The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion

[Cliff Varnell]

41 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

That's not a reasonable assumption, Cliff.

Given Biden's record, there is no chance he will reverse his "transparency plan" and seek release of outstanding JFK records. 

Nothing Trump says can be taken at face value. But there is a nonzero chance he will release some records. That doesn't mean Jim endorses Trump, even apparently, or will celebrate his victory. There are a few other matters to consider.

Jim didn't politicize the issue.  It is a legit issue because it could lead to some further look at the political murders of the 60s and what they have done to the country.  Keep up this line, Cliff, and you could be qualified to be a mod.

It's a legal issue, not the issue of a political campaign.  Once it's an issue in a political campaign the matter has been politicized.

Similar to the release of Julian Assange.  Even though there was debate over the matter it never became an issue in a political campaign.

Edited June 25 by Cliff Varnell

[Matt Allison]

31 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

Given Biden's record, there is no chance he will reverse his "transparency plan" and seek release of outstanding JFK records. 

oh yes, because we all know Biden doesn't like the Kennedys and would love to cover up facts about the assassination.

uh huh.

 

What?

Statements like this, that are completely divorced from reality, are why this subject has become so clownish on here.

Biden believed the agencies when they told him that once former employees had passed away, that their names would be unredacted. If he's wrong, get the evidence of such together, take it to a friendly Congressperson, and have them approach Biden about it.

[Calvin Ye]

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

John Newman is working on a book on the King assassination.

That is why its taking him so long on Armageddon.

The King book is going to be two volumes.

James, thanks for the update

[Cliff Varnell]

 

 

 

po·lit·i·cize

/pəˈlidəˌsīz/

verb

 

1. cause (an activity or event) to become political in character.

   "the administration did not want to politicize a tragedy"

   • make (someone) politically aware or active.

     "we successfully politicized a generation of women"
   • engage in or talk about politics.

     "we talk and squabble and politicize about education as a vote-catching agency"

     </q>

      

     Every issue in a presidential campaign is politicized by definition.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Matthew Koch said:

I think it's inconceivable, it is going to be brought up in the debate, especially seeing how hostile the moderators are towards Trump. 

BUT.. RFK Jr will be live streaming the debate and maybe he will bring it up? 

I think @Lori Spencer is doing something with the RFK campaign, maybe she can get him to bring it up🙂

Hey, terrific, Mathew.

Let us know if RFK, Jr. finally condemns Trump's historic January 6th mob attack on the U.S. Congress, for the purpose of obstructing the certification of Biden's election.

I've been waiting for RFK, Jr. to finally man up and tell his fans the truth about Trump's historic January 6th sedition.

Where is the RFK, Jr. "profile in courage" when the country could really use it?

Edited June 26 by W. Niederhut

[Benjamin Cole]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

John Newman is working on a book on the King assassination.

That is why its taking him so long on Armageddon.

The King book is going to be two volumes.

Well Newman is Newman, but he (like us) is running out of years...and why spread oneself so thin? 

TBH, I am a bit irked. If Newman has the goods on the JFKA, or better insights, then bring them on. He has done excellent research, and this is not criticism. But bring it on. 

Other people can cover the also important KingA. 

I never really linked the KingA to the JFKA-RFK1A, so I don't know why Newman would pursue the topic. 

As for biographies on King and his times, there are several excellent ones out there. 

But, each to his own. 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Serious JFKA/RFK1A researcher and EF-JFKA member Pat Speer made this following comment. I think I disagree, but let's read his comment first:

"My point was not that the remaining (JFK Records) documents are nothing-burgers, but that the vast majority of the public will come to believe they are nothing burgers. 

The Northwoods documents came out what? 30 years ago? And yet how many TV shows or history textbooks even mention them? 

Now, in the long run, this stuff is important and may change the perception of what went on.

But the likelihood of a "smoking gun" that will excite the public in the immediate future is next to nothing, IMO."--PS 

Certainly a valid point of view.

Let us suppose, even if the JFK Records are released in a succeeding administration, that we verify Joannides was in New Orleans and working with DRE, and indirectly with LHO (DRE being the cut out). 

That would hardly prove LHO shot JFK on CIA orders. The loosey-goosey connection would not be enough to shake the MSM into action. Too obscure. And most participants are dead, cannot be interviewed. 

Well...maybe 10-15 years ago I would agree with Pat Speer.

But now, I wonder: Trump's balking at releasing the JFK Records, and then the extraordinary effort and legal chicanery of the Biden Administration to permanently block the JFK Records release...well, something is up. 

Bottom line: I now strongly suspect there must be documents covered by the JFK Records Act that powerful entities do not want released. But why? 

