Will he keep JFK secrets?
As confirmation hearings for John Brennan as the new director of the CIA get underway this week, the Senate and the public face basic issues of trust and transparency. How does the director of a necessarily secretive multi-billion-dollar agency retain public trust and maintain accountability within the democratically elected government?
One way is to come clean on the JFK story, especially the role of top CIA officials in the JFK story. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an important symbolic test of the CIA’s credibility. A poll taken in 2003 found 34 percent of respondents held the agency responsible for JFK’s death.
There’s no “smoking gun” proof of a JFK conspiracy, but there is a pattern of suspicious activity on the part of some senior CIA operatives that has never been clarified. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr, recently said in Dallas, even his father Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy privately feared “rogue CIA” operatives were involved in his brother’s assassination.