompson. He put words in Connolly's mouth. I wonder how many researchers blindly copied this quote from Six Seconds in Dallas and never went to the original source. I was expecting to find a speech and the mangling of a quote. I went to the Jun 4, 1968 papers and found nothing. I thought maybe they were off a few days so I pulled the fiche for the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle for the first week of June. Both papers had stories of the Kennedy campaign, and through them I could track his movements day by day. In each paper I started on the June 1st and followed every article until he was murdered. He was never reported during that time frame to be at San Fernando Valley College. So I can confidently say that the when was wrong. RFK was never there to give a quote in the first week of June. Plus why would Kennedy be at a college in June, the students were gone. I was at the Johns Hopkins library, I returned the fiche and went down to the stacks and sat in the area where the RFK books were. I started perusing books that might have campaign material in them. I found one and started reading. In my post to alt.conspiracy.jfk I say the book that gave me the clue was called 85 Days. After just paying $1.99 to have it delivered to my Kindle, I find the real title is 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy. On Page 96, there is a mention of San Fernando Valley State College in California. It is during a weekend trip to California. I now had a match to the Who and the Where. The book 85 days mentioned nothing about the assassination dust up. I mentioned in the alt.consiracy.jfk post that a London Times Reporter was there, but 85 days has no mention of this. I must have read more books that 85 days. But it was over 20 years ago. But I now had a new starting point. I obviously looked at other books after I found this before I went upstairs to get the fiche, as I knew a London Times reporter was there and did read the London Times article while in Hopkins. It took me 5 minutes to find what I was looking for. Here is the AP story. Los Angeles, March 25 (AP) - Senator Robert Kennedy met a barrage of questions today on whether if elected President he would open the United States archives to reveal details of the assassination of his brother, President John Kennedy. "I would not reopen the Warren Commission report". Mr. Kennedy told students at San Fernando Valley state college. "I have seen everything that's in there. I stand by the Warren Commission." He did not elaborate on whether he would open the archives. Several times the senator, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, tried to ignore questions from students. He became obviously more distressed as they persisted. Finally, he said: "your manners overwhelm me. Go ahead, go ahead, ask your questions." A student shouted: will you open the archives?" Mr. Kennedy said: "Nobody is more interested than I in knowing who is responsible for the death of President Kennedy." An aide said it was the first public statement of this kind. The Warren Commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy. End of story I chose the AP story as it would be seen all over the country. I personally saw it in 3 different newspapers I pulled fiche for. This is what I will call the complete story as some paragraphs were missing in 2 of the papers. So we now have. Who: Robert Kennedy What: "I would not reopen the Warren Commission report". "I have seen everything that's in there. I stand by the Warren Commission." Where: San Fernando Valley College When: March 25, 1968 85 days give no further mention of San Fernando Valley College beyond the page 96 listing in the index that got me to here. So that looks to be the only time he was there during the campaign. I have no inclination to chase that down any further/ Clark Merrill