The large-scale declassification of JFK documents in the 1990s brought an estimated 4 million of pages of new assassination-related records into public view and generated a new era in JFK scholarship. But it also illuminated what is still missing or withheld from the public record. Among these are the vast bulk of the records of the Church Committee (named after Idaho Senator Frank Church), which in the mid-70s exposed the CIA plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro among many other abuses.
Even among the “assassination-related” documents that were released, gaps remain. The Church Committee, formally known as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, interviewed scores of current and past CIA employees and other people knowledgable about the U.S. government’s assassination activities.
Many of these interviews remain off-limits to the public more than three decades later.
This document is a compilation of all the deposition transcripts footnoted in the two assassination-related reports of the Church Committee that cannot be found among the released files. Some of the interviews relate directly to the JFK assassination investigations; most relate to CIA assassination plots targeting foreign leaders.
Either way, it’s about time they were made public.
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JFK Most Wanted List
(The most important government records related to JFK’s assassination that remain secret)
1) The Bill Harvey files (April 29, 2014)
2) The David Phillips operational files (May 6, 2014)
3) The Yuri Nosenko interrogation files (May 13, 2014)
4) 84 NSA documents related to JFK’s assassination (May 22, 2014)
Church Committee: Interim Report – Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1156
Michael Moore should do a movie on the JFK assassination. That would pry loose some of the hidden documents.
It’s right up his alley. Misuse of power. Cover-up. Media complicity. A good array of bad guys. A few “heroes.” Some sympathetic characters. Exotic dancers, mob figures, CIA rogues, J. Edgar Hoover, Jack and Bobby, women in the wings, Lee & Marina: the script would write itself.
Absolutely brilliant idea!
Declassification of withheld documents should become a hallmark of the 50th anniversary of this case. The continued concealment of information from the public does a disservice to history and prevents historians, journalists and researchers from searching for the truth behind the façade. In the past 50 years, some nations around the globe that experienced wrenching times of terror and systematic violence have opened their archives and, in some cases, granted immunity in order to expose wrongdoing involving murder, kidnapping, “disappearances” and institutional abuses. Why can’t we withstand disclosure in the US? During the Watergate era, it was suggested that “the country can’t stand a constitutional crisis.” Yet we did, and came through it the better. In fact, it was the ferment of investigations from that era that arguably led to the Church Committee inquiries. The secrecy under cover of “national security” contributes to ongoing abuses.
Right on.
If there was no conspiracy,why the secrecy?
Because revelation might affect something other than the JFK assassination.
Thanks.