If you’re interested in freedom of information and/or the JFK story, you’ll want to read this letter from New York attorney Larry Schnapf on the disposition of the last of the government’s JFK assassination files in October 2021.
Read moreCIA Director Bill Burns will advise Biden on secret JFK files
On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold hearings on the nomination of longtime diplomat William Burns to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
If confirmed as expected, Burns will have to advise President Biden on a symbolically potent decision: whether or not to release the last of the CIA’s files related to the assassination of President Kennedy in October.
Read moreComments to go dark
I like the fact that people come to JFK Facts to talk and learn about the assassination. Nonetheless, I plan to temporarily turn off the comments feature on the site on Wednesday, Feb 21.
Why?
Read moreIs Full JFK Disclosure Possible in 2021?
‘Will President Biden release the last of the JFK files in 2021?’
When this question in November, I received some pessimistic replies. Since I’ve thinking about how the JFK research community might campaign to for public release of the 15,834 assassination-related files that remain out of public view, I felt a little discouraged.
Read moreThe National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination
The Future of Freedom Foundation is sponsoring a JFK conference next month in the form of a weekly series of online presentations.
I will speak about my new JFK ebook, Morley v. CIA, My Unfinished JFK Investigation. What I like about this conference is this:
Read moreRIP: Gerald McKnight, Historian Who Dismantled the Warren Commission
Gerald D. McKnight, historian and author one of the very best scholarly books about the assassination of President Kennedy, died Lawrence, Kansas, on 30th January, 2021.
McKnight, a tenured professor of history at Hood College in Maryland, was the author of Breach of Trust, which explained how the Warren Commission, which was supposed to investigate JFK’s assassination, failed to find the truth–and why.
My friend journalist and historian, David Talbot, said it best:
Read moreAvailable on Kindle: Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation
In 2003 I sued the Central Intelligence Agency with the help of Washington D.C. attorney James Lesar. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), We sought public release of the files of a deceased undercover officer who was involved in the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In the new Kindle ebook, Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation, I tell the story of the epic 16-year legal saga that followed. It’s a brisk read, funny, disturbing and revealing about where the rest of the JFK assassination story is hidden: in the CIA’s archives.
The hero of the story is Lesar, a dogged litigator taking on high-powered Justice Department lawyers. The villain is a judge named Brett Kavanaugh.
Read more here
Some Thoughts on the JFK Anniversary
I’d never heard of Tommy Carrigan, an enthusiastic podcaster with a taste for military and intelligence books, before he invited me on his show to talk about THE GHOST, my biography of James Angleton, chief of CIA counterintelligence.
We spoke on the day after the 57th anniversary of the assassination of the President John F. Kennedy, and naturally the JFK story came up.
Read on here.
Will Joe Biden Release the JFK Assassination Records?
You will recall that President Trump caved to CIA director Mike Pompeo and FBI director Christopher Wray in October 2017. The two agencies were allowed to drop a veil of bizarre and suspicious secrecy over the full record of JFK’s assassination.
The clock is ticking, notes Brendan Cole in Newsweek. Will President Biden do the right thing?
In a presidential memo, Trump said the move was “to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs.” According to the National Archives, some 15,834 of the files still contain redactions and 520 remain unreleased in full.In April 2018, it said that a decision about the material must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 “to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.” This means that their fate will fall within the purview of the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Unsung JFK Hero: Abe Bolden
I am remiss in not posting this sooner.
RIP Vincent Salandria, Leading Warren Commission Critic
From the Truth and Reconciliation Committee
The writings of Vincent J Salandria on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are historic, foundational, and essential to any serious scholar interested in understanding the real dynamics of the Kennedy murder and its place as a terrible and pivotal moment of the American Century. In his 1967 book Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson notes that what he terms the “second generation” of assassination researchers—including Mark Lane, Edward J. Epstein, Harold Weisberg, Raymond Marcus, Léo Sauvage, Richard Popkin—owe “a deep debt to Salandria’s pioneering and largely unsung research.” Thompson is accurate, since Salandria is in the front rank of Warren Commission critics, and the prescience of his analysis is an instruction to all interested people.
NHK Prime on Oswald and the CIA, Part II
Several readers noted that the link to Part II of NHK Prime’s documentary on Oswald and the CIA didn’t work. Sorry about that. Here it is. Part II .
And a note for readers who like to comment on JFK Facts.
Read moreJapan’s NHK TV: Oswald in the Eyes of the CIA
Along with Rolf Mowatt-Larsen, John Newman and Dick Russell, I was interviewed extensively for this two-part show on NHK Prime, a prime-time magazine show on Japan’s public television network.
Here’s how NHK presents its latest JFK story.
Read moreThe New York Times Evades Bob Dylan’s JFK Challenge
“Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind,” the New York Times reported on June 12. That’s for sure. In late March, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down America, the 79 year old singer-songwriter released “Murder Most Foul,” an epic, 17-minute song-poem about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Since “Who killed JFK?” is one of the central questions of American history, you might think that the Times interviewer, historian Douglas Brinkley would ask the Nobel laureate about how he came to compose his dark and brooding take on November 22, 1963. You might think Brinkley, a CNN commentator, would ask Dylan why he decided to release the song as the country and the world reeled from a plague.
You might think wrong.
Read more
