New Book!

[Ernie Lazar]

QUESTION TO CONSIDER:

I don't recall right now which book I read this in -- but President LBJ told people privately that his greatest concern was that withheld FBI/CIA JFK documents might show that (1) Castro's Cuba was directly involved in JFK's assassination and (2) the Soviet Union had foreknowledge of Castro's plans (and perhaps even provided assistance).

In this context, LBJ was worried that if such documents became public, he would face tremendous and insurmountable pressure to invade Cuba and perhaps even take military action of some kind against the Soviets.

1.  Suppose that the FBI/CIA documents being released this week include records which tend to support the idea that Castro and the Soviet Union had some role in JFK's assassination.

2.  What do you suppose would the consequences of learning that?

[Michael Clark]

30 minutes ago, Ernie Lazar said:

QUESTION TO CONSIDER:

I don't recall right now which book I read this in -- but President LBJ told people privately that his greatest concern was that withheld FBI/CIA JFK documents might show that (1) Castro's Cuba was directly involved in JFK's assassination and (2) the Soviet Union had foreknowledge of Castro's plans (and perhaps even provided assistance).

In this context, LBJ was worried that if such documents became public, he would face tremendous and insurmountable pressure to invade Cuba and perhaps even take military action of some kind against the Soviets.

1.  Suppose that the FBI/CIA documents being released this week include records which tend to support the idea that Castro and the Soviet Union had some role in JFK's assassination.

2.  What do you suppose would the consequences of learning that?

Interesting question.  While processing it, the Vegas shooting and it's purpose gained some meaning. To be ure, the official story of the Vegas shooting does not, to me, add-up. What I noticed is that we all got over it kind of quickly. It's kind of "a day in the life". So maybe that was the purpose; a kind of last minute tenderizing of the people; to accept things like this and move on. I imagine that that is what would happen, just accept it and move on, and continue the isolation of Cuba. Half of us would accept the hypothetical reality that Ernie offers, the other half accepts that it's just another lie, and we all move on.

 

[Paul Trejo]

The following is my opinion.

With the coming release of all US Government holdings of previously classified JFK Records this week (perhaps as early as TODAY) -- we will soon see with glaring clarity that this recent book (no longer "New" as when this thread was started two years ago) was prescient.

Dr. Jeffrey Caufield's book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: the Extensive New Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (2015). once it is finally vindicated as the greatest and most complete account of the JFK conspiracy ever printed up through 2015, will become a must-read, coast-to-coast.

I predict it.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

[Ernie Lazar]

1 hour ago, Paul Trejo said:

The following is my opinion.

With the coming release of all US Government holdings of previously classified JFK Records this week (perhaps as early as TODAY) -- we will soon see with glaring clarity that this recent book (no longer "New" as when this thread was started two years ago) was prescient.

Dr. Jeffrey Caufield's book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: the Extensive New Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (2015). once it is finally vindicated as the greatest and most complete account of the JFK conspiracy ever printed up through 2015, will become a must-read, coast-to-coast.

I predict it.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

I make a different prediction.  I predict that once we all have a chance to absorb all the new material being released this week, there will be absolutely NOTHING which supports what Dr. Caufield has written.

[Ernie Lazar]

VERY Bad News For Paul Trejo:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/judge-who-saw-secret-jfk-files-conspiracy-theorists-will-be-disappointed-in-thursdays-release/article/2638524 

Judge who saw secret JFK files: Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed in Thursday's release

by Todd Shepherd | Oct 25, 2017, 9:00 AM

A federal judge in Minnesota who has seen a sizable portion of the unreleased documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy says those documents, due to be released Thursday, won't be as exciting as many are hoping.

"The [Assassination Records Review Board] was very careful," Judge John Tunheim, who served on the board, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. "Anything that we saw that was information itself about the assassination or about any of the key players such as Lee Harvey Oswald was released, regardless of whether an agency wanted us to protect it or not."

The ARRB was created by an act of Congress in 1992, largely in reaction to the conspiracy theories revived by Oliver Stone's movie "JFK," which was released in 1991.

