National Archives releases first batch of 2017 JFK documents

[Dawn Meredith]

I am betting they never release LHO'S tax records. Now that would be one smoking gun.

[Peter Lemkin]

I am betting the never release LHO'S tax records. Now that would be one smoking gun.

They are still being audited [along with the Donalds]....::

[Peter Lemkin]

Very significant document showing that Dallas Mayor Cabell was a longtime CIA asset here https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...-CIA-asset

[Peter Lemkin]

AUGUST 3, 2017 | ALAN DALE

2017 JFK DOCUMENT RELEASE SHOWS FORMER INTELLIGENCE ANALYST GOT IT RIGHT

Countdown to October 26

Dr. John M. Newman author of Countdown to Darkness, JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA, Where Angels Tread Lightly and more. Photo credit: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform and Skyhorse Publishing
For decades, those investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been eagerly anticipating the release of previously withheld documents scheduled for later this year, October 26. One major question that remains is whether President Donald Trump will use his authority to further keep these documents from the public eye.(1)

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Fifty-four years is long enough.
The potential for discovery represented by the recent and upcoming release of remaining government files on the Kennedy assassination was realized this week with the startling revelation that beginning in 1956, Earle Cabell, brother of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Charles P. Cabell and Mayor of Dallas at the time JFK was assassinated, was a CIA asset.
We are now able to review his 10/17/56 CIA Secrecy Agreement, his CIA 201 file cover sheet, his 5/13/57 CIA Personality 201 File Request, and a cover sheet indicating that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reviewed his 201 file. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) master listing of files scheduled for release indicates that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) classified these records as "Not Believed Relevant" (NBR). ARRB Director Judge John Tunheim, speaking at the National Press Club during a CAPA sponsored event this past March, said that he now believes that many of the NBR-designated documents are indeed relevant. With the benefit of hindsight, that may have been an understatement.
The passage of many days, months, or years may be necessary for information to be placed in the correct context and understood as being significant. The example of George Joannides, who was brought out of retirement to act as liaison between the Agency and the HSCA, is a case in point. Joannides' role as the CIA case officer for the DRE (Revolutionary Student Directorate), an anti-Castro group with which Lee Harvey Oswald had interacted in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, was withheld by the agency throughout the term of the HSCA which was investigating CIA connections to the group. When asked directly if Joannides could assist the HSCA by identifying the officer who had handled the DRE during the summer of 1963, he responded by saying, "I'll look into that." Perhaps the CIA did not feel that revealing Joannides' true identity to the Committee investigators was "assassination-related."
The official ARRB classification "assassination-related" was not limited to issues or evidence pertaining exclusively to the scene of the crime.
Dr. John Newman argues that real progress in solving the JFK assassination will not come to those who await a smoking-gun revelation, but will be possible if we first have an understanding of the internal language of US government cryptonyms and pseudonyms. Only by establishing the true identities of the actors and their locations and activities can we hope to separate fact from fiction in this mystifying saga.
That has been his goal in a series of publications on America's untold history over the last three decades. As a retired strategic intelligence cryptologic analyst for US Army Intelligence and the former military assistant to the director of the National Security Agency, Newman has some unique qualifications. His works on the cold war and America's involvement in Vietnam have been recognized by many, including Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and former CIA Director William Colby to be among the most authoritative and significant yet published. In past publications he correctly foretold what we are now seeing in the 2017 release of JFK records.
His 1991 book, JFK and Vietnam, documents Kennedy's navigation of a dangerous course through cold war hot spots and a very divided administration. What eventually emerged is an astonishingly dishonorable deception: a deliberate attempt to manipulate the President of the United States into authorizing a war policy to which he was fundamentally opposed. The media firestorm created by that thesis, that JFK was committed to withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his death, and obstructions such as the book's suppression by Warner Books after only five months on the bookshelves, did little to dissuade Newman from pursuing the story wherever it might lead.
It led to Oswald and the CIA. Published in 1995, his second book used the enormous collection of federal agency documents newly released by the ARRB to explore the CIA's keen operational interest in Lee Harvey Oswald. It focused on the people and organizations who opened and maintained Oswald's intelligence files for four years prior to the president's assassination, and it provided evidence to explore the question of whether Oswald might have been a false defector when he left the US for the Soviet Union in 1959. [See Countdown to Darkness, Chapters One and Eighteen for a detailed account of that story.]
Newman re-entered the JFK case in 2015 with the publication of Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume One. The updated and expanded second edition of JFK and Vietnam appeared in January 2017, as did Volume Two in Newman's series on the assassination, Countdown to Darkness.

