Morley: NYT Dismisses JFKA "Conspiracy Theory," RFK Jr.

[Benjamin Cole]

Just FYI. No comment--BC. 

The Latest From JFK Facts

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Faulty Fact Checking on JFK and RFK Jr.

A flawed New York Times report on the candidate's comments about his uncle's murder 

JEFFERSON MORLEY JUL 14

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Dealey Plaza moments after the assassination of JFK (Credit: Cecil Stoughton)

On July 6 New York Times reporter Anjali Huyn asserted that Democratic presidential Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had promoted “five noteworthy falsehoods,” one of which was his claim that the CIA was involved in the murder of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

Huyn’s reporting is flawed, incomplete, and based on demonstrably inaccurate U.S. government statements. 

What follows is an exercise in fact-checking. It is not a defense of RFK Jr’s candidacy or his statements on other issues. As its name implies, JFK Facts is a news and research platform. JFK Facts takes no position in the 2024 presidential election.

Lacking Context 

In her July 6 article Huynh wrote:

Mr. Kennedy has long promoted a conspiracy theory that the C.I.A. killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

JFK Facts: This statement assumes that RFK Jr.’s statement is something no non-conspiracy theorist believes. That assumption is erroneous. Three U.S. president believed that the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination.

One month after JFK was killed, former president Harry Truman called for theabolition of the CIA in a Washington Post column. That wasn't an expression of a conspiracy theory but of Truman’s belief that Kennedy’s murder emanated from the CIA. 

In 1967 President Lyndon Johnson told his aide Marvin Watson that he thought the CIA was involved in JFK's assassination, according to FBI official Cartha DeLoach.

Excerpt from an April 4, 1967 memo written by a senior FBI official.

Later, Johnson made clear to CBS News that he did not believe the Warren Commission’s lone gunman conclusion. 

In 1971, President Richard Nixon demanded CIA director Richard Helms provide him with secret reports on the Bay of Pigs debacle. When Helms asked why Nixon wanted the material, the president said "The 'Who shot John' angle."  So Nixon at least suspected there might be a connection between the Agency's 1961 defeat in Cuba and JFK's assassination two years later.

(You can hear Nixon make this comment at in this White House conversation with Helms on October 8, 1971. I recommend starting to listen at 16:30 as Nixon's explains why he wants the Bay of Pigs material. Nixon makes his comment about “the Who shot John angle” at 17:30. Warning: Sound quality is terrible).

Missing Evidence

NYT: [RFK Jr.] claimed, without evidence, during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in May that Allen W. Dulles, a C.I.A. director fired by President Kennedy, helped cover up evidence of the organization’s involvement when he served on the Warren Commission, convened in 1963 to investigate the Kennedy assassination.

JFK FACTS: There is abundant evidence that Dulles and Helms covered up evidence of the organization's involvement with the accused assassin Oswald in their Warren Commission testimony. Helms said under oath that the information on Oswald in the Agency's files before the assassination  was “probably minimal.” As the Agency’s pre-assassination file on Oswald—not fully declassified until May 2023—shows, the CIA’s pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald was not minimal. It was extensive.

Here is Helms’ misleading testimony to Warren Commission

Accurate Statement

NYT: Referencing a House committee inquiry in 1976, he said: “Most of the people in that investigation believed it was the C.I.A. that was behind it because the evidence was so overwhelming to them.”

JFK FACTS: RFK Jr.’s statement is accurate. Two HSCA investigators, Gaeton Fonzi and Dan Hardway, came to believe the CIA was involved in JFK's murder and said so publicly.

Outdated Information

NYT: But even that investigation, which found that President Kennedy was “probably” the victim of a conspiracy of some kind, flatly concluded that the C.I.A. was “not involved.”

JFK FACTS: As a result of my reporting on deceased CIA officer George Joannides, HSCA counsel Robert Blakey renounced in 2003 his previous affirmations that the CIA had cooperated with the HSCA inquiry. Blakey now says of the CIA on JFK, "I don't believe anything they say."

Reliance on False CIA Statements

NYT: The Warren Commission found that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone and was not connected to any governmental agency.

JFK FACTS: The Warren Commission was itself deceived. The CIA did not inform the Commission that counterintelligence chief James Angleton put Oswald on a mail intercept watch list within a week of his defection to the Soviet Union in November 1959. Nor did the CIA tell the Commission that Agency operatives subsequently opened, copied, and filed Oswald’s correspondence for twenty months. 

So the CIA’s statement to the Warren Commission that “Oswald was never associated or connected directly or indirectly” with the Agency was inaccurate, misleading, and possibly deceptive. In fact, Oswald’s travels, politics, and personal life were monitored by the CIA counterintelligence staff for four years before Kennedy was killed.

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Morley has some sort of update on JFKA docs going on. Still unclear to me. 

[Adam Johnson]

Matt Allison, 

The above article is for your discerning review.....

Mockingbird is alive and well at the NY Times.

[Benjamin Cole]

4 minutes ago, Adam Johnson said:

Matt Allison, 

The above article is for your discerning review.....

Mockingbird is alive and well at the NY Times.

Mockingbird has become a fleet of B-52s of mis-, dis-, de- and mal-information. 

[Benjamin Cole]

FYI:

 

Morley has a positive take on the MFF court case. 

 

	Open in app or online The Latest From JFK Facts JFK Researchers Win Their Day in Court Judge limits lawsuit to congressional records and destroyed assassination files  JEFFERSON MORLEY JUL 17     SHARE   On July 14 Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed three counts of the Mary Ferrell Foundation's lawsuit against President Biden and the National Archives but allowed the litigation to proceed over two other counts.  Judge Richard Seeborg The judge’s decision gives the foundation, the sponsor of the largest online collection of JFK records, the right to: seek immediate release of all still-redacted assassination records created by Congressional investigations of the Senate’s Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations;  investigate the destruction of JFK documents the course of three official investigations, and  compel improvements in the usability of the National Archives' JFK Collection.  The Foundation's attorneys are considering all options concerning this litigation. See Mary Ferrelll Foundations’s “JFK Records Lawsuit” page for more information about Judge Seeborg’s decision and the lawsuit.  You can support the Mary Ferrell Foundations' ongoing legal efforts to compel full JFK disclosure by clicking here.

[Benjamin Cole]

I may have a negative update on the Biden Snuff Job on the JFK Records Act. Stay tuned. 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Benjamin Cole]

Very muddy situation.