A diverse group of JFK authors and investigators have called on the Obama and Trump administrations to order the CIA and other federal agencies to declassify all secret JFK files in their entirely by October 2017.
[Click Here for Open Letter on JFK Records]
The JFK records will pose an early test of the open government policies of Donald Trump. The president-elect has espoused the baseless and debunked conspiracy theory that the father of Senator Ted Cruz was somehow involved in JFK’s assassination.
As the JFK authors and investigators told Obama White House Counsel Neil Eggleston:
After 53 years, continued JFK secrecy would provoke unnecessary suspicion and flout Congress’s clear preference for full disclosure within 25 years. And it would deny the American people access to portions of our history.
The signatories include:
–former JFK investigators G. Robert Blakey, former counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations; HSCA investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez; and Howard Willens, assistant counsel to the Warren Commission.
–best-selling JFK authors David Talbot, Anthony Summers, Larry Sabato and Gerald Posner;
–Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, former CIA Cuba analyst Brian Latell, an director Oliver Stone.
What’s in the files?
Most researchers believe it is unlikely that the last JFK files contain any kind of proverbial “smoking gun” proof of a conspiracy. Based on what is known about these records from the JFK records data base, they will shed new light on many JFK-related issues including:
–U.S. assassination operations run by senior CIA officers, Bill Harvey and David Phillips, who were known for their disdain of JFK’s policies;
–the monitoring of Lee Harvey Oswald between 1959 and 1963 by counterintelligence chief James Angleton as well as Angleton’s still-secret testimony to the Church Committee which investigated the CIA abuses of power.
—Heavily redacted passages from FBI investigation of the handling of Oswald’s return to the United States in1962-63.
–At least twenty six documents generated by the Church Committee.
Click here to download the JFK Records letter
What happens in 2017?
For more information about JFK developments in 2016-2017, visit the 2017JFK Web site.