Last
week, the National Archives suddenly released a batch of long-secret
official records relating to the JFK assassination. This was surprising
because the official release date for all the JFK-assassination records,
as mandated by law, is coming this October. The still-secret records
amount to tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of which are
records of the CIA, the super-secret federal agency that has specialized
in the art of assassination, cover-up of assassination, and regime
change practically since its inception in 1947.
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The Altgens6 take just after JFK was hit in the throat by a shot from in front. |
Of
course, the obvious question arises: Why are there still CIA records
relating to the Kennedy assassination being kept secret? After all, the
assassination occurred more than 50 years ago. By any standard of
reasonableness, the CIA should have released everything at least 25
years ago — that is, during the 1990s, when the JFK Records Act mandated
the release of such documents and when the Assassination Records Review
Board (ARRB) was enforcing the law.
It
turns out that when the JFK Records Act was being written, someone in
Congress — perhaps one of the CIA’s friends or assets — slipped a
provision into the law permitting the CIA and other agencies another 25
years in which to keep their JFK-assassination records secret. At the
time, that must have felt like a long time for the CIA to continue
keeping things under wraps.
But
those 25 years are now expiring. The gig is finally up. With one
possible exception: The CIA can request President Trump to continue the
secrecy on grounds of “national security.” If the president grants the
request, the secrecy continues. If it doesn’t, the secrecy finally comes
to an end, at least with respect to the CIA’s records that have been in
the custody of the National Archives for the past 25 years.
Will
the CIA seek another secrecy extension? Will the agency tell President
Trump that “national security” will be threatened if the American people
are permitted to see its 54-year-old records?
I
don’t have any doubts about it, and I’ve been saying that for several
months now. Thus, I was struck by a sentence in an op-ed that appeared
in the Washington Post last
week about the National Archives’ partial release of records last week.
The op-ed, authored by historians Larry J. Sabato and Philip Shenon, is
entitled, “President Trump, Give Us the Full Story on the JFK Assassination.”
It calls on President Trump to strike “a blow for transparency” by
refusing to grant any request for continued secrecy by the CIA and any
other federal agency with respect to their JFK-assassination-related
records.
Here’s
the sentence in the op-ed that struck me: “Congressional and other
government officials have warned us in confidence in recent weeks that
at least two federal agencies will make formal appeals to the White
House to block the release of some of the files.”
Just
as I and others have been predicting for several months. Of course,
there will be those who will cry “National security, Jacob!” or simply
chalk it up to the CIA’s customary penchant for secrecy.
But
there is another explanation, a much more likely one: to continue the
CIA’s cover-up of one of the most sophisticated and cunning
assassinations in history.
Do
the still-secret records contain a videotaped confession by CIA
officials stating that they orchestrated the assassination of President
Kennedy to protect “national security,” just as they orchestrated
regime-change operations in Cuba, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil,
Congo, Chile, and elsewhere to protect “national security”?
Of course not.
Will they contain even any acknowledgement that they did so?
Of course not.
Long
ago, when the CIA first began specializing in state-sponsored
assassinations and cover-ups, one of its cardinal rules was: Never put
assassination plans into writing.
But
the CIA knows that the still-secret records will provide further bits
of circumstantial evidence that further fill in the overall mosaic of
what happened. That’s why they’re going to ask Trump to continue the
secrecy — to prevent assassination researchers from getting their hands
on those additional pieces of circumstantial evidence.
Think
about a giant jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces. At one puts the
puzzle together, he gets to a point where he has a basic idea of what
the picture looks like even if he still doesn’t have all the pieces to
the puzzle inserted.
That’s
where we are with the Kennedy assassination, in large part because of
the massive release of records that the ARRB succeeded in securing in
the 1990s. Don’t forget: The original plan had called for secrecy for 75
years after the assassination. As a result of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, that plan was short-circuited by mandating a release of records earlier than expected.
Was
information secured by the ARRB important? Well, just consider the
sworn testimony of Saundra Spencer before the ARRB. She was a Navy
photography expert who worked closely with the White House on sensitive
and secret documents. It would be virtually impossible to find a more
credible witness than Saundra Spencer. On the weekend of assassination,
she was asked, on a top-secret basis, to develop the autopsy
photographs of the president’s body. Yet , when the ARRB showed her the
official autopsy photographs in the official records in the 1990s, she
stated directly and unequivocally that those were not the photographs
she developed.
Was
she contradicted by U.S. officials, including those in the Pentagon,
Navy, or CIA? Nope. Don’t you know that if they had felt Spencer was
lying or mistaken, they would have rushed over to the offices of the
ARRB and said so? They didn’t. They remained prudently silent in the
face of her incriminating testimony.
It’s
important to keep in mind that they had succeeded in keeping Saundra
Spencer’s version of the events secret for more than 30 years. That
secrecy came to an end in the 1990s with her sworn testimony before the
ARRB.
There was much more than that, as set forth in my ebook The Kennedy Autopsy. One thing is clear about Kennedy’s autopsy: There were shenanigans that are consistent with only one thesis: cover-up.
Until
the 1990s, they had also been able to keep secret the nature and depth
of the war that the CIA and Pentagon were waging against Kennedy for
doing what Arbenz in Guatemala had done and what Allende in Chile would
do (and what Trump promised to do): reach out to Russia and the rest of
the Soviet Union in a spirit of peace and friendship and in an effort to
establish normal relations between the United States and the Soviet
Union. For the full story on that, see FFF’s ebooks JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne (who served on the staff of the ARRB) and Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger.
The
CIA was able to keep whatever it wanted still secret for some two
decades after the ARRB went out of existence. When someone has engaged
in wrongdoing, does it not stand to reason that he will keep the most
incriminating evidence secret for as long as he can? There is little
doubt that the CIA’s official records still due to be released by
October are going to fill out more of the JFK assassination mosaic.
That’s why it’s a virtual certainty that the CIA is going to ask Trump
to continue the secrecy and, thus, its cover-up.
Will
Trump grant it? At this point, it’s impossible to say. But one thing is
for sure: If the U.S. national-security establishment succeeds in
getting the United States in a war with North Korea, Iran, Russia,
China, or some other nation, it is a virtual certainty that Trump will
give the CIA whatever extension of time it wants for continued secrecy
and cover-up in the JFK assassination. That’s because he will feel
dependent on them to prevail in the war and because there won’t be much
public outcry over continued secrecy in the JFK assassination in the
midst of massive death and destruction from one of the Pentagon’s and
CIA’s forever wars for “national security.”