Naming Names and Secret Missions

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The CIA was not the only federal agency to involve itself with organizing, recruiting and utilising anti-Castro paramilitary groups, but it may have been the one that invested the most time and money. JFK assassination research has focused a great deal of attention on the Agency's handling and control of such groups and the activists who made up their memberships. The CIA officers, agents and assets who ran those operations are also worthy of our attention. Volume II offered bold new predictions about the pseudonyms and cryptonyms used for the CIA officers and contract agents who dared without diplomatic protection to run the stay-behind nets inside Cuba after the January 1961 break in relations with the US. Three men whose careers would become increasingly important to our understanding of operations being directed against Castro by the CIA are Emilio Americo Rodriguez, Tony Sforza, and James Joseph O'Mailia.
Countdown to Darkness identified the CIA's principal deep-cover stay-behind agent in Cuba, Emilio Americo Rodriquez, as the person behind the CIA cryptonym AMIRE-1. In the CIA's long search for reliable recruits to employ as human intelligence who would accept dangerous assignments there could hardly have been anyone more qualified or better suited than Emilio Rodriguez, a multi-lingual young Cuban with American citizenship who approached the Agency in Washington in late 1959 offering to serve in the fight against Castro and a communist takeover of Cuba. By May of 1960, Rodriguez had been cleared for operational employment and was in place in Havana. Newman ascertained that Rodriguez used the pseudonym "Eugenio" for his stay-behind net in Cuba, that Rodriguez's work for American businesses in Cuba had been used to provide a cover, and that his stay-behind partner in Cuba was CIA contract paramilitary agent, Tony Sforza. Sforza would become notorious for his Agency-related exploits as the man who recruited Fidel Castro's sister Juanita, and who worked closely with JMWAVE (the CIA station in Miami) officers Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales. Sforza posed as a casino gambler named "Frank Stevens."
Photo credit: CIA

Countdown to Darkness also revealed that the pseudonym (for use in CIA reports and files) "Peter J. DiGerveno" belonged to Rodriguez while he was assigned to the CIA's JMWAVE station in Miami. Sforza was the person behind the CIA cryptonym AMRYE-1, and was assigned the pseudonym "Henry J. Sloman" for his stay-behind work in Cuba and for use in his assignment at the JMWAVE station.
Into the Storm (Volume III, due out in December 2018) will reveal that both Rodriguez and Sforza worked closely with an American CIA contract agent in Havana, James Joseph O'Mailia, whose cover was as a professor of English at the University of Villanueva. By early 1960, O'Mailia had become the Agency's principal go-between and cut-out to the Christian Democratic Movement (MDC) group and others being groomed to sabotage the Cuban economy and overthrow Castro.
Photo credit: CIA

During his research for Volume III, Newman discovered that O'Mailia was the person behind the CIA cryptonym AMCRACKLE-1, and that CIA documents used the pseudonym "Gordon M. Biniaris" for his work with the anti-Castro groups in Cuba.
O'Mailia's profile in Havana matched that of a man using the name "Joe Melton." Melton, according to Antonio Veciana a militant leader of the paramilitary exile group, Alpha 66, who was involved in terrorist acts and attempts to assassinate Castro was the American who trained him in sabotage and psychological warfare operations.
Veciana alleges that CIA propaganda expert David Phillips using the name "Maurice Bishop" was present for several of the training sessions. Moreover, Veciana has claimed that he met with Oswald and Phillips in a Dallas office building in September 1963 shortly before Oswald went to Mexico City seeking a Cuban visa. Earlier this year the publication of Antonio Veciana's memoir, Trained to Kill, was received very positively by some reviewers; for others, it has raised more questions than it answers. Familiarity with figures such as Rodriguez, Sforza and O'Mailia is required if we are to effectively evaluate claims that are presented as facts.
Photo credit: CIA