With a staff of about 30 document reviewers, the five-person board systematically reviewed millions of pages of documents related to the JFK assassination from 1994 to 1998, and released most of them, an estimated 5 million pages.

The National Archives estimates 88 percent of the total documents were publicly available after the ARRB's work, and another 11 percent have been available since then, but were also partially redacted.

Most or all of the remaining one percent — three thousand pages that have never been seen at all, along with 34,000 that were redacted by the ARRB — will be made public this Thursday, which has historians, conspiracy theorists, and newshounds alike playing a guessing game of what might be so special as to remain unreleased.

But Tunheim gave a sober assessment of what the documents are likely to include, even though he hasn't seen them in over 20 years.

"What we protected was largely intelligence-gathering information," Tunheim told the Washington Examiner.

"So, it might have been the name of an intelligence agent which we protected until we thought that they probably would no longer be with us. Those names have already all been released in the intervening 20 years or so. But sources and methods of intelligence gathering, details of intelligence sharing relationships with foreign governments, foreign informants, a lot of that protected information had to do with the American government's intelligence and law enforcement relationships with foreign countries – that was a particularly sensitive area, and we agreed to more redactions on that basis. That is what the information is that will hopefully be released this week."

According to the 1992 law, any documents withheld by the ARRB would be protected for 25 years, which expires this Thursday. However, the act also said the president at the time could order the documents to continue to be withheld.

Over the weekend, President Trump tweeted that he would allow for the release of all the documents, but until the deed is done, there's always the chance that there could be a presidential change of mind.

Judge Tunheim is lending his voice to the sizable number who are saying that full transparency is the only remaining option.

"I believe that it's time to release everything if for no other reason than some assurance that we can give to people who are interested in the subject that the government is no longer hiding information that relates to the Kennedy assassination," Tunheim said.

"We would have liked to have released everything, but we had a statute that we had to apply, and, you know, there were legitimate reasons in the 1990's for continuing to protect some sources and methods of intelligence gathering," Tunheim added.

"We didn't protect very much, but what we did, I think it's long overdue to release."

Professor Patrick Maney, a historian at Boston College, agrees that it will be difficult for the president to make an argument to have the documents withheld any longer.  

"My view is after this long of a time, it's hard for me to believe that any of these things would really jeopardize national security," Maney said.

As for the documents pertaining to other countries, Maney said most of those will relate to Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and also Mexico, because the CIA was keeping Oswald under surveillance during a 1963 trip to Mexico City in which he visited the Cuban embassy.

Maney believes in some cases, the CIA may have lobbied the ARRB to withhold documents that are more embarrassing than compromising.

"[The ARRB] indicated there is just a, whether you call it territorial, or there is a kind of bureaucratic imperative to withhold and conceal. And in a democracy, the imperative should be the opposite," he said. "It should be to disclose to the public." 

 

[Kenneth Drew]

Why were these documents kept secret and not released?  Because they contain information that will show that the CIA and FBI  were very involved in the plot.  Do I expect the 'truth' to come out?  No, it has been kept secret 54 years and they didn't do that to allow it to come out now.  There are too many people still alive that does not want this info public and anything that shows those folks in a bad light just plainly will not be released.  Does anyone think that if there were a CIA document that clearly said that George H W Bush was our agent in charge on the ground during the hit, that this info would be released?  If that document clearly said that CIA agents Sturgis, Barker, Hunt were hit men on the ground, that it will be released?  The presence or absence of Trump in the picture will have no bearing on whether 'the truth' is released or not.  They've kept it secret 54 years, they're not opening a candy store this week.  

[Ernie Lazar]

How to Read the JFK Assassination Files

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/26/jfk-secret-assassination-files-how-to-read-them-215749

The government is releasing thousands of long-secret files on Kennedy’s murder. Here are some tips for making sense of all the code names, redactions and confusing jargon.    By PHILIP SHENON,  October 26, 2017

If President Donald Trump is true to his word, the American public is about to be flooded with thousands of long-secret documents that could help resolve at least some of the conspiracy theories about a turning point in the nation’s history— the assassination in 1963 of President John F. Kennedy.

