an edgy conversation between Nixon and Helms eight months before the Watergate arrests confirms that Nixon did indeed have JFK’s assassination on his mind when he pressed Helms about the secrets of the Bay of Pigs.
In this piece for POLITICO Phil Shenon hews to the official theory of a lone gunman, but he makes an important point about the CIA’s changing JFK story. In 2013, the CIA’s Chief Historian David Robarge admitted the Agency had misled the American people about the man who supposedly killed Kennedy.
Bryan Bender of POLITICO profiles Ezra Cohen, the chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board, which this week called for maximum transparency around secret JFK assassination files.
Ezra Cohen, appointed by President Trump, gets positive reviews from one Democratic congressman on the board, which advises the president on declassification issues.
Exceptional reporting. Exceptional writing. Thank you for your dedication to seeking justice in this case. We have been waiting a long time to read what you wrote. The facts have led us here
After more than fifty years and zero quantum of proof since the JFK assassination, Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato insist on the out-worn hypothesis “Castro sorta done it” while reporting how the CIA came to doubt the official story.
I agree with WhoWhatWhy that the Politico story is politically convenient and factually incomplete, but I reject the claim that it is “disinformation.”
The first nationally known analysts to weigh in on the new JFK files are Phil Shenon and Larry Sabato, former New York Times reporter and University of Virginia professor respectively. In a story for Politico Magazine, they purport to tell the story How the CIA Came to Doubt the Official Story of JFK’s Murder.
The tipoff to the story’s limitations is the headline, which sounds a bit odd: how the CIA came to doubt the official story…
The CIA was the source for key parts of the official JFK story–that a lone gunman killed President Kennedy out of “hatred for American society.” The CIA’s doubts only surfaced in the spring of 1975 when the official story was shredded by revelations about the agency’s pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald and plots to kill Castro.
Politico’s Bryan Bender follows up on WhoWhatWhy’s scoop about still-secret JFK records with a resounding “maybe.”
Asked whether there might be any significant revelations about Kennedy’s unsolved murder, Martha Murphy, head of the Archives’ Special Access Branch, told POLITICO last year, “I’ll be honest. I am hesitant to say you’re not going to find out anything about the assassination.”
Phil Shenon writes: “I noticed the recent post on John McCone and wonder if it isn’t worth pointing out — given the recent fierce debate on the site and the criticism of my Politico piece — that Arthur Schlesinger’s quotation is strong evidence to support the idea that Bobby Kennedy DID have suspicions about Castro and Cuba, at least early on?”
In a telling passage in his recent piece in Politico Magazine, “Warren Commission staffers remain convinced today that Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas, a view shared by ballistics experts who have studied the evidence,” reporter Phil Shenon traffics in half-truths. Whatever the Warren Commission staffers think, Shenon’s claim is inaccurate and untrue. …