As President Trump’s April 26, 2018 deadline for full disclosure looms, key JFK files remain beyond public view.
These files concern a subject the mainstream media coverage has shied from: the pre-assassination surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from 1959 to 1963.
April 26 is the deadline for full disclosure of all of the government’s JFK files, according to this written order of President Trump. Or maybe it isn’t. Read more
A reader responds about Gina Haspel, the would-be CIA director. Read more
Roger Stone,
As President Trump’s April 26, 2018 deadline for release of the last of the government’s JFK files, Roger Stone, the sartorial dirty trickster of American politics, makes a legally valid point:
The CIA is not obeying the JFK Records Act.
Stone pointed out that the 1992 law which required the JFK documents be released also required the agency redacting records to justify their redactions in writing and that those explanations be published in the Federal Register.
A reader writes perceptively about the “conspiracy v. gross negligence” question in the JFK story. In an email, he explains, perhaps better than I have, why I emphasize this issue.
Politico’s Thomas Maier mines the new JFK files to competently retell the oft-told but still-disturbing story of how respectable CIA officials and murderous Mafia dons tried and failed to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.
Along the way, Maier drops this claim:
.. one of the most important JFK assassination records released in the Trump era.
Kevin Hall’s recent piece for McClatchy News is a good example of how to cover the new JFK files right. The piece provides new information and historical perspective, while avoiding the traps of conspiracy theories. Hall highlights a neglected subject: the importance of JFK assassination records still held by the Cuban government. Read more
Robert responds to my recent post on JFK files.
Black Vault deserves a thanks for putting on line a pdf and excel file of the latest data provided by NARA, but if you take the Black Vault figures to mean that there are thousands of records still withheld in full, that is not correct.
I’m not certain that Robert is correct but I want to air his concerns so that we get an accurate number of still-secret JFK files. Read more
The short answer is, we don’t knows for sure, but BlackVault.com and WhoWhatWhy have the first draft of an answer.
Digging deeper, and with the help and verification of Jimmy Falls of the news agency WhoWhatWhy we came up with the same numbers, using two entirely different methods.It confirms there are 3,082 Documents, totaling 217,114 pages that are not yet released to the public.
Source: J.F.K. Assassination Records – The Black Vault
A couple of caveats are in order.
From my story in AlterNet
The latest batch of JFK assassination files, released December 15, illuminate a story that the CIA still denies: the surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the years before he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy.
Source: The New JFK Files Reveal How the CIA Tracked Oswald | Alternet
The surveillance of Oswald led the CIA to use him in an operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the summer of 1963.
Tomorrow: Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
Many people have asked me about my reaction to this release, and I’ve gleaned what I can from a very complicated release.
the National Archives today posted 13,213 records subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). The majority of the documents released today were released previously in redacted form. The versions released today were prepared by agencies prior to October 26, 2017, and were posted to make the latest versions of the documents available as expeditiously as possible
via Latest Group of JFK Assassination Records Available to the Public National Archives
Some of the best reporting on the new JFK files is coming from USA Today.
In today’s story, the national daily notes an essential newsworthy fact revealed in the newly declassified records.
Within hours of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA started to distance itself from any connection to suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, recently released secret records from the National Archives show.
Jan Martinez Ahrens’ piece in EL PAÍS, the leading newspaper of Spain (machine translated) shows why foreign coverage of the JFK files release was more realistic and less propagandistic than the U.S. coverage.