In a message on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced that “the long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take tomorrow. So interesting!” 

The president did not specify whether the still-secret library of assassination-related documents will be released in full on Thursday, or whether he will give in to last-minute appeals from the CIA and FBI to block the declassification of some of the files. Either way, this promises to be a mammoth document dump. The library at the National Archives is said to include about 3,100 files that have never been seen before, most of them from the CIA, FBI and Justice Department, as well as the full text of more than 30,000 other files that were previously released in part.

The files, which are supposed to be released on the Archives website, are being made public under a deadline set by a 1992 law, the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act . The law, which Congress hoped would help tamp down the raging conspiracy theories revived or created by Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” the year before, was responsible for the release of millions of pages of other documents in the 1990s. What has remained secret at the Archives until this week were documents that the CIA, FBI and other agencies felt might somehow damage national security if made public. But short of Trump’s intervention, all of those documents must be made public, too—every word—to meet the 25-year deadline set by the law. That is the deadline that arrives on Thursday.

How to begin to go through that massive document dump—tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pages? It will be daunting even for historians, researchers and others who study the assassination and have been eagerly anticipating, for decades, the chance to see the files.

For most people who are not longtime students of the assassination, there will be almost instant frustration with the files because it will be impossible to make sense of most of the documents—at least not quickly. Many will be jam-packed with CIA and FBI code names, pseudonyms and other jargon, while other documents will be in foreign languages or refer to people and places never previously connected to the assassination—probably because those people and places had nothing to do with JFK’s murder but got swept up in earlier investigations. And, based on past releases, some of the documents will be virtually impossible to read because—apparently—the ink on the paperwork had so faded by the time digital copies were made.

But if you’re reading this, chances are you’re undeterred by these obstacles and are eager to dive in to what is one of the most highly anticipated document dumps in American history. So what follows, based on years of research for my own 2013 history on the Warren Commission, is a list of 10 suggestions for armchair detectives who are planning to test their patience—and risk their eyesight and even their sanity—by digging into this digital mountain of paperwork:  

1. Begin with the most secret documents. Start with the 3,100 assassination-related documents that the public has never seen before. It is tantalizing to ponder what could be in a document linked to the president’s murder that is so sensitive that not a single word of it could be made public until now. In previous Archives releases, those documents, when declassified, were labeled with the words: “Formerly Withheld in Full.”

2. Focus on Mexico City. Many historians, journalists and researchers who have studied the assassination, including this one, argue that the most important, and mostly unexplored, mysteries about the assassination involve the gunman Lee Harvey Oswald’s six-day trip to Mexico City in late September 1963, just weeks before JFK’s murder. The index released by the Archives shows that many of the soon-to-be-released documents are drawn from the files of the CIA station in Mexico City; that includes the paperwork of officers involved in the surveillance of Oswald during the Mexico trip. From what has already been made public, Oswald, a self-proclaimed Marxist who had once tried to defect to the Soviet Union, was in contact with Cuban and Soviet spies in Mexico and is reported to have talked openly there of his intention to kill Kennedy. The question has always been: How much did the CIA station in Mexico City know in real time about those contacts and a possible threat to Kennedy’s life—and was all that intelligence passed back to CIA headquarters?

