Trump on releasing the JFK records

[K K Lane]

I note that no president since JFK has been a transparency president.   And here is  Trump's alleged response to why he didn't release the JFK records:

“if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.”

 

Per Andrew Napolitano:

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

I like the judge and think he is a fair guy.

But can we believe Trump on this?

What did they show him?  Why would they show him compromisng stuff?

[Cory Santos]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

I like the judge and think he is a fair guy.

But can we believe Trump on this?

What did they show him?  Why would they show him compromisng stuff?

Why not ask the question?   What if all presidents since knew something everyone else did not and really had the best interest of the people in not telling?   Has anyone on here always told the truth?   Always disclosed everything?   No?   I know Cliff adds water to my booze before he leaves the cabana to make it look like he didn’t drink that much during his writing.  It’s a game.  I don’t really care as he is doing great with his creation.  I just go to Costco and buy more.  But the point is you don’t know.  Maybe you are better off not knowing.  

[Ron Bulman]

21 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Why not ask the question?   What if all presidents since knew something everyone else did not and really had the best interest of the people in not telling?   Has anyone on here always told the truth?   Always disclosed everything?   No?   I know Cliff adds water to my booze before he leaves the cabana to make it look like he didn’t drink that much during his writing.  It’s a game.  I don’t really care as he is doing great with his creation.  I just go to Costco and buy more.  But the point is you don’t know.  Maybe you are better off not knowing.  

Cliff, booze and the cabana?  Are you serious about the JFKA? 

[Cliff Varnell]

6 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Cliff, booze and the cabana?  Are you serious about the JFKA? 

I don't take Trump seriously about anything but his lust for autocracy

[Cliff Varnell]

31 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Why not ask the question?   What if all presidents since knew something everyone else did not and really had the best interest of the people in not telling?   Has anyone on here always told the truth?   Always disclosed everything?   No?   I know Cliff adds water to my booze before he leaves the cabana to make it look like he didn’t drink that much during his writing.  It’s a game.  I don’t really care as he is doing great with his creation.  I just go to Costco and buy more.  But the point is you don’t know.  Maybe you are better off not knowing.  

You might want to stay away from the cigars on the left side of the humidor.  They're fake Cubans in more ways than one.

[Cory Santos]

2 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You might want to stay away from the cigars on the left side of the humidor.  They're fake Cubans in more ways than one.

Thanks Cliff for telling the world.  They are not fakes.   Our friend in Santa Clara promised me.  How would you know.  You haven’t been to Cuba?   Only I have.  No cigars for you!  These Cubans are very trusty.   

[Cory Santos]

14 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Cliff, booze and the cabana?  Are you serious about the JFKA? 

To live life is to love life.   Friends bring joy.   Cliff is a joy for all.  

[Ron Ecker]

They must have shown Trump that Ted Cruz's daddy was not involved after all. Trump threw a bottle of ketchup against the wall and said, "No release!"

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

It is hard to believe anything Trump says. If Trump now says he will open up the the JFK Records, why would anyone believe him?

We know Biden will not open up the JFKA Records.

There is a third candidate, whose name cannot be mentioned, who would open up the JFK Records, given his family history and background.

So it stands. 

Is this unmentionable third candidate, who is loathed by establishment DC and media, a "spoiler" ...or are the two extant political parties crapulent and feculent in every way, and "spoiling"  a chance for an American renewal and transparency in government? 

Stay tuned.

 

[Keven Hofeling]

'WHY THE LAST OF THE JFK FILES COULD EMBARRASS THE CIA'

By BRYAN BENDER | 05/25/2015 07:15 AM EDT | Updated: 05/28/2015 12:34 PM EDT | https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/why-last-of-jfk-files-could-embarrass-cia-118233

"...But among the 40,000 documents are roughly 3,600 that have never been seen by the public. They have been “withheld in full” primarily because they contain information that was considered “security classified” but also to protect personal privacy, tax and grand jury information, and “because information in the document reveals the identity of an unclassified confidential source,” according to Murphy.

Among the 3,600 are roughly 1,100 CIA documents, which make up the largest share. The second-largest batch belongs to the FBI, according to Murphy, while the rest include testimony and other records of the Warren Commission itself; the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reopened the investigation into JFK’s death in the late 1970s and concluded it was the result of a conspiracy (though the panel couldn’t prove it); records from the National Security Agency and other Defense Department offices; and files from a pair of 1975 congressional probes of CIA abuses — the so-called Church and Pike committees — and a related commission led by then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

The withheld CIA files include those on some of the most mysterious and controversial figures in the history of American espionage — particularly individuals who were known to be involved in CIA assassination plots around the world.

There are at least 332 pages of material on E. Howard Hunt, an almost mythical spymaster who is most famous for running the ring that broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Office Complex in 1972, setting in motion the events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

But a decade before, he played a leading role in the agency’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The failed attack by CIA-trained guerrillas generated deep discontent with Kennedy from Cuban exiles seeking to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro and who felt the president had let their forces die on Cuba’s beaches by refusing to provide air support against Castro’s army.

It was Hunt, shortly before he died in 2007, who claimed that he had been privy to a plot by several CIA affiliates to kill Kennedy — what he referred to as “the Big Event.”

Also under review by the special team of archivists are at least 606 pages about David Atlee Phillips, another CIA officer, who won a medal for his role in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, went on to run operations in Latin America, and, along with Hunt, played a leading role in anti-Castro activities in Cuba.

