Request for JFK Act Oversight Hearings

Since this letter was written, Henry Waxman has been replaced as Chairman by Republican Rep. Darrell E. Issa (Ca. 49), a partisan, conservative who has no intention of overseeing the JFK Act. 

AARC

Assassination Archives and Research Center

Jim Lesar, President

1003 K Street, N.W., 5)e. 6 1$

Washington, D.C. 200 f 1

Tel (202) 393-1921

Mr. Henry A.Waxman

Chairman

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

2204 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 205 15

June 6.2008

Dear Mr. Chairman:

I write in my capacity as president of the Assassination Archives and Research

Center, a non-profit organization that aims to inform the public about political

assassinations. I write, too, as one who in the early 1990s testified before congressional

committees in support of the 1992 President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records

Collection Act (the "JFK Records Act"). This was the most sweeping disclosure

legislation ever passed into law, yet Congress has never reviewed either its

accomplishments - or, very important, its failures. Your committee, which has oversight

responsibility under the Act, has held no hearings on the subject for over a decade.

Congressional oversight is necessary, as just two examples make glaringly

evident.

1. Congress promised that, under the Act, virtually all Kennedy assassination

records would promptly be made public. It emerged just recently, though, that the CIA is

withholding 1,100 JFK assassination-related documents until at least 201 7. A second

cause for disquiet is the Agency's response to a recent order by the U.S. Court of Appeals

for the District of Columbia. Told to search for operational files on the late George

Joannides, who in 1963 was case officer for the DRE, a CIA-funded Cuban exile group

that had pre-assassination contacts with alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the Agency

claimed that it could find no such records. This raises troubling questions as to whether

case officer Joannides' operations were completely off-the-books, with no records

created or preserved, or whether such records have been destroyed in violation of the JFK

Records Act - or other federal laws. Alternatively, the CIA may be interpreting the

request in line with some in-house formula that enables it to avoid searching for records

even though they are plainly within the scope of the request - thus circumventing the

Freedom of Information Act.

2. There is, too, the recent disclosure by the current Dallas District Attorney that

his office has uncovered 12 boxes of records related to the Kennedy case--records that

should long since have been released pursuant to the JFK Act. With the JFK Act's

enforcement arm, the Assassination Records Review Board ("Review Board"), no longer

in existence, what can be done to ensure that such records are placed where they belong -

in the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives?

More important than these individual examples, historians and researchers are

now unable to get to pertinent information on President Kennedy's assassination. This is

due in large part to the fact that the Review Board wound up its work in 1998. There is no

effective way for researchers to obtain prompt disclosure of records not already deposited

in the JFK Records Act Collection. Moreover, researchers experience problems even

when seeking access to what is already there.

I ask that you do now hold hearings to assess the working of the JFK Records

Act. Also that your committee address the need to modify and update it, or enact new

legislation, to resolve the sort of problems I have described.

The hearings should address the following issues, at a minimum:

1. The fact that the JFK Records Act's mandate, which requires full and prompt

disclosure of all JFK assassination-related records, is no longer being fulfilled.

2. The perceived need for fresh legislation to deal with developments that were

not foreseen when the JFK Records Act was passed.

3. The way the Justice Department has handled leads Congress asked it to

investigate. These include the acoustics evidence, a key basis for the House Select

Committee on Assassinations' finding that there probably was a conspiracy to assassinate

President Kennedy, and whether and how new tests should be undertaken to resolve

important evidentiary questions: and

4. The way the Central Intelligence Agency undermined the House

Assassinations Committee's probe of President Kennedy's murder - highly disquieting

information that has come to light thanks to work stimulated by the JFK Records Act.

I attach a memorandum addressing these and other matters at greater length.

I am available to discuss this subject with you or members of your staff at any

mutually convenient time. I may be contacted at the phone number given above, at my

home telephone, (301) 657-4298, or by email at jlesar@mindspring.com.

Sincerely yours,

I/ President

Assassination Archives and Research Center

cc: Rep. William Lacy Clay

MEMORANDUM REGARDING JFK ACT OVERSIGHT HEARINGS

From: Jim Lesar

President, Assassination Archives and Research Center

To: Chairman Henry A. Waxman

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Date: JUNE 6, 2008

In a cover letter, I have given an overview of why my organization, the Assassination Archives and Research Center ("AARC"), requests that you hold oversight

hearings on the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records CoIlection Act of 1992

("JFK Records Act"), 44 U.S.C. rj 2107.

The fact that it is almost 45 years since President Kennedy's assassination increases rather than diminishes the need for urgent action. The Justice Department has in recent years reopened a number of seemingly ancient cases - horrific racial slayings of the 1950s and 1960s - and in some cases has obtained convictions. It has been conspicuously inactive, however, on the murder of President Kennedy, a crime of enormous importance to the nation. This even though much about the case remains in doubt, and though significant evidence has emerged pointing to the possibility that there was a conspiracy.