By deduction, those documents are clear enough that they will damage the image of the intel community, in the eyes of the lay public, even with an MSM filter.  In other words, strong stuff. 

Since we don't know what we don't know, we don't know what documents are in the vault that could be so damaging to the intel-state. 

IMHO, we might error if we downplay what could be revealed in a total and honest release of the JFK Records, and the public's reaction to such a release.  

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

On 6/24/2024 at 6:24 PM, Pat Speer said:

My point was not that the remaining documents are nothing-burgers, but that the vast majority of the public will come to believe they are nothing burgers. 

The Northwoods documents came out what? 30 years ago? And yet how many TV shows or history textbooks even mention them? 

Now, in the long run, this stuff is important and may change the perception of what went on.

But the likelihood of a "smoking gun" that will excite the public in the immediate future is next to nothing, IMO. 

Bumping this for Ben so he can find where to reply to Pat's post in the thread Ben started.  Instead of starting a whole new thread to comment on Pat's post.

[Keven Hofeling]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Serious JFKA/RFK1A researcher and EF-JFKA member Pat Speer made this following comment. I think I disagree, but let's read his comment first:

"My point was not that the remaining (JFK Records) documents are nothing-burgers, but that the vast majority of the public will come to believe they are nothing burgers. 

The Northwoods documents came out what? 30 years ago? And yet how many TV shows or history textbooks even mention them? 

Now, in the long run, this stuff is important and may change the perception of what went on.

But the likelihood of a "smoking gun" that will excite the public in the immediate future is next to nothing, IMO."--PS 

Certainly a valid point of view.

Let us suppose, even if the JFK Records are released in a succeeding administration, that we verify Joannides was in New Orleans and working with DRE, and indirectly with LHO (DRE being the cut out). 

That would hardly prove LHO shot JFK on CIA orders. The loosey-goosey connection would not be enough to shake the MSM into action. Too obscure. And most participants are dead, cannot be interviewed. 

Well...maybe 10-15 years ago I would agree with Pat Speer.

But now, I wonder: Trump's balking at releasing the JFK Records, and then the extraordinary effort and legal chicanery of the Biden Administration to permanently block the JFK Records release...well, something is up. 

Bottom line: I now strongly suspect there must be documents covered by the JFK Records Act that powerful entities do not want released. But why? 

By deduction, those documents are clear enough that they will damage the image of the intel community, in the eyes of the lay public, even with an MSM filter.  In other words, strong stuff. 

Since we don't know what we don't know, we don't know what documents are in the vault that could be so damaging to the intel-state. 

IMHO, we might error if we downplay what could be revealed in a total and honest release of the JFK Records, and the public's reaction to such a release.  

 

 

 

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/why-last-of-jfk-files-could-embarrass-cia-118233

 

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

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Shortly after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who oversaw the first official inquiry, was asked by a reporter if the full record would be made public.

“Yes, there will come a time,” the chairman of the Warren Commission responded. “But it might not be in your lifetime.”

It will soon be in ours — that is, unless the CIA, FBI or other agencies still holding on to thousands of secret documents from related probes convince the next occupant of the White House otherwise.

A special team of seven archivists and technicians with top-secret security clearances has been set up at the National Archives and Records Administration to process all or portions of 40,000 documents that constitute the final collection of known federal records that might shed light on the events surrounding JFK’s murder, POLITICO has learned — files that, according to law, must be made public by October 2017.

But the records’ release is not guaranteed, says Martha Murphy, head of the National Archives’ Special Access Branch. While the JFK Records Act of 1992 mandated the files be made public in 25 years, government agencies that created the paper trail can still appeal directly to the president to keep them hidden. And some scholars and researcher not to mention the army of JFK conspiracy theorists, fear that is exactly what will happen given the details about the deepest, darkest corners of American spy craft that could be revealed — from the inner workings of the CIA’s foreign assassination program and front companies to the role of a CIA psychological operations guru accused of misleading congressional investigators about alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities.

“We have sent letters to agencies letting them know we have records here that were withheld, 2017 is coming,” Murphy said in a recent interview at the primary government records repository in the D.C. suburbs. She said while no agency has formally requested a waiver yet, some “have gotten back to ask for clarification” and are seeking “more information.”

“Within our power, the National Archives is going to do everything we can to make these records open and available to the public,” she added. “And that is my only goal. There are limits to my powers, and the president of the United States has the right to say something needs to be held for longer.”

