Mark Adamczyk on the MFF Lawsuit

[James DiEugenio]

 

Mark is one of the group of lawyers who worked on the filing in north California.

He is very knowledgeable about the JFK Act.  Kennedys and king is fortunate to have him.

I wonder how many people here know that both Trump and Biden actually broke both the letter and the spirit of the JFK Act.

And Trump said he wanted to clean up the swamp?  

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/2022-lawsuit

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

sadly, I am aware of that, and bet most here are, but just in case - thanks

[James DiEugenio]

Welcome Paul.

Lawsuits are always a coin flip, depending on many external factors.

But I don't think they had a choice.

Biden was going to crap out again.

[Roger Odisio]

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Welcome Paul.

Lawsuits are always a coin flip, depending on many external factors.

But I don't think they had a choice.

Biden was going to crap out again.

Mark Adamczyk's article on the MFF lawsuit is good, particularly in explaining Congress's desire to get expeditious release of all JFKA records, the inadequacy of FOIA to do the job, and the fact that NARA has done "virtually nothing" about the Collection since the ARRB closed. 

 

But with an important error.  It is written as though only information possessed by government agencies is a JFK record.  The JFK Act did define "record" that way, but only as a working definition. 

 

The Act created the Review Board to find and release records, and tasked it to define what it was looking for.  The Board decided that, to meet the intent of the law to create a Collection that would allow anybody to decide for themselves what happened that day, "record" had to be defined as broadly as possible. 

 

The final definition eliminates any reference to the source or form of the information.  A JFK record is *any* information, "public and private, regardless of how labeled or identified" relevant to understanding the murder.  (See Appendix D of the ARRB Final Report "Guidance for Interpretation and Implementation" of the JFK Act, particularly 36 CFR 1400.1 (a), and 1400.3 (g), where it says a record "may be  located at, or under the control of....Persons, including individuals and corporations, who have themselves created, or have obtained such records".)

 

If a JFK record was only information held by government agencies, the ARRB would not have been able to declare the Zapruder film a record and successfully "take" ownership of the original from the Zapruder family after a long struggle.

 

Some here have opined that the MFF lawsuit, even if successful, is unlikely to pry important information from the CIA and FBI that hasn't already been destroyed or "lost".   Seems probable to me too.

 

Fortunately there is much else for the lawsuit to accomplish. The JFK Collection was intended to be a central place where the curious from around the world can go to find out what happened. Just think of the synergy.  One discovery leads to another.  Bart Kamp discovering Hosty's interrogation notes in one of Malcolm Blunt's boxes of material copied from NARA (donated by Hosty in 1997) leads to a renewed interest in the Darnell and Wiegman films for possible corroboration of Oswald's alibi.  Just one example. 

 

Much new information has come to light in the 24 years since the Board closed that needs to be included in the Collection for future reference.  NARA has indicated to me in an email that they are open to suggestions.  Should it get to that stage, there is a long list of items from which the suit can choose to ask NARA to collect.

 

But by all accounts what is already there is poorly organized.  NARA is supposed to be working on digitizing the Collection. There is much that can be done to push NARA to make the Collection more user friendly.  

 

The good news is Bill Simpich, Larry Schnapf and Larry Hancock have all responded here to discussion of their lawsuit.  I read all three as saying they see room to do more than simply going around in circles with Biden and the CIA about what agencies are hiding.

[James DiEugenio]

I think we all know that Roger.

 

If you recall, Rankin's son gave the Board drafts of the Warren Report, which revealed Ford's alteration on the back wound.

 

Just a slip by Mark.

Edited December 3, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Roger Odisio]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I think we all know that Roger.

 

If you recall, Rankin's son gave the Board drafts of the Warren Report, which revealed Ford's alteration on the back wound.

 

Just a slip by Mark.

Mark Adamczyk rightly praised the ARRB's work and even suggested people should read their final report.  But when he comes to defining a JFK record it's right out of the JFK Act, rather than from the Board, mentioning only information held by government agencies.

This is not just a minor oversight.  The expansion of the "record" definition by the ARRB to include all information, public and private, without regard to its source or form, was one of its major accomplishments.  It provides the basis for the further work of turning the Collection into the depository of information Congress intended it to be.