Phillips was accused — though never charged — of committing perjury when asked about agency ties to Oswald by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Phillips, too, late in life attributed the JFK assassination to “rogue” CIA officers.

It is the type of information that many researchers believe the agency would still like to keep secret.

“I don’t see the CIA handing out 600 pages on David Atlee Phillips in two years,” said Jefferson Morley, a leading Kennedy researcher and founder of JFKfacts.org, who has sued the CIA to reveal more information about several key figures known to be the focus of some of the withheld files.

“It may have nothing to do with JFK but about other assassinations,” he added. “They still don’t want to open that window and let everyone look in. I expect the worst.”

Another colleague of Phillips at the CIA was Anne Goodpasture. The career agency officer denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald’s phone calls in possession of the CIA’s Mexico City station, where she worked. But she later admitted in sworn testimony that she had, in fact, disseminated the tapes herself. A 286-page CIA file about her is among the documents that are supposed to be released in two years.

Also among the agency’s withheld files: 2,224 pages of the CIA’s interrogation of Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet KGB officer who defected to the U.S. shortly after the Kennedy assassination. He claimed to have seen the KGB files on Oswald in the 2 ½ years before the assassination when Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.

Rex Bradford, who runs the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a research organization that has digitized more than 1 million records related to the JFK case, has also identified numerous depositions before the Church Committee that are referenced in the panel’s final report but have yet to be made public.

They include testimony on secret plots to assassinate Castro from CIA officers; Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy; and the head of the CIA at the time, John McCone.

“The principal question we were trying to pursue was who ordered the assassination of Castro and five other leaders around the world — was it the president or the attorney general?” former Sen. Gary Hart, who was a member of the Church Committee and tasked with looking into the issue, said in an interview.

It was Hart’s digging that first revealed that the CIA had enlisted leading figures in organized crime to help kill Castro, who had closed down all their gambling and prostitution rings in Havana when he took power in 1959. The CIA’s assassination plots at the time have been considered by many government investigators to be relevant to finding out who might have had a motive to kill the American leader.

“How could the U.S. government bring itself to order these [CIA] assassinations?” added Hart. “We never resolved that. If these documents answer any of those questions it would be worthwhile.”

Also withheld are the Church Committee’s interviews with CIA officials about “JM/WAVE,” the code name for the secret CIA station overseeing covert operations in Cuba that was located on the campus of the University of Miami — and files on the obscure figure who ran its psychological operations branch, George Joannides.

It was revealed in a previous document release in 2009 that Joannides had links to some of the same anti-Castro forces that were connected to Oswald — something that was never shared with the Warren Commission.

Meanwhile, Joannides also served as the liaison between the agency and the House assassinations panel that reopened JFK’s murder in 1978 and inquired about the agency’s links to Oswald. But Joannides never told the panel about his role in Miami, a failure that the federal judge who ran the Assassination Records Review Board recently said amounted to “treachery.”

The CIA acknowledged in a lawsuit filed by Morley that there are more than 50 documents about Joannides’ activities, including in 1963 and 1978.

The bulk of the JFK collection now being processed by the National Archives includes thousands of files that were partially released over the years but with key sections blacked out — some of them “heavily redacted,” according to Murphy. Among these files are the CIA’s official history of its Mexico City station (which was opened in 1950 by Hunt).

Oswald visited Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination seeking visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union, which he was denied. Previous government disclosures have revealed that while initially the CIA denied any knowledge of Oswald’s activities, at the time itwas monitoring him closely and created several cover stories to hide what it knew.

Meanwhile, as PBS reported in 2013, “intelligence documents released in 1999 establish that, after Oswald failed to get the visas, CIA intercepts showed that someone impersonated Oswald in phone calls made to the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban consulate and linked Oswald to a known KGB assassin — Valery Kostikov — whom the CIA and FBI had been following for over a year.”..."
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'TRUMP BACKTRACKS, DELAYS RELEASE OF JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS UNTIL AT LEAST 2021'

By BRENT D. GRIFFITHS | 04/26/2018 11:16 PM EDT Updated 04/26/2018 11:59 PM EDT | https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/26/trump-jfk-records-delay-557339

"President Donald Trump on Thursday delayed the full release of JFK assassination records until at the latest 2021, siding with the CIA and FBI over national security concerns that the release of the remaining files could spark."

"I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure," Trump wrote in a memorandum released by the White House...." 
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James DiEugenio wrote:

"There are two upcoming deadlines with the extension of the JFK Act that Trump unilaterally made when he changed the law back in 2017. The first is coming up in about four days when the pubic declassification board will make a recommendation. Then next month, on October 26th, the White House will make a determination on whether or not to finally declassify the last of the JFK documents. Mark Adamczyk is the Kennedys and King attorney on this issue. Here is his latest."
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"The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (the “JFK Act”) mandated the final release of all assassination records by October 26, 2017. In October of 2017, President Trump publicly committed to authorizing the release of all records, as mandated by the JFK Act. However, on the eve of the October 26, 2017, deadline, President Trump changed course and issued an executive memorandum authorizing an additional delay of six (6) months. We can only assume that agencies protecting these records (namely the CIA and FBI) pressured Trump at the eleventh hour for more time. We will never know exactly what happened. What we do know is that Trump’s executive memorandum was a violation of the JFK Act. At the very least, President Trump was supposed to issue a document that certified the specific reasons for postponement as required by the JFK Act.