NARA released several records with Rodriguez's AMIRE-1 cryptonym in the clear and the diagram for "Eugenio's" stay-behind net in Cuba. On his net diagram were the names "Henry," for "Henry Sloman" (Tony Sforza), and "Happy," who may have been James O'Mailia. With NARA's July 2017 release of JFK records, we now have the opportunity to check the predictions and assessments set forth in Countdown to Darkness. Many of the estimates in Newman's Volumes II and III have been confirmed by the recently released files. We are getting dozens of crypts, pseudos, country digraphs, and operational codenames. In many instances their presence alongside of the already released documents permits many more new discoveries. An overall assessment will have to wait until everything has been released.
All three CIA operatives in Cuba were fortunate to escape from the island. Rodriguez and O'Mailia were arrested and imprisoned by Castro's secret police. Sforza went underground until his escape by boat in mid-July 1961. Rodriguez, who had been arrested and held for six days before the invasion, was permitted to leave on an airplane to New Orleans at the time Sforza fled the island. O'Mailia, who was arrested during the exile invasion, was held in prison for three months and then he, too, was permitted to leave in mid-July. If Cuban authorities had realized the prominent roles these three figures would play in the CIA's anti-Casto campaigns, they would certainly not ever have been allowed to leave Cuba alive.
Newman's work not only resolves the multiple identities of the key CIA officers and agents who risked their lives in this Cuban-American drama, but also recounts the circumstances in which their flight from Cuba took place in the context of the disastrous Bay of Pigs. The claims, by top advisors to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, that an exile invasion would trigger an uprising of the Cuban population against Castro were known to be false by those who made them.
In Volume II, Newman makes a persuasive case that the exile invasion was designed to fail in order to pave the way for a full-scale US invasion of the island. Castro's victory on the beachhead in 1961 was blamed on the failure of the Kennedy administration to provide sufficient air support for the invaders. Along with the diplomatic resolution to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, these purported "betrayals" of those who died or were captured at Bahía de Cochinos would, in turn, form the context and a possible motive for the murder of the president.
So, here we are in 2017, the year that we are promised will solve some mysteries, answer some questions, and perhaps settle the case once and for all. Or not. We can be confident that some details of the JFK assassination story will no longer be hidden from us. Revelations such as those cited in this article provide valuable new pieces to our collective understanding; they allow us to measure our progress by improving upon previous assessments, and they assist us in getting closer to our ultimate objective: to put the puzzle together.
And you never know, there may be some other surprises in store for us. It is not unprecedented for materials that were thought to be lost or that were never documented at all to suddenly appear. When the son of the staff director to the Warren Commission contacted the ARRB and said that his father had died and there were 18 boxes of Warren Commission documents in his basement, did they want them? The answer was, "Well, yes we do."
A final note of caution: Documents don't always mean what they say or say what they mean. What they purport to reveal is seldom complete and may not be accurate, perhaps even false, especially when they are issued by intelligence agencies whose tradecraft includes deception and maintenance of "plausible deniability." In cases where something that should be there is missing such as the disappearance of Volume 5 of Oswald's Security files the significance of what is absent, what Professor Peter Dale Scott refers to as the negative template, is also informative.

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Thanks to Malcolm Blunt, Bill Simpich, Dan Hardway, Peter Dale Scott, and Jerry Shinley for their contributions to this article. Special thanks to Milicent Cranor, Jimmy Falls, Klaus Marre, and Russ Baker for their invaluable assistance.
Alan Dale serves the noted FOIA attorney, Jim Lesar, as Director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, aarclibrary.org, and is the host of JFK Conversations, jfkconversations.com. He is affiliated with the research groups JFK Lancer and CAPA, and is responsible for administration and content at https://jfkjmn.com.
Endnote
[1] Postponement beyond the Oct. 26, 2017 deadline set 25 years ago by the JFK Assassination Records Act is possible if the president certifies that it is necessary to prevent an identifiable harm to military, defense, intelligence, law enforcement or foreign relations and that harm outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

[Peter Lemkin]

