CAPA - New Group Advocates Disclosure On Political
Assassinations
Andrew Kreig, March 13, 2016
Americans deserve thorough disclosure of the
nation’s major assassinations says a new research group at the start of the
annual “Sunshine Week” in March 2016.
As an initial goal, Citizens Against Political
Assassinations (CAPA), a non-partisan umbrella group, seeks withheld records
pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy in
1968.
Details: http://ow.ly/ZpIZ2
Americans deserve thorough disclosure of the
nation’s major assassinations says a new research group during the annual
“Sunshine Week” in March.
“CAPA seeks
release of the remaining JFK records with a minimum of redactions, which can
obscure vital information,” said CAPA Chairman Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., a
prominent expert in forensic pathology for five decades.
“We shall also file Freedom of Information Act
requests and similar legal actions to enforce the law and undertake public
education efforts to show the importance of disclosure to new generations.”
Wecht is a world-renowned consultant, medical school professor, author, and
former county coroner for two decades in Pennsylvania.
This editor is one of nine CAPA directors along with
Wecht, and is also the media liaison for the CAPA announcement, which is timed
to coincide with the annual Sunshine
Week launched by Florida journalists and then nationally in 2005 by
the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) with funding from the Knight
Foundation. The purpose is to advocate for open government and warn against the
dangers of excessive secrecy.
In Washington, DC, the National Press Club and
Newseum are among the organizations sponsoring events during the week seeking
more transparency by government. There are many challenges for the media and
the public in obtaining from government information once regarded as routine.
For example, the Washington Post reported in its Sunday, March 13 print
edition, The federal government no longer cares about disclosing public
information.
This editor shares those goals as an active member
of more than a half dozen journalism and legal bodies, including the National
Press Club's Press Freedom Committee and several other of the largest and
oldest journalism bodies, such as SPJ, ASJA, and the Overseas Press Club. But
an urgent need exists also for more for targeted advocacy efforts on the topic
of assassinations, especially since the major media have proven extremely
reluctant to use their influence to report sensitive aspects of major assassinations
-- much less lobby for additional disclosures.
MANY ASSASSINATION SECRETS STAY BURIED
Part of this reluctance is doubtless the pressure of
deadlines and, often, the implied need for scientific and legal expertise to
overcome obstacles.
Yet review of the records indicates that other
factors doubtless include the establishment media's role in maintaining public
confidence in government institutions and their own brand names as purveyors of
truth even though such declassified records as those about Operation
Mockingbird show that during the 1950s and 1960s the nation's top
newspaper, broadcast, wire services and magazines worked closely at the
ownership to thwart reporting on sensitive intelligence topics, including the
1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the Warren Commission investigation
of it.
Importantly, such efforts as Operation Mockingbird
were cooperative ventures between media owners and such agencies as the CIA,
the evidence indicates, and not the agencies in effect mandating that the media
do anything.
Thus, Operation Mockingbird's co-leaders are now
known to have been Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham and
the CIA's Frank Wisner, Sr., who dined together weekly with their wives, as
Graham's widow Katharine Graham noted (albeit in passing) in her memoir Personal
History.
Somewhat similarly, Time-Life Publisher Charles
"CD" Jackson led the magazines' coverage of the 1963 assassination
and their exclusive acquisition of such vital evidence as the video of the
killing by Abraham Zapruder. Jackson, publisher of the nation's two most
important magazines in terms of influence, was regarded also as the nation's
leading expert on psychological warfare because of his successes during World
War II in the CIA's forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services, and his work
as a national security advisor to President Eisenhower.
Similar efforts placed CIA and other intelligence
operatives in other businesses, government offices (including the White House
and Pentagon), academia, unions, religious organizations, and political groups
of the mainstream, left and right, researchers now know from many documents,
witness accounts and books.
The late Air Force Col. Fletcher Prouty described
the process in his courageous 1973 insider's account The Secret Team, for
example. In it, Prouty described how he helped arranged such confidential
placements when he worked at the Pentagon during the 1950s and early 1960s at
the liaison between the Joint Chies of Staff and the CIA's leaders for covert
operations in such specialties as assassinations, revolutions and propaganda.
Among more recent books on the topic are last year's Workshops
of Empire by Eric Bennett and John Countney Murray, Time/Life and the
American Proposition: How the CIA's Doctrinal Warfare Program Changed the
Catholic Church by David Wemhoff and, more generally, The Devil's Chessboard by
David Talbot, subtitled Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's
Secret Government. Proponents of such program justified them, to the extent
they ever had to do so, for anti-communist and patriotic reasons, as evidenced
by many other books too numerous to mention here.
For such reasons, the JFK Act of 1992 exemplifies
one major CAPA initiative that is especially congruent with the goals of
Sunshine Week and other open government initiatives this spring fostered by the
newspaper, broadcast and library leaders along with concerned citizens.
The JFK Act requires federal release of records on
the assassination of President Kennedy by October 2017. The president of the
United States at that time will be responsible for enforcement. Millions of
pages have been declassified regarding Kennedy's assassination and the Warren
Commission investigation, (but so many remain classified that they can’t tell
us how many).
The CIA has long objected to release of others, as
reported by such researchers as Russ Baker's investigative team at WhoWhatWhy
and by former Washington Post Reporter Jefferson Morley, who curates the
website JFKFacts.org. Their columns are Exclusive: List of Withheld JFK Assassination Documents and Denied: the JFK records the government doesn’t want you to see,
respectively.
“Especially in the midst of the 2016 presidential
election cycle,” said CAPA's leader Dr. Wecht, ”Sunshine week is a key time to
foster public confidence in government by building public support for document
release and other ‘sunshine’ goals. Time is running out to do something about
the horrific JFK crime and cover-up. There is power in numbers. We hope you
will join us in this worthy endeavor to bring truth to the American people.”
JOIN CAPA, HELP REVEAL EVIDENCE
Excerpted below are samples of news reports and
analysis by the Justice Integrity Project about these topics, as well as by
other writers and groups. The appendix includes links to a so-far 30-part
"Readers Guide" to the JFK Assassination providing, among other
things, a catalog of the most important several hundred books on the topic out
of the more than 2,500 total estimated.
Even though a great deal of progress has been made
in solving key components of the JFK assassination and several others important
documents are still being withheld. That creates terrible precedents also for
important political murders and attempts reaching current times in the United
States and globally.
Therefore, leading scientists, lawyers, journalists
and other researchers -- most with decades of experience and current
participation in other groups -- have convened to create a new organization in
CAPA to dispel remaining secrets, working in a complementary fashion with other
entities, including other researchers and authorities.
But the scope of work is large and priorities will
be determined by those who participate effectively. Please consider joining the
effort this week and participating on a committee suited to your interests and
talents. To join CAPA, visit its website.
For any questions, you are involved to contact this
editor.
Andrew Kreig
Justice Integrity Project Editor (www.justice-integrity.org)
Washington, DC 20004
Twitter: AndrewKreig
RSS Feed for Updates: http://feeds.feedburner.com/JusticeIntegrityProject
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