3. Keep in mind that the crazy theory about an Oswald “imposter” in Mexico may not be so crazy. Oswald did indeed go to Mexico City and appeared at the Cuban and Soviet embassies—several witnesses confirmed it, and there is other evidence—but many popular conspiracy theories focus on the possibility that a CIA agent or someone else impersonated Oswald in Mexico for at least part of the trip. After the assassination, there was special confusion within the FBI and CIA over reports that telephone calls in Mexico City—on phones tapped by the CIA—suggested that a man claiming to be Oswald in calls with the Soviet and Cuban embassies was someone else; the voice sounded different. Was the caller actually working for the CIA? That seems possible, if only because the CIA’s Mexico City station had a program of trying to intercept potential Americans defectors or spies who, at the height of the Cold War, regularly showed up at the door of Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico. Was it possible that the CIA, learning of Oswald’s arrival in Mexico, sent an agent to intercept him before some of his planned meetings with Cuban or Soviet agents, or that a CIA agent pretended to be Oswald in some of the phone calls? The CIA officer who ran operations directed at the Cuban embassy was David Atlee Phillips, and his files are among the documents scheduled to be released this week. The CIA claimed to the Warren Commission it had no surveillance photos of Oswald in Mexico and had routinely erased tapes of his wiretapped phone calls there; CIA officers would tell Congress years later that photos and tapes had survived.

4. Credit Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner and the power of Hollywood. There is plenty of irony in the fact that it took a conspiracy-theorist filmmaker like Stone to create the uproar that led, ultimately, to the release of all of the government’s secret files about JFK. Nearly as ironic: that the final decision about releasing the files is left to Trump, who has promoted unsupported conspiracy theories throughout his adult life, including one offered during last year’s campaign that tied Senator Ted Cruz’s father to Oswald. And here's a further irony: The film's hero, the late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, played by Costner, was no hero. He was a charlatan whose allegations that a prominent New Orleans businessman was part of a CIA-directed conspiracy to kill Kennedy fell apart when the case was finally brought to a jury; Garrison’s tactics against another man in the case appear to have driven him to suicide. Among the champions of the 1992 bill: Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who first gained national fame in the 1960s as the Warren Commission staff member who developed the so-called single bullet theory—the theory that one bullet from Oswald’s rifle hit both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, who was a passenger in Kennedy’s limousine. The single bullet theory, while almost certainly true, was ridiculed in the film, as was Specter, by name. 

5. Don’t forget that the government has already admitted there was a JFK assassination “cover-up,” just not the one Oliver Stone imagined. In a once-classified 2013 report, the CIA’s in-house historian acknowledged that the spy agency had conducted a “cover-up” (albeit a “benign cover-up,” he said) to hide “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission that might have pointed away from Oswald as the man solely responsible for Kennedy’s murder. The CIA wanted the commission to focus solely on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvard Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone.” According to the report, the most important information withheld from the Warren Commission: The CIA had been trying, for years, to assassinate Fidel Castro. Without that information, the commission never even knew to ask whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba, Mexico or somewhere else who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.

6. Remember who wrote these documents. These will be, mostly, documents written by federal government workers to other government workers, using jargon that would mean little to anyone outside their agencies, even when discussing the details of a turning point in history like the Kennedy assassination. Previously declassified documents have demonstrated that embarrassing or explosive information about the assassination tended to be hidden in bureaucratic language found in the middle or at the bottom of the paperwork. An example of information buried in previously declassified files: a 1967 CIA memo that revealed tantalizing information about “the fact” of a brief affair between Oswald and a Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico City. “The fact” was characterized as insignificant and worthy of no one’s attention.

7. Bone up on your Watergate history. The long-secret assassination files cite the activities of a remarkable number of CIA officials and American political operatives who later turn up as figures in the Watergate scandals of the Nixon administration. The files include an 84-page background file on Bernard Barker, a Cuban exile who was one of the Watergate burglars, as well as documents on Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, an ex-CIA officer whose family has insisted that he might have had advance knowledge of the JFK assassination.

8. Find a good cheat sheet and other shortcuts. Several websites are dedicated to questions—and conspiracy theories—about the assassination. One is especially valuable: the website of the Mary Farrell Foundation, which has created a vast online archives of government files and other information about the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King. Last year, the foundation’s president, Rex Bradford, prepared a useful summary of the soon-to-be released documents. The website also has prepared an invaluable guide to the meaning of thousands of the CIA code names used to identify people and programs that figure in the history of the Kennedy assassination. Another valuable website for JFK assassination research: www.JFKfacts.org. The site is run by Jefferson Morley, a former journalist at the Washington Post and the author of a biography of Winston Scott, the CIA station chief in Mexico at the time of Oswald’s visit.