AUGUST 2, 2017 | WHOWHATWHY STAFF

DALLAS MAYOR DURING JFK ASSASSINATION WAS CIA ASSET

Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Former Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell (inset). Photo credit: Anita & Greg / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0), US Government Printing Office / Wikimedia and CIA / Wikimedia.
Here is the first major revelation from the historic release of previously withheld government records on the JFK Assassination: the mayor of Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was killed in that city was a CIA asset.
We were alerted to this salient fact by retired military intelligence officer and author John Newman, who is conducting a thorough analysis of the long-secret documents.
At the time of the assassination, Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, brother of one-time Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Charles P. Cabell, had been a CIA asset since 1956.
It is worth noting that Kennedy dismissed CIA Director Allen Dulles in November 1961, and that Earle Cabell's brother Charles left the CIA on January 31, 1962, after Kennedy forced him to resign. Thus, both Dulles and Charles Cabell were no longer working for the CIA on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was killed.
Earle Cabell, who had been elected mayor of Dallas in May 1961, oversaw arrangements for Kennedy's trip and motorcade, which took him through Dealey Plaza, a route that violated almost all standard rules for presidential safety and where normal safeguards, such as sealing windows and placing sharpshooters, were ignored. This is of interest to researchers into the assassination, who have been collecting evidence of CIA ties to a host of individuals who figure in the events of 11/22/63 (see also WhoWhatWhy Editor-in-Chief Russ Baker's Family of Secrets for more on this topic.)
Below is Earle Cabell's 10/17/56 CIA Secrecy Agreement, his CIA 201 file cover sheet (a "personality" file opened on actual or potential agents, assets, or informants), his 5/13/57 CIA Personality 201 File Request, and a cover sheet indicating that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reviewed his 201 file.
It is quite remarkable both that this document was withheld all these years under the criterion that it was "Not Believed Relevant" (NBR) to the Kennedy assassination. Judge John Tunheim, who led the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, a 1990s successor to the HSCA, recently said he now believes that many of the NBR-designated documents are indeed relevant.
This raises the question of who is determining which documents to release, what training they receive, and under what instructions they operate.
WhoWhatWhy will continue to cover the records release and welcomes all public input.

[Peter Lemkin]