After the six (6) month “extension,” agencies were supposed to provide their final reasons for postponement to the President and the Archivist. Compliance with the JFK Act was to be finally accomplished by April 26, 2018. Inexplicably, President Trump then issued another executive memorandum granting agencies an additional three (3) years to “complete” their review of assassination records. This was on the heels of a twenty-five (25) year mandatory review obligation imposed by the JFK Act and then an additional six (6) month period to complete that review.

In that same memorandum of April 26, 2018, the President required final action from agencies by April 26, 2021. By that date, the President required that all information on declassification of JFK Records be delivered to the Archivist. That would, according to the executive memorandum, put the Archivist in the position of making final recommendations to President Biden by September 26, 2021. After receiving recommendations from the Archivist, President Biden would then be in an informed position to authorize a final release by October 26, 2021. That was the plan, at least designed by President Trump in 2018 with legal advice from the Office of Legal Counsel.

What happened instead? We do not know of any action taken by agencies in the three (3) year period between April 2018 and April 2021. We saw no press releases from the Archivist and the President in April 2021 indicating that agencies (protecting these records) did their jobs. We saw no press releases from the Archivist and the President this summer indicating that they were making serious progress, in anticipation of the artificial “deadlines” authorized by President Trump in 2018.

The Archivist is not to blame here. I sincerely believe that the Archivist wants to see these records released. These records are based on an event that happened in 1963. The problem is that the Archivist is a custodian of records and does not have the authority under the JFK Act to compel the release of assassination records. Only the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) had that power under the JFK Act, but unfortunately the ARRB only had authority and funding through 1998.

Congressional oversight committees had authority to ensure compliance with the JFK Act after the winding-down of the ARRB. Those committees have done nothing that we know of, despite receiving correspondence from lawyers and researchers interested in compliance with the JFK Act. At this stage, President Biden has the authority to ensure compliance. President Biden should no longer entertain continuing and stale requests from agencies to postpone assassination records. In order to do his job under the JFK Act, a federal statute, President Biden needs legitimate and transparent reasons from agencies for continued postponement. If the President receives that information, he can then make an executive decision on continued postponement. If the President authorizes postponement of more records, it must be accompanied by a written and unclassified certification of the reason(s). That is what the JFK Act requires. Vague explanations based on “national security” do not come close to meeting the standards of the JFK Act.

Congress declared that continued classification of records would be warranted in only “the rarest of circumstances.” That was in 1992, almost 30 years after the assassination. We are now almost 30 years after the passage of the JFK Act, and almost 60 years after the assassination itself.

I recently signed a letter and legal memorandum to President Biden expressing the importance of this issue. That document can be viewed here. I strongly encourage you to contact the White House with a simple request. Follow the law. Stop the delays based on unfounded (and undisclosed) arguments from agencies that wish to continue hiding these records.

This effort is not about proving a conspiracy or validating the previous findings of the Warren Commission or House Select Committee on Assassinations. It is about following the law, which was passed by Congress in 1992. It is worth noting that Joe Biden was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the JFK Act was passed by Congress in 1992. The executive branch recently authorized the release of 9/11 records and it has the same chance to earn trust from the American public by authorizing the release of the JFK records. It should not be a difficult decision. It is what the law requires."

Wednesday, 22 September 2021 05:04

'FINAL DEADLINES ON JFK RECORDS -- WHAT IS BIDEN GOING TO DO?'

Written by Mark Adamczyk | https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/final-deadlines-on-jfk-records-what-is-biden-going-to-do

"Mark Adamczyk highlights the looming final deadlines for the release of the JFK records by the National Archives. He outlines President Joe Biden’s responsibilities as defined by the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and urges our readers to join him in writing a letter to President Biden asking him to follow the requirements of the law."
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'WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS THAT SCARED TRUMP TO BACKTRACK ON HIS PROMISES TO RELEASE THEM?'

by Adam Dick | Nov 25, 2022 | http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/november/25/presidents-trump-and-biden-keep-john-f-kennedy-assassination-records-secret/

"...Trump had indicated he would release the records before he instead chose to keep much of them secret through 2021 — a time period that could and has been extended since.

Legal scholar Andrew Napolitano, who has known Trump since before Trump’s 2016 presidential run, provides some insight on Trump’s change of mind regarding the release of the still secret Kennedy assassination records in a Tuesday video conversation with Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal. Napolitano, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute and was a state trial judge in New Jersey, discusses a late December of 2000 phone conversation he had with Trump in which Trump not releasing the records during his presidential term was discussed. Napolitano relates that Trump, who was then finishing up his presidential term, told Napolitano, “Judge, if you saw what I saw, you would know why I can’t release them.” Queried then by Napolitano concerning what Trump was talking about, Napolitano relates Trump said he could not tell Napolitano over the phone but could tell Napolitano next time they meet in person — something that is yet to happen.

Napolitano, in the video conversation, speculates regarding why Trump changed his mind regarding releasing the Kennedy assassination records, stating, “Well what the hell could he have seen? Whatever it ...was it was proof of more people involved than Lee Harvey Oswald — people in the government, and he didn’t want to reveal it even though many of those people are themselves now dead.” “I think they scared him or threatened him,” further states Napolitano, “I don’t know, I don’t know what he saw; he was determined to reveal it and then he saw something and he goes ‘I can’t reveal it.’”"

