As the April 26 deadline for release of the last of the JFK assassination files approaches. President Trump will be hearing from his new CIA director Gina Haspel on the issue of what can and cannot be made public.
What will Haspel say?
Despite the 1992 JFK Records Act, which mandated full disclosure by October 2017, the law has not been enforced by the Trump administration. Thousands of JFK files remain out of public view. According to the Mary Ferrell Foundation, 21,890 JFK files still remain wholly or partially secret.
These include key files on four CIA officers who participated in the pre-assassination surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
In her upcoming confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Haspel should be asked about her position on these files.
Her record is not reassuring. In 2005 Haspel destroyed 92 CIA videotapes to conceal the nature of the agency’s torture program. Its not a stretch to think she might destroy JFK files to conceal the nature of the agency’s pre-assassination surveillance of Oswald, or some other embarrassing fact.
A question for the Senate Intelligence Committee: Will Haspel commit publicly to preserving and releasing all JFK assassination files now in the CIA’s possession?
Sometimes the CIA tells us more by what they conceal than by what they reveal.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Gina Haspell defended her decision to destroy videotape evidence of torture at her “black site” in Thailand. She said her view at the time has not changed: that the tapes needed to be destroyed because they endangered the security of CIA officers who appeared in them. The same logic seems to apply to the agency’s refusal to comply with the law and release all the JFK files.
What Talleyrand said of the Bourbons after the French Revolution fits the CIA just as well: “They learned nothing and they forgot nothing.”
If she does indeed destroy these files, or obstruct the release of the files in any way, she needs to face criminal charges, being that she would be violating the law passed back in 1992. As far as is known, there is no statute of limitation that she could use as an excuse. Government officials need to realize that they are not above the law. Keep up the good fight, Mr. Morley. The best is yet to come.
I’d like to imagine she will not destroy records because it was so long ago and she’s among the many who already feel they know what happened without doing any extra work to discover more. If so, there is hope. But honestly, I think it more likely the people more directly involved already destroyed the most clear-cut evidence long ago, and what remains won’t prove much with regard to what really happened in 1963.
Despite that, I’m still hopeful the remaining records will at least show clearly, and in terms the average American can clearly see that covert illegal operations have corrupted, and continue to corrupt our nation. Keep up the good fight, Mr. Morley.
#JFKFiles | Reading this 1977 @nytimes article, it’s no small wonder how the #CIA and friendly media assets sold the American public a lemon in Sept 1964. #JFKAssassination #CoverUp https://twitter.com/filesjfk/status/958424096131317761?s=21