The government's failure to address the doubts and confront such evidence has

had a lasting, profoundly negative impact on our democracy. It is no coincidence that the

steep and continuing decline in trust and respect for American leaders and institutions

began after the assassination and the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey

Oswald acted alone in killing the President. Questions remain as to whether - to cite

more common suspicions, not least those expressed by the House Select Committee on

Assassinations - there was a conspiracy involving organized crime, or a foreign power,

or even "the military industrial complex" of which President Dwight Eisenhower warned

in his farewell address. Only by being seen to have made every last effort to resolve such

suspicions, and by achieving total transparency in terms of public disclosure. can we

begin to restore confidence in our democratic system and our national institutions.

Congress implicitly acknowledged this when it passed the JFK Records Act. It

recognized that the American people have the right to know their own history, and that to

know it they must have access to the facts - to the fullest possible record. As a direct

result of the Act, a huge volume of previously secret documents were rapidly released.

Those disclosures, coupled to ongoing research, produced stunning revelations. One such,

of which we would otherwise have remained ignorant, is the existence of Operation

Northwoods, the 1962 plan by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that called for mounting violent

"terrorist" attacks in Washington D.C., phony hijackings of commercial airplanes, and

the framing of innocent people as "bombers" - all of which would be blamed on Castro

and used to justify an invasion of Cuba.

Most relevantly, we now know that the 1976-1 978 probe by the House Select

Committee on Assassinations ("HSCA") was corrupted by the CIA. This occurred when

the HSCA sought to learn what contacts alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had had

before the assassination with members of the DRE, a CIA-funded Cuban exile

organization. The Committee asked the Agency to identify the group's case officer and

provide it with relevant records. The CIA never did this. Instead it brought the former

case officer, George Joannides, out of retirement to act as the CIA liaison handling the

HSCA's inquiries on this and other matters. The CIA withheld from the HSCA7s chief

counsel and his staff the fact that they were relying for information on the very officer

who had handled the matter they were investigating! Congress never was given the

information it needed for this part of its investigation.

The HSCA7s former chief counsel, Professor G. Robert Blakey, has stressed the

gravity of this in a sworn affidavit. "By concealing his role in the events of 1963,

Joannides effectively frustrated the Committee's investigation into one of the central

issues in the investigation of the President's assassination and the performance of the

agencies that President Lyndon Baines Johnson had tasked with the investigation of

President Kennedy's assassination: the role, if any, of the Agency with those who had a

hand in the death of the President."

The HSCA's work in this area was potentially crucial because:

(1) it was as a result of Oswald's confrontations with DRE members in August 1963

in New Orleans that he gained a high public profile as a Soviet defector and pro-

Castro sympathizer, and

(2) it was DRE leaders who within hours of the assassination disseminated this

information on Oswald's background to the press. It was they who ensured that

the next day's headlines painted Oswald as an active pro-Castro Soviet defector.

By covertly using Joannides to deal with the HSCA, the CIA undermined the House

investigation. The last official investigation of the Kennedy assassination was thus

subverted by the very agency long suspected by some scholars and researchers of having

at least covered up something substantive - and perhaps of having even been somehow

involved in the assassination. This subversion made a mockery of the democratic

accountability intrinsic to congressional investigation.

The AARC calls upon Congress to investigate this CIA malfeasance and require a

thorough, fresh probe of Oswald's pre-assassination contacts with the DRE and other

Cuban exile organizations. For Congress not to respond with firm action would be

unacceptable in our democracy.

Please note, moreover, that the CIA has disclosed that it is withholding 1,100 JFK

assassination-related documents, and intends to block their release at least until 201 7.

This alone violates the assurance Congress gave that the public would have prompt

access to all relevant records. At least some of these withheld documents may relate to

Joannides, the CIA case officer for the DRE at the time Oswald had contact with the

group. Should that be the case, the CIA concealed salient information from the Warren

Commission, the Senate Intelligence ["Church] Committee, the HSCA, and the citizen

body that oversaw the operation of the JFK Act - until it ceased its work in 1998 - the

Assassination Records Review Board (the "Review Board").

In light of the above, the AARC calls upon Congress to enact new legislation that

brings the date for full disclosure of all JFK assassination records forward to 2009.

The JFK Records Act requires remedial action in other areas. Some examples:

* The Review Board ordered that many records or portions of records that

were initially withheld be disclosed at dates prior to 2008. A good deal of such

information, however, is still withheld. The National Archives and Records

Administration ("NARA"), which has a duty to disclose such materials once the

postponement date is reached, does not always do so.

* While the Review Board was in existence, many records containing third

agency information were referred to third agencies for action. Those agencies

have in many cases failed to process the referred materials in timely fashion, and

NARA - which maintains the JFK Records Act Collection, has failed to follow

through by obtaining it.