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'IS TRUMP TUCKER CARLSON'S JFK ASSASSINATION SOURCE?'

by Jacob G. Hornberger | December 27, 2022 | https://www.fff.org/2022/12/27/is-trump-tucker-carlsons-jfk-assassination-source/

On December 15, 2022, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue stating his conviction that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The presentation was remarkable given that that sort of thing is never found in the mainstream media. As most everyone knows, the mainstream media avoids the Kennedy assassination like the plague.

Carlson’s presentation motivated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to issue the following highly dangerous tweet: “The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered. @TuckerCarlson.”

Carlson made his presentation in the context of the CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to disclose thousands of its assassination-related records to the American people, along with President Biden’s decision to go along with the CIA’s decision. These are records that the CIA was mandated to release to the American people by the JFK Records Act, which was enacted in 1992 — thirty years ago!

As I have long maintained, there is only one reason for the CIA’s continued secrecy. Those thousands of records contain pieces of incriminating circumstantial evidence that further establish criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy. Obviously, the CIA has concluded that it simply cannot afford to permit the American people, especially assassination researchers, to view those records. Better to have the American people believing that the records are incriminating rather than letting them know that they are incriminating.

On November 8, 2022 — approximately one month before the Carlson presentation — Gerald Celente conducted an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former judicial analyst for Fox News. In that interview, Napolitano recounted a conversation with President Trump, with whom he was friends. In that interview, the pertinent part of which you can view here, Napolitano stated:

"I once had a conversation … with President Trump when he was in the White House. He used to call me all the time. And we talked about everything under the sun. I said, “Are you going to release those documents or not?” And he said to me, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them.”"

In his presentation, Carlson stated the following:

"In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. That act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed. The last administration promised to comply fully with that law. But under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld, in the end, thousands of pages of CIA documents. Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration did exactly the same thing. That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved. But we still can’t see them. Clearly, it’s not to protect any person. They’re all dead. It’s to protect an institution. But why? Well, today we decided to find out. We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?” And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”" (Emphasis added.)

Is Trump Carlson’s source? It would make sense that he is. After all, just a little more than a month ago, Trump told Napolitano that had seen the CIA’s still-secret records. He also implied to Napolitano that the still-secret records contain explosive information of an incriminating nature. What else could he have meant when he said, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them”?

It also stands to reason that Carlson would have known about the Napolitano interview, given Napolitano’s longtime relationship with Fox News. It also stands to reason that Carlson would have reached out to Trump and that Trump would have talked to him, given Trump’s longtime close relationship with Fox News.

But whether Trump is Carlson’s source or not, the obvious question arises: Why didn’t Trump order the release of those long-secret records of the CIA? Why did he, like Biden, participate in the CIA’s assassination cover-up by authorizing the CIA to continue keeping its half-century-old records secret? Indeed, why doesn’t Trump, a recently announced candidate for president, go public right now with what he saw in those records?

One possibility is that the CIA “Hoovered” Trump into continuing the keep the CIA’s decades-old assassination-related records secret. By “Hoovered” I am referring to J. Edgar Hoover, who was a serial blackmailer when he was serving as FBI director. Hoover would acquire personal information about people with the aim of blackmailing them into bending them to his will. If they complied, he would keep the information secret. If they refused to comply with Hoover’s will, he would release the information through trusted assets in the mainstream press.

My hunch is that that is what happened with Trump. After all, when the deadline for release was coming due, Trump publicly announced that he intended to order the release of the CIA’s assassination-related records. Then, just before the deadline came due, however, the CIA somehow prevailed on Trump to suddenly change his mind and instead to grant the CIA’s demand to extend the time for secrecy.

In the final analysis though, the CIA’s steadfast refusal to disclose those thousands of assassination-related records is, largely, irrelevant. As I have maintained over the years, once it was established beyond a reasonable doubt that the national-security establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy on Kennedy’s body, the gig was up. That’s because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with an innocent explanation for the fraudulent autopsy, and no one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy necessarily means criminal culpability in the assassination itself. See my article “Why the JFK Assassination Should Matter to Everyone.” Also see my books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, Regime Change: The JFK Assassination, and, most recently, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.

The CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to release the thousands of remaining assassination-related records tends to confirm what Trump told Napolitano. But those records would simply add additional evidence to what the fraudulent autopsy has already established: that the November 22, 1963, assassination was a regime-change operation intended to protect “national security” from a president who was determined to lead America in a direction different from the direction that the Pentagon and the CIA were determined to lead America.

NOTE: Credit is given to Charles Burris, who first raised the possibility that Trump is Carlson’s source in the following article at LewRockwell.com: “Will Tucker Carlson Reveal The High Level Source Which Confirmed That The Deep State Murdered JFK In A Regime Change Coup d’état?"

This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Edited March 16 by Keven Hofeling

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

'WHY THE LAST OF THE JFK FILES COULD EMBARRASS THE CIA'

By BRYAN BENDER | 05/25/2015 07:15 AM EDT | Updated: 05/28/2015 12:34 PM EDT | https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/why-last-of-jfk-files-could-embarrass-cia-118233

"...But among the 40,000 documents are roughly 3,600 that have never been seen by the public. They have been “withheld in full” primarily because they contain information that was considered “security classified” but also to protect personal privacy, tax and grand jury information, and “because information in the document reveals the identity of an unclassified confidential source,” according to Murphy.