[TABLE="width: 590"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Welcome to radio WhoWhatWhy I'm Jeff Schechtman. Not since JFK have we had a president so at odds with the intelligence community and with what so many call the deep state. For many, this has reanimated discussions of the JFK assassination and once again brought to the surface all the unanswered questions that have haunted us for the past 54 years.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Just last week, the National Archives released a significant number of previously unseen records related to the JFK assassination. The story of the release received little coverage and the content of the documents even less.[/TD]
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[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Our guest today, Rex Bradford perhaps more than any other American understands those documents. Rex Bradford has become the self-appointed electronic archivist of the assassination of JFK. He began scanning relevant documents and making them available all the way back in 1999. He founded History Matters to make them freely available. He's also written several essays and given talks at conferences, particularly on the Oswald-Mexico trip. He is now president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center. He is the consultant and analyst archivist for the Mary Ferrell Foundation and he's undertaken even larger scale document archive projects.[/TD]
[/TR]
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[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]It is my pleasure to welcome Rex Bradford to the program. Rex, thanks so much for joining us.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Hi Jeff, thanks for your kind words.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]How did you get involved in all of this archival research, particularly as it relates to JFK?[/TD]
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[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]My advice to people is: "Watch out for your hobbies, because they can get away from you." I am a late comer compared to many people actually. I never saw the JFK movie when it came out in 1992 and then saw it I think about six years later on television, and I was intrigued enough that I went off and bought a book. I'm an avid reader and then I bought another book and another book and so down I guess the same rabbit hole that many people before me had.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I decided to go to one of the conferences that they were still holding in Dallas at that time. In fact still are. That's when, this is now 1999 and the documentary releases, that had come out in large part because of the JFK movie and the furor after it, were coming out of the archives and people were passing around photo copies of some of the more amazing finds in them.[/TD]
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[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I'm a computer programmer by training and so my first question was: have you guys heard of scanners and the internet? Not too many people had. That sort of got me intrigued. I met Jim Lesar, who runs the Assassination Archives and Research Center in DC, shortly after that. We got together and started scanning some of the records and making CD-Rom's available and then that quickly turned into internet ventures of putting them online.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Talk a little bit about the way these documents were originally archived and how it was setup that there were certain specific release dates for this material?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Sure, well, I mean, most of the documents, well a large number anyway, come from the various investigations. The Warren Commission conducted the first major federal investigation of the Kennedy Assassination but there were several others. The biggest of which was, late 1970s, House Select Committee on Assassinations which did a full re-investigation and their Church Committee and others. A lot of the files basically are from those investigations. They tended to do their work, write up their report and then seal the documents.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]That is not strictly true, the Warren Commission actually published the now famous 26 volumes of evidence but they still put files away that were not released to the public at the time. Then in the wake of the Oliver Stone movie and the passage of the JFK Records Act that mandated not only that all those files be processed for potential public release and most were but not all. But, several agencies of government, particularly the CIA and the FBI and others, were tasked with going through their records to identify relevant holdings that they had that weren't in the hands of the investigations per se. Literally, you're talking like five million pages, roughly, which is an amazing amount of material for a crime supposedly committed by a lone guy with a gun in a building, but there you are.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Going back to the original, even the Warren Commission documents and the Select Committee documents. How was the determination made, as best as we can tell today, as to what was public and what would be held back?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Originally, the Warren Commission, to take an example, published a 900-and-something page report and then were intending to do just that. But, then there was discussion within the Commission and a decision made to not only publish the report but to back it up with an impressive array of evidence behind it. The so-called 26 volumes, which is about half or actually more than half transcripts of interviews they conducted and the rest documents and other kinds of evidence. This is really what opened the Pandora's box. Allen Dulles, who was on the Commission, said no one will read this stuff. What happened was, a small number of people actually did read the entire 26 volumes and what they found was all kind of stories that contradicted the 900-page report. That is what really got the ball rolling in the mid 60s of people questioning the Warren Commission's findings.[/TD]
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[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]In the case of the House Committee, they published 12 volumes of reports but then sealed all the rest of their records, hundreds of thousands of pages of interviews and files. None of that was made public until the passage of the JFK Records Act in the 90s.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]These documents that were released last week, talk a little bit about what they represent?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Sure, so what happened is, in the wake of the 1992 JFK Records Act, a review board was put together to basically collect the documents from the files of the investigations as well as directly from other agencies like CIA and FBI, in particular and process them for release. The understanding was that some of them, particularly intelligence agency files would have information too sensitive to release. This review board from basically 1994 until 1998 went through these files and also conducted searches themselves and tried not to investigate the case per se but investigate the location of files. They made determinations of what things to make public, what things to keep withheld, and what to publish in redacted form with an agent name blacked out or that sort of thing. In many cases, larger pieces blacked out.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Originally, the CIA and FBI both pushed back on that Commission. The way the law was written any disagreement between the board itself and agencies would basically go to Presidential review. President Clinton at that time sided with the review board and the agencies backed down and cooperated. Although, there was an incident where the Secret Service destroyed files before the review board was able to get their hands on them.[/TD]
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[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Which really begs the larger question, what do we know or what information do we have with respect to any files and/or documents that have been destroyed over the years?[/TD]
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[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Well, it's hard to know. There are known cases of that. The review board itself in their report wrote about the destruction of the Secret Service documents for instance. There's another case in the 70s where the House Committee determined that Army Intelligence had destroyed a file on Oswald that they held.[/TD]
