What the government is still hiding
about the JFK assassination
The National Archives, for the first
time ever, released a list of documents related to the assassination that are
still shielded from public view.
By BRYAN BENDER
02/04/16 08:07 PM EST / Updated 02/04/16
08:14 PM EST
More than five decades after the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, thousands of government files
detailing the activities and testimony of shadowy spies, long-deceased
witnesses and others with possible knowledge of the events remain shielded from
public view.
The government gave a first-ever
peek at what's still out there Thursday, as the National Archives released a
list of the 3,063 documents that have been "fully withheld" since
JFK's murder in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
The documents listed — released in
response to a Freedom of Information Act request from POLITICO, other news
organizations and researchers — were collected by the Assassination Records
Review Board, an independent panel created by the 1992 JFK Records Act.
That same act requires that all the
documents on the list be released by October 2017 unless the next president
decides to keep them classified.
Based on what has been revealed
previously, many of the files are expected to have no direct bearing on
Kennedy's death in Dealey Plaza but could reveal intelligence operations
involving Cuba, secret relationships between U.S. spy agencies and unsavory
characters during the height of the Cold War, as well as other secrets the U.S.
government might have resisted disclosing publicly as part of a full and open
investigation at the time.
Cold War scholars have long
suspected that many of the still-withheld files will not necessarily shed new
light on whether Oswald acted alone. They could, however, help explain why some
top officials at the time might have sought to prevent a thorough
investigation, out of concern it would require airing the dirty laundry of
covert activities.
Yet 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.”
The Archives says that "certain
information has been removed" from the list, including titles and other
identifying information, to protect national security, personal privacy and tax
information.
Here is a snapshot of what is still
being hidden from the public about key figures, probes and other events that
the Archives has deemed relevant to the JFK investigation.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Secret CIA "personality"
studies of the reported lone assassin fingered by the Warren Commission
produced immediately after the assassination have yet to be released, along
with a telegram about him from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to the State
Department a week after the assassination. Oswald, a former Marine who had
temporarily defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, is suspected of having
visited Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination, reportedly to obtain
a visa to travel to Cuba.
There also are hundreds of other
pages of undated CIA files that contain classified information on Oswald,
including a handwritten note from Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected from
the Soviet Union and also is the subject of numerous other secret transcripts
and tapes contained in the withheld records, as well as another document on
Oswald's "contacts with Cuban and Soviet embassies." The trove also
includes a pair of 1959 telegrams — one from the State Department to Moscow and
the other from Moscow to Secretary of State Christian Herter — regarding
Oswald's brother Robert.
J. Edgar Hoover
There are a series of communications
from the longest-serving and highly secretive FBI director, including one
titled "Reaction of Soviet and Communist Party officials to JFK
assassination" that he sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson's chief of
staff, Marvin Watson, a week after the assassination; another a few weeks later
to the deputy secretary of state for security relating to Oswald; and a series
of 1964 memos sent to J. Lee Rankin, the general counsel of the Warren
Commission, about Jack Ruby, the Dallas night club owner with mafia ties who
killed Oswald two days after the assassination in the basement of the Dallas
police station, preventing a trial.
Jacqueline Kennedy
At least five communications are
contained in the files from the former first lady to President Lyndon B.
Johnson in the days immediately following the assassination.
James Jesus Angleton
Still classified is the top-secret
testimony from the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence branch from 1954 to
1975 before the so-called Church Committee, convened by the U.S. Senate in 1975
to investigate abuses by the spy agency. It was the Church Committee that
revealed for the first time that the CIA had hired figures in organized crime
with deep ties to Havana to help overthrow the communist government of Fidel
Castro, including through assassination attempts.
Frank Sturgis
Also contained in the remaining JFK
files is the former military officer and undercover operative's 1975 testimony
before the Church Committee. Sturgis was also one of the five Watergate
burglars whose break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in 1972 led to the
resignation of President Richard Nixon.
David Atlee Phillips
The trove includes the secret
testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 from the
longtime CIA officer who was involved in covert U.S. plans to assassinate
Castro and also was a person of interest in the JFK case for scholars and
researchers.
Regis Kennedy
Kennedy (no relation to the
president) is among several witnesses connected to the events in Dallas in 1963
who died before they could be fully questioned. Kennedy reportedly suffered a
heart attack the day before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury on
confiscated home movies of the assassination. The unreleased files contain an
untitled communication from Justice Department files from Regis Kennedy to the
special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans field office on May 18, 1967.
Protected sources
Several unidentified CIA documents,
according to the newly released inventory of withheld JFK records, have been
kept from the public to protect an intelligence source that is still living.
Illegible material
Sure to fuel conspiracy theories, a
sizable portion of CIA documents related to the JFK case is deemed “illegible.”
The documents include one from the general counsel of the Warren Commission to
the CIA's Richard Helms. Helms, who later became director, managed the agency's
cooperation with the independent panel that was set up by President Johnson and
concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin.
Another set of documents the agency
shared with the Warren Commission deemed unreadable: several communications
from the agency's station in Mexico City before and after the assassination,
including a cable to "Director Info Havana" on Nov. 11, 1959.
Also deemed unreadable is a secret
communication from the CIA to the Office of Naval Intelligence before the
assassination — in October 1963 — about Oswald.
Not believed relevant
Some of the withheld documents were
designated in the 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board as "not
believed relevant" to the assassination but are nevertheless of keen
historical interest.
They include the CIA "operational" files of E.
Howard Hunt, another of the Watergate burglars and a career spy. Also withheld
is a CIA file on Jack Wasserman, a lawyer for New Orleans mafia boss Carlos
Marcello and a longtime suspect in the assassination who was also involved in
CIA plots to overthrow Castro in Cuba.
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