Among the 3,600 are roughly 1,100 CIA documents, which make up the largest share. The second-largest batch belongs to the FBI, according to Murphy, while the rest include testimony and other records of the Warren Commission itself; the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reopened the investigation into JFK’s death in the late 1970s and concluded it was the result of a conspiracy (though the panel couldn’t prove it); records from the National Security Agency and other Defense Department offices; and files from a pair of 1975 congressional probes of CIA abuses — the so-called Church and Pike committees — and a related commission led by then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

The withheld CIA files include those on some of the most mysterious and controversial figures in the history of American espionage — particularly individuals who were known to be involved in CIA assassination plots around the world.

There are at least 332 pages of material on E. Howard Hunt, an almost mythical spymaster who is most famous for running the ring that broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Office Complex in 1972, setting in motion the events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

But a decade before, he played a leading role in the agency’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The failed attack by CIA-trained guerrillas generated deep discontent with Kennedy from Cuban exiles seeking to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro and who felt the president had let their forces die on Cuba’s beaches by refusing to provide air support against Castro’s army.

It was Hunt, shortly before he died in 2007, who claimed that he had been privy to a plot by several CIA affiliates to kill Kennedy — what he referred to as “the Big Event.”

Also under review by the special team of archivists are at least 606 pages about David Atlee Phillips, another CIA officer, who won a medal for his role in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, went on to run operations in Latin America, and, along with Hunt, played a leading role in anti-Castro activities in Cuba.

Phillips was accused — though never charged — of committing perjury when asked about agency ties to Oswald by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Phillips, too, late in life attributed the JFK assassination to “rogue” CIA officers.

It is the type of information that many researchers believe the agency would still like to keep secret.

“I don’t see the CIA handing out 600 pages on David Atlee Phillips in two years,” said Jefferson Morley, a leading Kennedy researcher and founder of JFKfacts.org, who has sued the CIA to reveal more information about several key figures known to be the focus of some of the withheld files.

“It may have nothing to do with JFK but about other assassinations,” he added. “They still don’t want to open that window and let everyone look in. I expect the worst.”

Another colleague of Phillips at the CIA was Anne Goodpasture. The career agency officer denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald’s phone calls in possession of the CIA’s Mexico City station, where she worked. But she later admitted in sworn testimony that she had, in fact, disseminated the tapes herself. A 286-page CIA file about her is among the documents that are supposed to be released in two years.

Also among the agency’s withheld files: 2,224 pages of the CIA’s interrogation of Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet KGB officer who defected to the U.S. shortly after the Kennedy assassination. He claimed to have seen the KGB files on Oswald in the 2 ½ years before the assassination when Oswald lived in the Soviet Union.

Rex Bradford, who runs the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a research organization that has digitized more than 1 million records related to the JFK case, has also identified numerous depositions before the Church Committee that are referenced in the panel’s final report but have yet to be made public.

They include testimony on secret plots to assassinate Castro from CIA officers; Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy; and the head of the CIA at the time, John McCone.

“The principal question we were trying to pursue was who ordered the assassination of Castro and five other leaders around the world — was it the president or the attorney general?” former Sen. Gary Hart, who was a member of the Church Committee and tasked with looking into the issue, said in an interview.

It was Hart’s digging that first revealed that the CIA had enlisted leading figures in organized crime to help kill Castro, who had closed down all their gambling and prostitution rings in Havana when he took power in 1959. The CIA’s assassination plots at the time have been considered by many government investigators to be relevant to finding out who might have had a motive to kill the American leader.

“How could the U.S. government bring itself to order these [CIA] assassinations?” added Hart. “We never resolved that. If these documents answer any of those questions it would be worthwhile.”

Also withheld are the Church Committee’s interviews with CIA officials about “JM/WAVE,” the code name for the secret CIA station overseeing covert operations in Cuba that was located on the campus of the University of Miami — and files on the obscure figure who ran its psychological operations branch, George Joannides.

It was revealed in a previous document release in 2009 that Joannides had links to some of the same anti-Castro forces that were connected to Oswald — something that was never shared with the Warren Commission.

Meanwhile, Joannides also served as the liaison between the agency and the House assassinations panel that reopened JFK’s murder in 1978 and inquired about the agency’s links to Oswald. But Joannides never told the panel about his role in Miami, a failure that the federal judge who ran the Assassination Records Review Board recently said amounted to “treachery.”

The CIA acknowledged in a lawsuit filed by Morley that there are more than 50 documents about Joannides’ activities, including in 1963 and 1978.

The bulk of the JFK collection now being processed by the National Archives includes thousands of files that were partially released over the years but with key sections blacked out — some of them “heavily redacted,” according to Murphy. Among these files are the CIA’s official history of its Mexico City station (which was opened in 1950 by Hunt).

Oswald visited Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination seeking visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union, which he was denied. Previous government disclosures have revealed that while initially the CIA denied any knowledge of Oswald’s activities, at the time itwas monitoring him closely and created several cover stories to hide what it knew.

Meanwhile, as PBS reported in 2013, “intelligence documents released in 1999 establish that, after Oswald failed to get the visas, CIA intercepts showed that someone impersonated Oswald in phone calls made to the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban consulate and linked Oswald to a known KGB assassin — Valery Kostikov — whom the CIA and FBI had been following for over a year.”..."
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'TRUMP BACKTRACKS, DELAYS RELEASE OF JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS UNTIL AT LEAST 2021'

By BRENT D. GRIFFITHS | 04/26/2018 11:16 PM EDT Updated 04/26/2018 11:59 PM EDT | https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/26/trump-jfk-records-delay-557339

"President Donald Trump on Thursday delayed the full release of JFK assassination records until at the latest 2021, siding with the CIA and FBI over national security concerns that the release of the remaining files could spark."