The review now underway marks the start of a long-awaited — and many would say tortuous — process to unlock more pieces of the puzzle surrounding the assassination of the nation’s 35th president. Among the questions still hotly disputed: Did Oswald, who had defected to Russia in 1959 and was tied to radical groups seeking to overthrow the communist government in Cuba, act alone — as the Warren Commission concluded? Did some U.S. officials or intelligence assets have prior knowledge of the plot? Did American leaders willfully prevent a full investigation to protect other closely guarded secrets?

At minimum, in the estimation of Murphy, who has reviewed some of the still-secret documents, they will provide a “beautiful snapshot of Cold War America and the intelligence community.” Some predict there could still be a “smoking gun.”

The documents were originally requested from dozens of agencies at the request of the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent panel of experts established by the broadly defined 1992 law that sought to collect all government records that might have a bearing on one of the most searing and vexing events of the 20th century. In all, the collection amounted to 5 million records, the vast majority of which have been made available to researchers.

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.”

Bradford believes the heavily redacted CIA history of the Mexico City station could still reveal new things after all these years.

“It looks very clear [from the partially released file] that they have microphones in the Cuban Embassy [in Mexico City],” he said in an interview. “When were those microphones planted? Were they operational in October [of 1963]? There is also information about human informants and spies that were inside the embassy.”

There could be more to learn from “knowing who those people were — probably dead by now, maybe not — [and] whether they see Oswald. There is all kinds of stuff in that thing that is relevant to the Oswald visit and what happened there that we only have a small glimpse into because of all the secrecy surrounding the records related to it.”

A spokesman for the CIA, Dean Boyd, said the agency is working with the National Archives on the JFK records but declined to comment on the circumstances in which the CIA might seek a waiver from the president to continue to withhold information.

“We are aware of the process and will work judiciously within that process,” he said.

Others who have closely followed the paper trail also wonder whether the additional files will shed light on how the federal government seemingly went to great lengths to obstruct the investigation into the JFK assassination (and Oswald’s killing while in police custody a few days later by Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner with Mafia ties).

Adam Walinsky, who worked in the Kennedy Justice Department, believes that the mounting evidence over the years of a purposely botched autopsy of the president and the multiple “suicides” of so many figures connected to the events strongly suggests such a coverup from high levels.

Walinsky suspects that the documents could reveal more about “the role of the FBI, under the direction of President [Lyndon] Johnson and Director [J. Edgar] Hoover, in preventing any serious investigation of the assassination at the time.”

“That is still capable of being considered a smoking gun,” he added.

But there are concerns among long-time observers of the declassification process that the battle inside the national security bureaucracy over the fate of the records is only just beginning.

“There are going to be appeals to the president, the Central Intelligence Agency for sure,” predicted Malcolm Blunt, a British researcher who has spent nearly two decades poring over JFK records. “Particularly on cover issues — corporations and financial institutions, banks and business used for cover purposes.”

David Marwell, who served as executive director of the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994 to 1997, said of the withheld records: “Often it was the stuff unrelated to the assassination but intimately related to how intelligence agencies do their business. There were practical and institutional reasons it was important for them to keep that stuff. They were very protective of relationships they had with foreign intelligence sources or situations where they might have a base or a station in a particular country.”

He also said that some of juiciest stuff about the assassination may have been destroyed or never sent to the Assassination Records Review Board in the first place.

“Unless you can enter yourself into the agencies’ files at any time and search for anything you want, how can you know you found everything?” he asked.

But Murphy, whose role is to get the 40,000 documents released, isn’t prepared to say that they won’t reveal new things about the assassination itself.

“I’ll be honest,” she says. “I am hesitant to say you’re not going to find out anything about the assassination.”

She clearly wants the secretive agencies now being consulted to decide what they want to do.

“We want this to go as smoothly as possible,” she said. “We don’t want them to wait until the last minute. It is our interest to know the status of the records as soon as possible because we are going to begin scanning them.”

[Matt Allison]

13 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Bumping this for Ben so he can find where to reply to Pat's post in the thread Ben started.  Instead of starting a whole new thread to comment on Pat's post.

I would think when Ben was copying Pat's comment from this thread to make a new thread, he could instead have simply replied to it here, no?

 

[W. Niederhut]

     There have been more than 20+ redundant threads on the JFKA forum during the past year-- after Tucker Carlson finally took an interest (on Fox News) in the issue of the JFKA records.  Oddly, one of the few previous forum threads about Donald Trump's historic 2017 suppression of the JFK records-- started in 2020-- was removed from the JFKA board because it was considered too "political."

     Meanwhile, there has never been a single forum thread about the JFK assassination, and the liberal Democratic legacy of JFK and RFK, in relation to Trump's historic J6 mob attack on the U.S. Congress, for the purpose of obstructing the lawful transfer of power to President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

     JFK and RFK would roll over in their graves to witness the destructive legacy of Donald Trump and our 21st century Koch/GOP plutocracy.

