TRUMP GOVT RELEASE DOCUMENTS ON J.F.K'S MURDER
The federal
government just
released thousands of documents related to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
• The papers
were posted
online by the National Archives in compliance with a 1992 law
requiring their release after 25 years.
• After a
chaotic last-minute review in which intelligence agencies lobbied against full
disclosure, the White House said it would take more time to process and release
thousands more documents that were also supposed to be made public. It set a
deadline of late April for the release of those documents.
Citing security concerns, Trump held back some of the documents.
The papers
were being posted online by the National Archives and Records Administration in
compliance with a 1992 law requiring their release after 25 years. But
President Trump agreed to postpone the release of thousands more files that
were supposed to be made public, pending a review that should end on April 26.
From Mr. Trump’s memorandum:
The American public expects — and deserves — its Government to provide as
much access as possible to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
(records) so that the people may finally be fully informed about all aspects of
this pivotal event. Therefore, I am ordering today that the veil finally be
lifted. At the same time, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have
proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because
of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. I have no
choice — today — but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially
irreversible harm to our Nation’s security. To further address these concerns,
I am also ordering agencies to re-review each and every one of those redactions
over the next 180 days. At the end of that period, I will order the public
disclosure of any information that the agencies cannot demonstrate meets the
statutory standard for continued postponement of disclosure under section 5(g)
(2)(D) of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of
1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the “Act”).
The decision
to postpone the release of some documents will invariably lead to suspicions
that the government is still protecting secrets about the case. Administration
officials said there was no cover-up, just an effort to avoid compromising
national security, law enforcement or intelligence gathering methods.
AdvertisementResearchers found a treasure trove of ‘obscure clues’ and ‘shiny objects.’
Larry J. Sabato, the founder and director of the
Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and a team of researchers
were reviewing the files on Thursday night. He sent a report of what they had
found so far:
As expected,
these incomplete raw files are, often, a mess. Handwritten notes from the
C.I.A. and others are often illegible. It will take an enormous amount of work
and lots of time to put this together. Think of this as an unassembled
million-piece puzzle.
Since the
good stuff has mainly been withheld for now — or forever — we are primarily
looking for obscure clues and shiny objects. Here, the files do not disappoint.
In no particular order, our research team at the University of Virginia found
these intriguing documents:
• Mexico was
a cooperative partner with the United States in many ways — from helping to
wiretap the Soviet and Cuban Embassies well prior to the assassination, to
thorough attempts to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald’s ties in the country after
Kennedy’s murder. Sources told the C.I.A. that Oswald had deposited $5,000 in a
Mexican bank. In a
document dated March 9, 1964, Mexico was reported to have traced all
deposits in Mexican banks, looking for the money. They found no such Oswald
transaction.
• The F.B.I.
closely monitored the activities of attorney and conspiracy advocate Mark Lane,
who was representing Marguerite Oswald, mother of Lee. According
to an F.B.I. source, a bizarre meeting Mr. Lane had with a Polish
journalist in January 1964 saw wild conspiracy theories tossed around,
including a ridiculous claim in a far-right Italian newspaper that J.D. Tippit,
the Dallas policeman killed by Oswald shortly after Oswald shot Kennedy, was
the real presidential assassin — and that Jack Ruby had killed Mr. Tippit.
• A C.I.A.
document alleges that Oswald may have been accompanied on his
mysterious September 1963 trip to Mexico City by “El Mexicano.” According to another
document, “El Mexicano” is believed to have been Francisco Rodriguez
Tamayo, the captain of Cuban Rebel Army 57 until he defected to the United
States in June of 1959. A third
file also identifies Rodriguez Tamayo as the head of the anti-Castro
Training Camp at Pontchartrain, La.
No doubt
there are thousands of tantalizing tidbits. But are they true? How do they
augment our current knowledge, if at all? Do they somehow help us to answer the
larger questions about the assassination? These are questions we should ask as
we examine this treasure trove.
— Larry
J. Sabato
Dr.
Sabato is the author or editor of two dozen books on American politics. Dr.
Sabato was the editor and lead author of the recent book “Trumped,” which
explores the 2016 election.
A memo from J. Edgar Hoover captures the drama of the days after Kennedy’s death.
Some of the long-withheld documents convey some of the
drama and chaos of the days immediately after the murder of the president.
Among them is a
memo apparently dictated by J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. director, on
Nov. 24, 1963, shortly after Jack Ruby fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald as Oswald
was moved from one jail to another.
“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that
he is dead,” the memo begins laconically before reciting the day’s events.
Document: Read J. Edgar Hoover’s Memo on Oswald’s Death
Referring to Nicholas Katzenbach, then the deputy
attorney general, Mr. Hoover expresses anxiety that the killing of the
suspected assassin may spur undesirable doubts among Americans.