"I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure," Trump wrote in a memorandum released by the White House...." 
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James DiEugenio wrote:

"There are two upcoming deadlines with the extension of the JFK Act that Trump unilaterally made when he changed the law back in 2017. The first is coming up in about four days when the pubic declassification board will make a recommendation. Then next month, on October 26th, the White House will make a determination on whether or not to finally declassify the last of the JFK documents. Mark Adamczyk is the Kennedys and King attorney on this issue. Here is his latest."
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"The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (the “JFK Act”) mandated the final release of all assassination records by October 26, 2017. In October of 2017, President Trump publicly committed to authorizing the release of all records, as mandated by the JFK Act. However, on the eve of the October 26, 2017, deadline, President Trump changed course and issued an executive memorandum authorizing an additional delay of six (6) months. We can only assume that agencies protecting these records (namely the CIA and FBI) pressured Trump at the eleventh hour for more time. We will never know exactly what happened. What we do know is that Trump’s executive memorandum was a violation of the JFK Act. At the very least, President Trump was supposed to issue a document that certified the specific reasons for postponement as required by the JFK Act.

After the six (6) month “extension,” agencies were supposed to provide their final reasons for postponement to the President and the Archivist. Compliance with the JFK Act was to be finally accomplished by April 26, 2018. Inexplicably, President Trump then issued another executive memorandum granting agencies an additional three (3) years to “complete” their review of assassination records. This was on the heels of a twenty-five (25) year mandatory review obligation imposed by the JFK Act and then an additional six (6) month period to complete that review.

In that same memorandum of April 26, 2018, the President required final action from agencies by April 26, 2021. By that date, the President required that all information on declassification of JFK Records be delivered to the Archivist. That would, according to the executive memorandum, put the Archivist in the position of making final recommendations to President Biden by September 26, 2021. After receiving recommendations from the Archivist, President Biden would then be in an informed position to authorize a final release by October 26, 2021. That was the plan, at least designed by President Trump in 2018 with legal advice from the Office of Legal Counsel.

What happened instead? We do not know of any action taken by agencies in the three (3) year period between April 2018 and April 2021. We saw no press releases from the Archivist and the President in April 2021 indicating that agencies (protecting these records) did their jobs. We saw no press releases from the Archivist and the President this summer indicating that they were making serious progress, in anticipation of the artificial “deadlines” authorized by President Trump in 2018.

The Archivist is not to blame here. I sincerely believe that the Archivist wants to see these records released. These records are based on an event that happened in 1963. The problem is that the Archivist is a custodian of records and does not have the authority under the JFK Act to compel the release of assassination records. Only the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) had that power under the JFK Act, but unfortunately the ARRB only had authority and funding through 1998.

Congressional oversight committees had authority to ensure compliance with the JFK Act after the winding-down of the ARRB. Those committees have done nothing that we know of, despite receiving correspondence from lawyers and researchers interested in compliance with the JFK Act. At this stage, President Biden has the authority to ensure compliance. President Biden should no longer entertain continuing and stale requests from agencies to postpone assassination records. In order to do his job under the JFK Act, a federal statute, President Biden needs legitimate and transparent reasons from agencies for continued postponement. If the President receives that information, he can then make an executive decision on continued postponement. If the President authorizes postponement of more records, it must be accompanied by a written and unclassified certification of the reason(s). That is what the JFK Act requires. Vague explanations based on “national security” do not come close to meeting the standards of the JFK Act.

Congress declared that continued classification of records would be warranted in only “the rarest of circumstances.” That was in 1992, almost 30 years after the assassination. We are now almost 30 years after the passage of the JFK Act, and almost 60 years after the assassination itself.

I recently signed a letter and legal memorandum to President Biden expressing the importance of this issue. That document can be viewed here. I strongly encourage you to contact the White House with a simple request. Follow the law. Stop the delays based on unfounded (and undisclosed) arguments from agencies that wish to continue hiding these records.

This effort is not about proving a conspiracy or validating the previous findings of the Warren Commission or House Select Committee on Assassinations. It is about following the law, which was passed by Congress in 1992. It is worth noting that Joe Biden was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the JFK Act was passed by Congress in 1992. The executive branch recently authorized the release of 9/11 records and it has the same chance to earn trust from the American public by authorizing the release of the JFK records. It should not be a difficult decision. It is what the law requires."

Wednesday, 22 September 2021 05:04

'FINAL DEADLINES ON JFK RECORDS -- WHAT IS BIDEN GOING TO DO?'

Written by Mark Adamczyk | https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/final-deadlines-on-jfk-records-what-is-biden-going-to-do

"Mark Adamczyk highlights the looming final deadlines for the release of the JFK records by the National Archives. He outlines President Joe Biden’s responsibilities as defined by the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and urges our readers to join him in writing a letter to President Biden asking him to follow the requirements of the law."
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'WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS THAT SCARED TRUMP TO BACKTRACK ON HIS PROMISES TO RELEASE THEM?'

by Adam Dick | Nov 25, 2022 | http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/november/25/presidents-trump-and-biden-keep-john-f-kennedy-assassination-records-secret/

"...Trump had indicated he would release the records before he instead chose to keep much of them secret through 2021 — a time period that could and has been extended since.

