Tag: jfk

After 60 years, establishment figures are increasingly voicing the belief that government agencies and officials might have at least covered up critical information about the assassination plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. And one major interpreter of history is even going so far as to suggest a key governmental entity took delight in JFK’s demise. 

Nonetheless, they’re still behind the curve of public opinion. And even in their new posture, they appear to be playing a game of denial. 

Most Americans don’t buy the official story of one disgruntled loner coincidentally  securing a job along an as-yet-undetermined presidential motorcade route, then, once the route information was public, deciding spontaneously to bring a rifle and thereby altering the course of history.

And most people who have studied the copious research done over the years are even more sure that it’s hooey. (As was a 1970s panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded there was seemingly some kind of conspiracy involving more than one person). That’s why at least some of us keep on digging. 

After Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, swung public opinion on the issue in the early 1990s, Congress unanimously mandated that the government find and release all documents on the assassination. By 2017, a quarter-century later, all the documents were supposed to be out. But delays dragged on as federal agencies sought more time to review, redact, or outright withhold documents that might somehow breach individuals’ privacy or harm national security. 

Still, more documents have slowly emerged, and finally, in December, the National Archives and Records Administration (“Archives”) let loose online another pile of faint, eye-straining documents related to the Kennedy assassination — 13,173 of them. The agency says that pretty much everything covered by the JFK Records Act of 1992 is now out, except a handful of papers protected by other laws involving IRS documents or those protected by rules around judicial proceedings like grand juries. 

The commercial media’s reaction to this “final” release was, with one notable exception, pretty much what you would expect.

Oswald did it alone. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.

Oswald did it alone. And here’s more proof that he did it.

Oswald did it alone. The CIA has been hiding things, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the assassination.

The exception: Oswald alone pulled the trigger — but maybe others were involved.

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Arecent release of declassified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy includes an internal CIA memo that skeptically relays — without ruling out completely — a report that the intelligence agency employed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Officially, Oswald acted alone in the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, firing at the presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. At the time, Kennedy was riding in an open-top convertible and sustained fatal gunshot wounds.

Oswald was apprehended shortly thereafter, but not before he also killed police officer J.D. Tippit while attempting to flee the scene. He was killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, whom authorities then arrested. Ruby was later convicted of Oswald’s murder.

Various conspiracy theories involving Kennedy’s death have persisted for decades, with many permeating popular culture. Sitcoms and video games such as “Seinfeld” and Call of Duty have alluded to claims that Oswald may not have acted alone.

Prominent among such theories is a notion that the CIA orchestrated Kenney’s death in retaliation for his removal of CIA Director Allen Dulles following the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Though the claim of CIA involvement is commonly dismissed as a conspiracy theory, NARA’s declassification of documents has shed light on some potential links between Oswald and the CIA. It was already known that as a Marine Oswald was stationed at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan in 1957. The base was also a hub for the CIA’s psychedelic drug research, and some have already suggested Oswald may have been a subject of the agency’s experiments, according to The Intercept.

However, one of the CIA documents NARA released this month acknowledged the possibility, albeit remote, that Oswald and the CIA had a more direct relationship, with the clandestine organization actually employing him. An internal memorandum from 1978 details repsonses within the CIA to a former finance clerk testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the agency employed Oswald while he was stationed in Atsugi.

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