Tag Archive for Judge John Tunheim

JFK Files Watch: Will the White House enforce the law?

April 14, 2018AssassinationNo comments

The JFK Records Act mandates disclosure of virtually all of this material. The view of Judge John Tunheim is that this material can and should be released in full; we concur and share his disappointment that it did not happen by the statutory deadline. President Trump has expressed the view that only the names of living informants should be withheld from released JFK files after April 28, 2018. Our view is that the names of living informants should be disclosed as well, and in any case current withholding is far beyond that limited scope.

Source: Mary Ferrell Foundation Letter to U.S. Archivist March2018

Judge Tunheim: I saw Oswald’s KGB file and it was five feet tall

March 18, 2017Assassination, NewsNo comments
Lee Harvey Oswald,

Lee Harvey Oswald, Marine and defector

The Soviet intelligence service has a massive file on accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that has never been public, said federal judge John Tunheim, former chairman of a government declassification panel

Tunheim said he reviewed the file in Moscow in 1994 on behalf of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which declassified millions of pages of JFK documents in the 1990s.

“The KGB file stood five feet tall when you stacked all the boxes up,” Tunheim told a Washington press conference on Thursday.

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Judge Tunheim says JFK files were ‘probably unlawfully withheld’ by CIA

March 17, 2017Assassination, Full Disclosure, NewsNo comments
Judge Tunheim

Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board.

At a Washington press conference Thursday, Judge John Tunheim called for the release of all the government’s files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy later this year.

Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Incredibly enough, thousands of pages of government files related to his murder remain secret, 54 years later.

“It’s time to release them all,” Tunheim said. “There’s no real reason to protect this information.”

Some 3,500 JFK documents remain secret, according to the National Archives data base,

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Returning to action: the JFK story in 2017

March 9, 2017Assassination, NewsNo comments

My vacation from the land of JFK is over. I haven’t written here in a couple of months and now I’m back. Please excuse my unauthorized absence. I’ve been busy.

I’m writing about the Trump administration for AlterNet, and that’s a yuge job.

I finished my next book, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, and that was bigly too. (Look for this biographic thriller on Amazon/Powell’s and in bookstores in October.)

But I’d left some people high and dry. My friend Dwight said, Man, what’s up with the blog? Don’t stop now. So, with lots of JFK news coming, it is indeed time to start writing again.

You will be hearing from me on many things, including:

  • Judge John Tunheim’s March 16 appearance in Washington to talk about the JFK Records Act;
  • The latest from the National Archives on the JFK records in October 2017;
  • The implications of tensions between President Trump and the CIA for full JFK disclosure;
  • Why Natalie Portman was robbed at the Oscars.

I was talking with John Newman the other day–about Angleton, the JFK Records Act, and Cuba–and he said, “I truly think we are in new territory in terms of understanding the case.”

I think that’s right. The challenge of 2017 is to tell the new JFK story in a lucid dispassionate way.

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What the JFK review board recommended for 2017

December 26, 2016Assassination, Full Disclosure4 comments

Between 1994 and 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) reviewed and declassified millions of pages of JFK records, contributing immensely to the history of the JFK’s murder, his presidency, and the Cold War.

The board’s final report also laid down the law  to any government agency that wants to continue withholding JFK documents past October 26, 2017. Read more