    Among other things, the rightward GOP shift, since 1980, has culminated in the stacking of the SCOTUS with right-wing GOP ideologues who destroyed enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, (Shelby v. Holder) wiped out a century of campaign finance reforms in the U.S., (Citizens United) and overturned Roe v. Wade.

      Does anyone doubt that the Kennedy brothers would have been shocked and utterly appalled by the rulings of the 21st century GOP SCOTUS?

      By Trump's violent J6 mob attack on the U.S. Congress, and his 2020 efforts to organize slates of False Electors in multiple swing states?

      The obsessive MAGA focus on Biden's JFK records mistake is causing the JFK forum to overlook the forest for the trees in 2024.

       

     

       

        

Edited June 26 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

Ben, why start another thread to reply to something in another thread you started at 2:06 AM yesterday?  Twelve of the threads on the first three pages of the forum were started by you in the last nine days, plus four moved by Mark Knight in part in response to reports from other members.  One member has mentioned this resembling spamming, which is specifically against forum rules.

Thats sixteen threads of I believe if I counted correctly forty-five total, over 1/3 of that total in nine days.  I guess it was so Keven could give us an interesting but long response.  Which could have been a response to your response in your thread, without starting another one.

[Ron Bulman]

Well, congratulations W, you have been reported before anyone replied to your initial thread starting post.  A first for me in my short time as a moderator.

I disagreed with the removal of the 56 years thread, not a mod at the time.  It became too hot to handle.  One member has stated part of his purpose for joining was to counter it.  It seems, with help he succeeded.

As a Moderator I guess I should abstain.  But I'm still a member too.  That the JFK assassination, and maybe before, led to where we are today seems a realistic possibility.  That was the essence of the 56 years thread.  

Mark may well justifiably disagree, maybe even move the thread, which maybe it should be.  Who knows, I may have to depending on developments.  

For the moment I'll defer to Dr. Joseph McBride of San Francisco State University, originator of the 56 years thread.  An actual researcher, unlike me.  Finder of the Belmont memo, the Hoover briefing George Bush of the CIA memo on 11/24/63 (?).  Only interview of Tippit's dad, plus several in Dallas.  A campaign participant for JFK in 1960.

Read this and get back to me, all.

Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy: Joseph McBride: 9781939795618: Amazon.com: Books

Edited June 26 by Ron Bulman

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Ben, why start another thread to reply to something in another thread you started at 2:06 AM yesterday?  Twelve of the threads on the first three pages of the forum were started by you in the last nine days, plus four moved by Mark Knight in part in response to reports from other members.  One member has mentioned this resembling spamming, which is specifically against forum rules.

Thats sixteen threads of I believe if I counted correctly forty-five total, over 1/3 of that total in nine days.  I guess it was so Keven could give us an interesting but long response.  Which could have been a response to your response in your thread, without starting another one.

RB-

I thought Pat Speer's perspective and comment deserved public airing, and specific or explicit attention. 

The JFKA Records Act is marginally in the news lately, which is good news for  EF-JFKA'ers, although not likely to last. 

I enjoyed KH's collegial response on this thread, although I wish he had put some of his own thoughts down as well.

I enjoy different points of views, and have encouraged the full range of political and JFKA spectrums to participate here. 

The EF-JFKA is a forum, where (I hope) all people can "pipe up" as they see proper, as long as they do not disparage other commenters, or present hate speech, or drag the EF-JFKA down into petty present-day partisan narratives. 

All threads, including mine, tend to recede into the past rather quickly, and are soon forgotten, as new threads appear. 

In my view, as the great Lakers' broadcaster Chick Hearn used to say, "No harm, no foul." 

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

Ron,

   After the EF administrative decision to close the 56 Years thread-- which had been quite erudite and informative before the invasion of the MAGA spammers-- the MAGA J6-Insurrection-Deniers were supposed to post their politicized cut-and-pastes at the MAGA Water Cooler.

   They refused.

    Instead, they have continued to flood the JFKA board with redundant anti-Biden threads disguised as references to the JFK records and/or "RFK1A."

    So, I'm not surprised that the MAGAs are now complaining about a thread linking the November 22, 1963 attack on American democracy to the January 6, 2021 attack on American democracy.

    And, incidentally, let's recall that Tucker Carlson promoted Trump's Stop-the-Steal scam in 2020, then promoted his "Patriot Purge" narrative blaming the Deep State for Trump's J6 Insurrection-- long before he took a belated interest in the JFK records.

Edited June 26 by W. Niederhut