* It has become clear in recent years that records pertinent to the study of the JFK

assassination are not in the JFK Collection - either because they were overlooked

by government agencies and the Review Board or because new areas of inquiry

have opened up that were previously not perceived as relevant or significant by

agencies or the Review Board. In some instances agencies have concealed or

destroyed relevant records. Many Church Committee records that should be in the

JFK Records Collection are not. The CIA'S file on Eladio del Valle, a significant

Cuban exile long suspected of involvement in the assassination, is missing. The

Collection does not have the audiotapes of communications between the White

House and Air Force One after the assassination. The Review Board failed, for its

part, to obtain the records of President Kennedy's personal physician, Admiral

George Burkley. Burkley was the only doctor present both at Parkland Hospital in

Dallas, where the President died, and at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the

autopsy took place. Disclosures under the JFK Act have drawn attention to a CIA

operation codenamed AMIWORLD, which some researchers suspect is key to a

putative plot to kill Kennedy. Few AMIWORLD records have thus far been

released, however.

* In flagrant violation of the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed

records after the Review Board ruled that they were assassination-related.

Congress should conduct a full investigation into why this was done and on

whose instructions.

* CBS Television agreed to donate film outtakes of Kennedy assassination

materials to the JFK Collection. Yet, researchers contend, only part of its

collection has so far been deposited.

* Kennedy aide Walter Sheridan investigated the President's assassination on

behalf of Robert F. Kennedy and worked to discredit the probe by New Orleans

District Attorney Jim Garrison. After Sheridan's death. the Review Board's

negotiation with his family to obtain his papers was frustrated by NBC

Television. Sheridan had worked for the network, and NBC - claiming ownership

-took possession of the papers. NBC has not to date turned them over to the

National Archives.

* Mexican television recently reported that the CIA had an agreement with

Mexican intelligence that surveillance data gathered on Mexican territory would

be shared with the Mexican government. We know that there is or was such

material relating to alleged assassin Oswald's visit to Mexico shortly before the

assassination - a visit that has long been a subject of controversy. Former HSCA

chief counsel Professor Blakey advises that the State Department is currently

negotiating with Mexico in an attempt to obtain this surveillance material. It is

important that Congress have the State Department report on its progress, or

otherwise, on the matter.

* The CIA entered into an agreement with the Review Board to continue

processing any and all JFK assassination records after the Review Board ceased to

function. It has not honored that agreement. The result - and this applies not only

to the CIA but also to other agencies - is that persons requesting assassination

records not already a part of the Collection must proceed under the Freedom of

lnformation Act ("FOIA") - which is far more restrictive than the JFK Records

Act. It was the inadequacy of the FOIA, indeed, that led Congress to pass the JFK

Act in the first place. In a real sense. requesters thus find themselves back to

Square One. Congress should hold hearings on the need for new legislation to

ensure that researchers have access to materials mandated for release under the

JFK Records Act.

The House Assassinations Committee concluded in 1979 that, contrary to the

Warren Commission's lone assassin finding, "President John F. Kennedy was probably

assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." Leads the Committee passed to the Justice

Department for further investigation included, importantly, studies by two distinguished

panels of acoustical experts. These studies found that at least four shots had been fired at

the President, from two different directions, pointing to more than one shooter and thus to

a conspiracy.

Congress has conducted no oversight hearings to determine whether the Justice

Department adequately pursued these leads, or whether new evidence has emerged on the

acoustics issue.

New evidence has indeed emerged:

(1) Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have discredited the last

remaining basis for the "Single Bullet Theory," which was relied on both by the Warren

Commission and the House Assassinations Committee. The Single Bullet Theory posits

the notion that President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally were both struck

by a single bullet fired from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The Theory is the sine

qua non for the belief that only one assassin was involved. The Livermore Laboratory

scientists now say, however, that scientific advances make the Single Bullet Theory

inapplicable. They assert, moreover, that bullet fragments tested by the FBI could have

come from one - or as many as five - bullets, and could have been fired from a

Remington rifle or another weapon other than Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano.

(2) In the HSCA's probe, each panel of acoustical experts supported the other's

findings that the acoustics evidence indicated four or more shots fired from at least two

different directions. These studies have now been reaffirmed and strengthened by a peerreviewed study conducted by an American government scientist, Dr. Don Thomas. If his study is correct, the assassination of President Kennedy indeed remains unsolved.

Other assassination researchers argue, meanwhile, that analysis of the Dallas

police tapes and Dealey Plaza photographic evidence fails to support the HSCA's finding

that the sounds of the gunfire in Dealey Plaza were captured by an open microphone

mounted on the motorcycle of a police officer in the President's motorcade. This police

tapeslphotographic evidence should also be investigated.

I am advised that further tests and studies, undertaken by appropriate experts,

could clarify whether the acoustical findings relied on by the House Committee are valid

or not. In addition to requesting that you hold public hearings on the overall functioning

of the JFK Records Act, therefore. we also call upon your Committee to hold oversight

hearings on the state of the acoustical evidence, and on what can be done to resolve the

issues outlined.

It is essential that Congress use its muscle to ensure that the JFK Records Act

again operates as the lawmakers intended and that government agencies, the CIA

included, comply with all its requirements. Congress should also ensure that,

notwithstanding the passing of the years, fresh evidence is studied and given a thorough

hearing.

To fail to take such action, in a way that is absolutely clear and transparent, would

be to invite further erosion of the public trust. A democratic nation lost its elected leader,

in circumstances never satisfactorily explained, and requires nothing less of its elected

representatives.