Legal scholar Andrew Napolitano, who has known Trump since before Trump’s 2016 presidential run, provides some insight on Trump’s change of mind regarding the release of the still secret Kennedy assassination records in a Tuesday video conversation with Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal. Napolitano, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute and was a state trial judge in New Jersey, discusses a late December of 2000 phone conversation he had with Trump in which Trump not releasing the records during his presidential term was discussed. Napolitano relates that Trump, who was then finishing up his presidential term, told Napolitano, “Judge, if you saw what I saw, you would know why I can’t release them.” Queried then by Napolitano concerning what Trump was talking about, Napolitano relates Trump said he could not tell Napolitano over the phone but could tell Napolitano next time they meet in person — something that is yet to happen.

Napolitano, in the video conversation, speculates regarding why Trump changed his mind regarding releasing the Kennedy assassination records, stating, “Well what the hell could he have seen? Whatever it ...was it was proof of more people involved than Lee Harvey Oswald — people in the government, and he didn’t want to reveal it even though many of those people are themselves now dead.” “I think they scared him or threatened him,” further states Napolitano, “I don’t know, I don’t know what he saw; he was determined to reveal it and then he saw something and he goes ‘I can’t reveal it.’”"

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'IS TRUMP TUCKER CARLSON'S JFK ASSASSINATION SOURCE?'

by Jacob G. Hornberger | December 27, 2022 | https://www.fff.org/2022/12/27/is-trump-tucker-carlsons-jfk-assassination-source/

On December 15, 2022, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue stating his conviction that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The presentation was remarkable given that that sort of thing is never found in the mainstream media. As most everyone knows, the mainstream media avoids the Kennedy assassination like the plague.

Carlson’s presentation motivated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to issue the following highly dangerous tweet: “The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered. @TuckerCarlson.”

Carlson made his presentation in the context of the CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to disclose thousands of its assassination-related records to the American people, along with President Biden’s decision to go along with the CIA’s decision. These are records that the CIA was mandated to release to the American people by the JFK Records Act, which was enacted in 1992 — thirty years ago!

As I have long maintained, there is only one reason for the CIA’s continued secrecy. Those thousands of records contain pieces of incriminating circumstantial evidence that further establish criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy. Obviously, the CIA has concluded that it simply cannot afford to permit the American people, especially assassination researchers, to view those records. Better to have the American people believing that the records are incriminating rather than letting them know that they are incriminating.

On November 8, 2022 — approximately one month before the Carlson presentation — Gerald Celente conducted an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former judicial analyst for Fox News. In that interview, Napolitano recounted a conversation with President Trump, with whom he was friends. In that interview, the pertinent part of which you can view here, Napolitano stated:

"I once had a conversation … with President Trump when he was in the White House. He used to call me all the time. And we talked about everything under the sun. I said, “Are you going to release those documents or not?” And he said to me, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them.”"

In his presentation, Carlson stated the following:

"In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. That act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed. The last administration promised to comply fully with that law. But under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld, in the end, thousands of pages of CIA documents. Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration did exactly the same thing. That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved. But we still can’t see them. Clearly, it’s not to protect any person. They’re all dead. It’s to protect an institution. But why? Well, today we decided to find out. We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?” And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”" (Emphasis added.)

Is Trump Carlson’s source? It would make sense that he is. After all, just a little more than a month ago, Trump told Napolitano that had seen the CIA’s still-secret records. He also implied to Napolitano that the still-secret records contain explosive information of an incriminating nature. What else could he have meant when he said, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them”?

It also stands to reason that Carlson would have known about the Napolitano interview, given Napolitano’s longtime relationship with Fox News. It also stands to reason that Carlson would have reached out to Trump and that Trump would have talked to him, given Trump’s longtime close relationship with Fox News.

But whether Trump is Carlson’s source or not, the obvious question arises: Why didn’t Trump order the release of those long-secret records of the CIA? Why did he, like Biden, participate in the CIA’s assassination cover-up by authorizing the CIA to continue keeping its half-century-old records secret? Indeed, why doesn’t Trump, a recently announced candidate for president, go public right now with what he saw in those records?

One possibility is that the CIA “Hoovered” Trump into continuing the keep the CIA’s decades-old assassination-related records secret. By “Hoovered” I am referring to J. Edgar Hoover, who was a serial blackmailer when he was serving as FBI director. Hoover would acquire personal information about people with the aim of blackmailing them into bending them to his will. If they complied, he would keep the information secret. If they refused to comply with Hoover’s will, he would release the information through trusted assets in the mainstream press.

My hunch is that that is what happened with Trump. After all, when the deadline for release was coming due, Trump publicly announced that he intended to order the release of the CIA’s assassination-related records. Then, just before the deadline came due, however, the CIA somehow prevailed on Trump to suddenly change his mind and instead to grant the CIA’s demand to extend the time for secrecy.

In the final analysis though, the CIA’s steadfast refusal to disclose those thousands of assassination-related records is, largely, irrelevant. As I have maintained over the years, once it was established beyond a reasonable doubt that the national-security establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy on Kennedy’s body, the gig was up. That’s because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with an innocent explanation for the fraudulent autopsy, and no one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy necessarily means criminal culpability in the assassination itself. See my article “Why the JFK Assassination Should Matter to Everyone.” Also see my books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, Regime Change: The JFK Assassination, and, most recently, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.

The CIA’s continued steadfast refusal to release the thousands of remaining assassination-related records tends to confirm what Trump told Napolitano. But those records would simply add additional evidence to what the fraudulent autopsy has already established: that the November 22, 1963, assassination was a regime-change operation intended to protect “national security” from a president who was determined to lead America in a direction different from the direction that the Pentagon and the CIA were determined to lead America.