“The thing I
am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so
that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,” Mr. Hoover
says. The F.B.I. director discussed his agents’ early findings — a call Oswald
had made to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and a letter he had sent to the
Soviet Embassy in Washington — and says they could “complicate our foreign
relations.”
Mr. Hoover
calls the killing of Oswald “inexcusable” in light of “our warnings to the
Dallas Police Department” and hints at Ruby’s mob connections, which would soon
spawn an industry of research and speculation: “We have no information on Ruby
that is firm, although there are some rumors of underworld activity in
Chicago.”
— Scott
Shane
The files contain a variety of material.
Paging
through the documents on Thursday night was a little like exploring a box of
random documents found in an attic. There are fuzzy images of C.I.A.
surveillance photos from the early 1960s; a log from December 1963 of visitors,
including a C.I.A. officer, to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch in Texas;
and a
White House memo from 1965 discussing how the F.B.I. and the Secret
Service should collaborate on presidential protection.
An April
1964 F.B.I. cable recounts Oswald’s bus trip to Mexico in October
1963, including the names of the people sitting around him and his clothing: “a
short-sleeved light colored sport shirt and no coat.” From the 1970s, there are
reports on interviews conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations
with retired F.B.I. agents. The agents had interviewed mobsters with C.I.A.
ties and Cuban exiles in Florida who might have encountered Oswald.
— Scott
Shane
A memo from Hoover pointed to Kremlin suspicions that Johnson was behind the assassination.
Mr. Hoover
sent a memo to the White House more than three years after the assassination
summarizing information in the F.B.I.’s files about how the Soviet government
responded to Kennedy’s death.
One passage
of the memo notes that Johnson was considered virtually unknown to the Soviet
leaders, and that their intelligence agencies suspected his involvement in the
assassination:
Our source added that “now” the K.G.B. was in possession of data purporting
to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late
President John F. Kennedy.
The
memo, which Mr. Hoover notes was not “furnished to the Acting
Attorney General,” Ramsey Clark, opens by saying that the news was met with
“shock and consternation” and that church bells tolled in the president’s
memory.
The
intelligence, some of which was gathered by a source who was inside Russia when
Kennedy was assassinated, details how Communist Party leaders believed the
killing was part of an “ultraright” conspiracy to “effect a ‘coup.’” Soviet
officials also claimed not to have a connection with Oswald.
In the days after the assassination, according to the
memo, the K.G.B. focused its attention on gathering information about the new
president, Johnson, who “was practically unknown to the Soviet Government.”
— Mikayla
Bouchard
What are you finding?
Meet some of the key figures in the assassination.The J.F.K. Assassination: A Cast of Characters
As a new trove of documents about the killing of President
John F. Kennedy is released, The Times's Peter Baker walks us through who’s who
in this American tragedy.
By NATALIE
RENEAU and PETER BAKER on Publish Date October 25, 2017. . Watch
in Times Video »
An infamous mystery meets a president who dabbles in conspiracy theories.
Few seem as
excited about the release of the final batch of secret documents as the current
occupant of the Oval Office.
Somehow it
feels only appropriate that the remaining papers from one of history’s most
infamous mysteries would be made public by the administration of a president
who dabbles in conspiracy theories himself. After all, it was Mr. Trump who
during last year’s campaign suggested that the father of his Republican rival,
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, was somehow involved in the Kennedy assassination.
And one of his longtime advisers, Roger J. Stone Jr., wrote a book blaming the
killing on Lyndon B. Johnson. Read
more »
The assassination has fueled decades of speculation and investigations.
The
granddaddy of all conspiracy theories has re-emerged in the American psyche
with the release of the National Archives’s final trove of records about the
assassination.
Kennedy’s
death and the numerous investigations that followed were simultaneously some of
the most secretive and public events in modern history.
Government
agencies, Hollywood big shots and amateur sleuths have floated theories of what
happened to Kennedy: a plot by Cold War adversaries like Cuba and the Soviet
Union, an elaborate mafia-backed hit, a covert federal government coup. And
it’s been going on for over 50 years. Read
more »
‘Grassy knoll,’ ‘Zapruder film,’ ‘Umbrella Man’ ... See a glossary of some of the key terms associated with the assassination.
As the longtime government explanation goes: Kennedy was
assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, by a lone gunman, Oswald. Oswald fired three
bullets from a nearby building, striking Kennedy and Gov. John Connally of
Texas.
But much
of the public has never fully bought that explanation. The trove of
files released on Thursday, which the federal government had
long fought to keep from public view, may address some of the
conspiracy theories that have lingered for decades.
As you dive
into the documents or read news coverage, refresh your memory on some of the
people, theories and other aspects of the assassination. Read
more »
Dallas, Nov. 22 — President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin today. He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet that was fired at him as he was riding through downtown Dallas in a motorcade.
Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was riding in the third car behind Mr. Kennedy’s, was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States 99 minutes after Mr. Kennedy’s death.
No comments:
Post a Comment