9. Remember the name James Jesus Angleton. Angleton was the CIA’s counterintelligence director at the time of the Kennedy assassination and controlled the flow of information to the Warren Commission. Angleton, a paranoid, delusional, duplicitous alcoholic whose legacy at the CIA is a uniquely disastrous one, appears to have intentionally withheld evidence and witnesses from the commission, all but guaranteeing its investigation would be flawed. Among the most intriguing documents scheduled for release this week is a top-secret 74-page transcript of a 1976 interview with Angleton by congressional investigators.

10. Forget the name of Rafael Cruz Sr. (probably). Cruz, the 78-year-old father of Senator Ted Cruz, is the subject of the conspiracy theory offered by Trump during last year’s campaign. President-to-be Trump repeatedly promoted an article in the National Enquirer that suggested ties between Rafael Cruz and Lee Harvey Oswald, based on a photograph from the files of the Warren Commission that showed Oswald and man who resembled Cruz Sr. in the streets of New Orleans. Both Senator Cruz and his father, who grew up in Cuba, adamantly denied any family tie to Oswald. And no other evidence has emerged to suggest any connection.

 

[Ernie Lazar]

The President of the Mary Ferrell Foundation (Rex Bradford) has created a useful overview of what is about to be released.  (link below)

I recommend everybody look it over -- because it reveals, yet again, how totally irrational Paul Trejo's position is. 

NOBODY but Paul Trejo proposes that what is about to be released will reveal anything whatsoever about any "JBS plot" or about Edwin Walker or about any other subject which Paul thinks is about to become public knowledge for the first time.

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Featured_Mark_the_Date.html

Edited October 26, 2017 by Ernie Lazar

[Paul Trejo]

3 hours ago, Ernie Lazar said:

NOBODY but Paul Trejo proposes that what is about to be released will reveal anything whatsoever about any "JBS plot" or about Edwin Walker or about any other subject which Paul thinks is about to become public knowledge for the first time.

Ernie,

If (and only if) you are correct, then think what this will mean when my predictions come true.  I have been making this call for nearly six years on this Forum -- and taking a lot of heat for it -- day after day.  So, if my prediction turns out to be correct, then I will surely bask in the satisfaction -- of this everybody can rest assured.

I have predicted: today's total and final release of JFK Records by the US Government will reveal a successful plot by the Dallas Radical Right to assassinate JFK during his 11/22/1963 motorcade through Dealey Plaza.  Furthermore, I predicted: Ex-General Edwin Walker, residing in Dallas since November, 1961, will be identified at the center of that cyclone.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

[Ernie Lazar]

58 minutes ago, Paul Trejo said:

Ernie,

If (and only if) you are correct, then think what this will mean when my predictions come true.  I have been making this call for nearly six years on this Forum -- and taking a lot of heat for it -- day after day.  So, if my prediction turns out to be correct, then I will surely bask in the satisfaction -- of this everybody can rest assured.

I have predicted: today's total and final release of JFK Records by the US Government will reveal a successful plot by the Dallas Radical Right to assassinate JFK during his 11/22/1963 motorcade through Dealey Plaza.  Furthermore, I predicted: Ex-General Edwin Walker, residing in Dallas since November, 1961, will be identified at the center of that cyclone.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Yes-- I agree with your assertion.  But the reverse is also equally the case.  If there is nothing substantive released to support your contentions, then that will reveal (yet again) that there is something fundamentally defective about the method(s) you use to determine fact, truth, and reality.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Ernie Lazar

[Kenneth Drew]

2 hours ago, Ernie Lazar said:

If there is nothing substantive released

Which is exactly what most people expect.  If the Assassins can keep it secret for 54 years, why would anyone think that somehow, magically, someone will be made to release all the secrets that have been kept for all that time.  No file that names a shooter (real shooter) or assassin plotter will ever be released by the CIA or FBI or the US Congress.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Kenneth Drew
to remove notes at bottom