NOTE: Credit is given to Charles Burris, who first raised the possibility that Trump is Carlson’s source in the following article at LewRockwell.com: “Will Tucker Carlson Reveal The High Level Source Which Confirmed That The Deep State Murdered JFK In A Regime Change Coup d’état?"

This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Great post KH. 

Something fishy happened in and around Watergate and Nixon, who had demanded to see the "Bay of Pigs" files. Then a team 100% of CIA'ers, including Hunt and McCord (except possibly Gordon Liddy) breaks into Watergate, is caught red-handed, and Nixon is said to have organized the break-in, and he goes out. But not before Agnew also gets the boot...and Gerald Ford, WC'er, becomes the unelected President.

This is not a defense of Nixon, who should have been impeached/convicted for what he did in Laos alone. 

I wonder if four presidents have been effectively deposed by the security state...JFK, Nixon, Carter, Trump. This is entirely separate from whether I agreed or not with these Presidents and their policies, or thought they were crooks or not. 

Is the right lesson from the JFKA to be aware of putsches in civilian clothing? 

 

 

[Keven Hofeling]

On 3/16/2024 at 4:35 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

Great post KH. 

Something fishy happened in and around Watergate and Nixon, who had demanded to see the "Bay of Pigs" files. Then a team 100% of CIA'ers, including Hunt and McCord (except possibly Gordon Liddy) breaks into Watergate, is caught red-handed, and Nixon is said to have organized the break-in, and he goes out. But not before Agnew also gets the boot...and Gerald Ford, WC'er, becomes the unelected President.

This is not a defense of Nixon, who should have been impeached/convicted for what he did in Laos alone. 

I wonder if four presidents have been effectively deposed by the security state...JFK, Nixon, Carter, Trump. This is entirely separate from whether I agreed or not with these Presidents and their policies, or thought they were crooks or not. 

Is the right lesson from the JFKA to be aware of putsches in civilian clothing? 

 

 

In a manner of speaking, yes.

In my opinion, this is the lesson of the Kennedy assassinations, and of the travails of Nixon, Carter, and Trump as well...

Edited March 19 by Keven Hofeling

[Benjamin Cole]

24 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

In a manner of speaking, yes.

In my opinion, this is the lesson of the Kennedy assassinations, and of the travails of Nixon, Carter, and Trump as well...

"American Gestapo." Truman was known for blunt talk. 

It seems Truman thought the CIA might have had a hand in the JFKA.

My take is the national security state, aka Deep State, or Shadow Government, knew it had played the assassination card a little too often by the 1970s. But it had been working with media for generations, building up relationships and kompromats, and allies in both major political parties (no doubt a lot of kompromats there to).  

I wonder if there can be a US President that the CIA opposes. 

 

 

[Keven Hofeling]

15 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

"American Gestapo." Truman was known for blunt talk. 

It seems Truman thought the CIA might have had a hand in the JFKA.

My take is the national security state, aka Deep State, or Shadow Government, knew it had played the assassination card a little too often by the 1970s. But it had been working with media for generations, building up relationships and kompromats, and allies in both major political parties (no doubt a lot of kompromats there to).  

I wonder if there can be a US President that the CIA opposes. 

 

 

 

RE: The origins of the post WWII SS in America and abroad...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/2442248799164508/

"The Devil is in the details. And once you begin to get in to the details of Operation Paperclip one is quickly forced to conclude that the version of the Operation Paperclip narrative which focuses on German rocket scientists is the sterilized version of the story, carefully crafted by the intelligence resources of the American power elite to obscure the genuinely scandalous elements of the story (or in other words, a "limited hangout"). "Operation Overcast", the twin operation of Paperclip, remains hidden in plain sight, and once you become familiar with the details and cast of characters and realize that the story of Operation Overcast is the story of the creation of the hydra-beast that President Kennedy was executed for attempting to dismantle, the sensitivity of this particular facet of the hidden history of the U.S. national security state becomes quite obvious. Attorney Daniel Sheehan does an excellent job presenting an overview of the story (beginning at 59m35s of the following video lecture) which is basically that the American oligarchs brokered a deal with Reinhardt Gehlen (the Third Reich Waffen SS anti-Soviet intelligence chief) by which an anti-communist special warfare academy would be created (and placed under the command of Major General Otto Skorzeny, former commander of the Waffen SS Special Forces) beginning in 1946 to train 100 men per year for placement in key positions in all allied intelligence agencies (especially the newly constituted CIA and Israeli Mossad). 1200 such key operatives were trained in said special warfare academy between 1946 and 1965, profoundly influencing the tactics and strategies of these intelligence agencies, from the use of torture and death squads, to the deployment of mercenary regime change forces such as Isis. Among the very interesting and particularly telling facts is that the key translators between the American oligarchs and Generals Gehlen and Skorzeny were Special Agents Henry Kissinger and Ted Shackley (future Director of Central Intelligence under HW Bush) of the Army Counterintelligence Corps. Harry Truman would be manipulated (much to his future regret) to authorize all of this to finance the new anti-Soviet intelligence network and its operations (events in which Charles Willoughby and Edward Landsdale [future primary conspirators in the JFK hit] would play central roles).

https://youtu.be/KeNQixRRUCo?si=PeXmztd7K9vuEpce&t=3576

 

 

Edited March 17 by Keven Hofeling