Rex Bradford of the Mary Ferrell Foundation made some important points about the JFK files in this conversation with Jeff Schectman of WhoWhatWhy Radio.
Bradford on the sheer volume of the JFK historical record.
5,000,000 pages in the JFK collection of the National Archives, which is a whole lot for a murder supposedly carried out by some guy in a window in a building.
On what public pressure has wrought:
the good news is, we’re approaching the point where what’s being redacted are what was sort of touted all along as being the reason, like agent or informant names, name of a person in a foreign government or would be embarrassing to the CIA just to acknowledge a liaison, that sort of thing. We’re not there yet. But it’s being reduced to a smaller collection of withheld information than where we were even a few months ago
On what we have learned from the new files:
a big misconception people might have is that this thing [JFK’s assassination] was honestly investigated, or at least semi-honestly investigated in the first place, and I think that’s the biggest thing that these documents have proven to be false, that both major investigations, the House Committee as well as the Warren Commission, basically were set up not to find out the truth.
How the truth might emerge:
I know a very wise person named Peter Dale Scott that some of your listeners may know of, and way back when he wrote Deep Politics and the Death of JFK in the early ’90s before all these declassifications, he put in the preface of that book that first of all the government records will tell us more about pre-assassination intelligence operations and post-assassination coverup than they do about the murder conspiracy itself. But he wrote that, quote, “This oblique path of the truth about the murder is the best hope which the documents give us.” And I think that’s been born out in spades.
The still-secret JFK files are themselves a clue to what the U.S. government seeks to hide.
the more of these documents come out, the more pattern emergence of what should be there and is missing. And those are actually interesting clues for the murder.
1. Why would the CIA knowingly release documents that implicate itself? They wouldn’t.
2. Why would we trust a pathological liar? We shouldn’t.
3. How do we know that the documents released are not forgeries designed to keep people traveling down rabbit holes of nothingness? We don’t.
4. Waiting breathlessly for documents to be released assumes that the CIA must know something. Why would they when the operation was done off the books?
5. Why do you think the CIA has infiltrated the JFK Assassination community? Because they, like you, also want to know how it was done.
I agree with you, Mark. Even though the “shadow government” has been able to do what they do best-lie, cover up, deny-those of us with any critical thinking ability know the facts. Obviously, the “lone nut-Oswald” lemon that the Warren Report tried to sell us, is not true, period. If Oswald indeed played a role in the assassination,it had to be that of a patsy. He was squirrelly enough, and desperate enough for attention, that he was usable. Why else would he have been known to, and under surveillance, by upper level CIA officials? Think about this for 30 seconds.Unfortunately, we will never be shown the truth. The document releases are going to continue to be edited and redacted.This is symptomatic of the cover-up that has been happening ever since the murder took place in 1963. Why else was so much evidence suppressed, and continues to be suppressed?
I firmly agree with Mark- our government is in no way what it is supposed to be. I seriously doubt that we will EVER know the complete story of the JFK assassination. This is very sad.
Its sooo far past the point of “obvious-ness” the reason why the CIA is so pedantic about not releasing certain files of an event that happened 55 freakin’ yrs ago is the very reason the government’s white wash Warren Commission was total fiction…A coverup.
If it was a lone nut assassin as they government would have you think then what would be the harm in releasing every document that would support the lie that LHO killed JFK?
All these delays do is further solidify the suspicion of the truth…that the assassination of JFK was a highly organized murder by the upper level of the very part of the government he was going to destroy. Those who killed JFK had the most to lose if he had been reelected as he most certainly would have been, as would have his brother and his son. < They were the biggest threat to the invisible government Dan Smoot wrote of. Anyone who thinks we have a goverment by the people, of the people for the people is an idiot in every sense of the world.