[Ernie Lazar]

JFK files: Trump orders release of 2,800 secret records, withholds others due to national security concerns

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/26/john-f-kennedy-assassination-archives-release-secret-jfk-files/798788001/

[Ernie Lazar]

To Paul Trejo:  Here you go  >>>>> Knock yourself out!  Let us know if you find anything.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release

[Ernie Lazar]

OK -- I've gone through about 70% of the FBI docs.  I was especially interested in FBI files from the 89-series classification.  That classification is for reports of threats to the President or other senior elected officials.

What I hoped to find was some document that would confirm that Harry Dean told the FBI about the "JBS plot".  I did not find anything in the FBI docs.  However, I then stumbled across an extremely significant Secret Service document which is item #356 of the most recent release with the NARA # 180-10065-10379.  This is a 413 page Secret Service summary of persons who had threatened the President.  This file includes references to reports received from the FBI or from informants.

There were many listings for people connected to the JBS, Minutemen, American Nazi Party, Constitution Party, and various white supremacy groups like Indignant White Citizens Council.  All the "usual suspects" have a record -- including:  Stanley Drennan, George King Jr., Kenneth Lamar Adams, Thomas Vallee, Edward R. Fields, etc.

However, NOT surprisingly, there is NO record which mentions any report from Harry Dean

Almost everything in the FBI docs that I reviewed was information already known except (in many cases) the identity of the informant name(s) is (are) not redacted.  Many of the Cuba-related documents discuss the Fair Play For Cuba Committee.  I saw about two dozen memos.  Also, significantly, NONE of the FBI memos from 1961-1965 contain a reference to any information received from Harry Dean.  In fact, many (perhaps most) of the FBI file numbers shown at the bottom of the memos (which identify the file numbers where the FPCC info originated) routinely refer to New York City files.

Another noteworthy fact:   There are literally dozens of memos that do not contain ANYTHING worthy of being classified and withheld for 54 years!

FOR EXAMPLE:  I found two separate records which were duplicates.  One is from the FBI HQ main file on the JFK Assassination (62-109060, serial #7376) and the duplicate is from FBI file 89-43, serial #9642.  Both of these memos discuss what a Dallas Morning News reporter (Earl Golz) received in 1963 from a former FBI Special Agent who later became the Director of Security for Hunt Oil Company (Paul Rothermel).  I have previously posted messages here in EF which summarized what this memo reported. 

Here is what they withheld for 54 years:  The first 9 characters of the first sentence was previously redacted.  The first 9 characters was a reference to the symbol code being used for a Dallas FBI informant i.e. "DL-1961-PCI"  The "PCI" means "potential criminal informant" and "PCI" is also redacted several other times in that memo.

THIS is why I have previously stated that no FOIA decisions should EVER be left to government bureaucrats.  ALL decisions concerning redactions or denials or excisions should be made by an entirely independent commission with no possibility of appeal by any agency AND there should be a law passed stating that ALL government documents which are 20 or more years old, should be released in their entirety.  The only exceptions being war plans, or codes which would enable our adversaries to decipher secret or top secret documents and the identity of any living informant (but if the birthdate of that person is 80 or more years ago, it should be released anyway). 

[Paul Trejo]

The following is my opinion.

The news that President Trump continues to withhold some JFK assassination files comes as a great shock to me.

Others will be disappointed -- I am shocked.

President GHW Bush -- a genius and former Director of the CIA -- deemed that the American People would be ready for the JFK assassination files by Thursday 26 October 2017.

President Trump disagrees.

I can't help wondering if President Trump's current overtures to the Radical Right in the South (an integral part of his "base") may be at the root of this shocking withhold.

No -- I don't claim to know what is being withheld -- but I do claim that NOBODY (not even Ernie Lazar) can know what is being withheld, either.  This is another sad day in American History.

Sadly,
--Paul Trejo