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[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]In other cases, it's just inferred. For instance, I took it upon myself, a few years back, to look into Church Committee records. This was the Senate investigation into intelligence agency abuses in the mid-70s post-Watergate, which took a brief look at the Kennedy Assassination as well. Specifically, to what extent the intelligence agencies supported or hindered the Warren Commission's work.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]What I discovered is that simply going through two of the Church Committee's public volumes, which directly related to this matter, one on the Kennedy Assassination itself and the other on the CIA's plots to kill foreign leaders and just looking at all of the footnotes and collecting the references to all of the transcripts of interviews on which the reports were based, which they identified by who was interviewed on what date and discovered that even though over 100 transcripts of the Church Committee had been released, more than 40 that were literally footnoted in these reports were not. Long story short, I discovered that the Review Board had tread this path before me and discovered that dozens and dozens of interviews were simply missing from the Church Committee's files when the Review Board went to go collect them.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]There's other indications like that and many more. In some cases there may very well be innocent explanations, it's a large volume of material and things go missing. But, the pattern of what's missing is itself interesting. The more these documents come out, the more you sort of see what should be there that isn't. That's another aspect of all of this.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]And what is that pattern tell us from what you've looked at, what does it lead you to when you look at what specifically is missing?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]It's a broad topic. A couple of things in particular that jump out is that, one topic, which we could fill up a whole long conversation with and hopefully won't, is the subject of Lee Harvey Oswald's alleged trip to Mexico City seven weeks before the assassination. That is a huge black hole of information and there are clearly withheld records on that that are part of this set that's going to be released and is being released and indications of missing records there as well.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Another case and a completely different area, I don't know if this qualifies as missing records so much, but there is an amazing story of the President's personal physician who was the only medically trained person present both at Dallas when they were trying to save his life at Parkland Hospital and at the autopsy later that night. Without getting into details there's been an ongoing controversy of why the descriptions of President Kennedy's wounds differ so markedly between those locations. The one person medically trained to answer that question was a guy named Admiral Burkley, who was the President's personal physician, rode in the motorcade, etc., etc. and he was never interviewed by the Warren Commission.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]In the files of the House Committee in the 1990s what was discovered, not released originally, was a letter that his lawyer wrote to the House Committee saying that his client, Admiral Burkley, had a story to tell the House Committee. The gist of which others besides Oswald must have participated. About a week after that letter was delivered, the House leadership team that was leading the investigation was removed from the case and new leadership put in. Basically, Burkley, for another year, wasn't interviewed and then finally got a pro forma phone call on other matters and that was that.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]The Review Board actually tried to obtain the files of his lawyer, Burkley now being deceased in the 90's. They initially got permission from the family and then the permission was later withdrawn so they never received the lawyer's files to see if they could learn more about it.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]And these documents that were released last week?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Sure, the Review Board released, it's hard to get an exact number, but something over 90% of the documents that they went through, well over 90%. But a significant number remain. There's by the National Archives accounting, roughly 3600 documents that were still withheld in full as of a week ago. As well as a much larger universe of documents that have blacked out areas in them. By the law, the reason this is coming up all at this time is the 1992 law had a sunset clause, which said that after 25 years all the material, even withheld in the 90s, would be released. That is what this is all about because the 25 year anniversary is this October.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]What the National Archives did last week is, before the October deadline, do a partial release of what they have. Out of the 3600 documents withheld in full, they released a little over 400 of those, a little over 10% and they also released some documents, a few 1000 in full, that had redaction's in them and there is many, many, more of those to go. This is on the order of 10% to 15% of what is supposed to come by this October.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]They come from different agencies, primarily CIA and FBI, although also from the House Committee's files and some other places. They range in a variety of areas. They're not all even documents, some are actually tape recordings, audio. For instance, without getting into details, there was a Soviet defector named Yuri Nosenko, who's part of this story. He was imprisoned by the CIA, in the 1960s, for three years and the interview tapes of at least some of the interviews that they conducted with him while he was held captive are part of this release for instance.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]There are also things like financial documents related to the financing of Cuban exile groups. Because, many people believed that the assassination is fundamentally tied into Kennedy foreign policy, specifically, the so-called secret war against Castro as well as potentially the Vietnam War. The Review Board cast a wide sloth of documents related to Kennedy foreign policy, particularly around Cuba and Vietnam. Many of those were released in the 1990s. A few bombshells actually in the sort of larger foreign policy and the administration policy sphere not perhaps directly related to the assassination. Some of those were withheld at the time because of things like agent names and stuff like that.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]There is a large number of financial documents related to the funding of Cuban exile groups in here. This is true of the assassination records at large. There's much there for people who are trying to figure out who killed Kennedy in there, but there's also a large amount of material that helps fill out our knowledge of what was going on in the 1960s and the Kennedy administration, particularly some of the senior aspects of intelligence work.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Are there any things that are particularly surprising or that have been surprising to you out of this last release of documents last week?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]This particular release I'm sorry to say I have not been reading too much of it. It's been a busy week and this weekend is actually when I was intending to start going through it some. I've cherry picked and looked at a few things. In general, I would say I'm a person who, I'm not sure of the right word for it, but I'm not expecting bombshells in any of these new releases now or in October. I could easily be wrong on that.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Certainly there is many things from what came out in the 90s that I think qualifies as that. In some cherry picking I've done, what I've seen in many of these things, certainly, in many of the ones that are released that were formerly redacted is things that you might expect. There are agent codes and agent names and things like that.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Things like these financial records of Cuban exile groups, which are fairly voluminous. I'm not expert enough to even interpret those well. I expect they will be of great interest to some people that are into that in particular.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]The Nosenko tapes, a lot of it is in Russian. I'd be very interested if someone comes along and makes English language transcripts available of those. I expect they will be quite interesting to listen to. In part because there is an ongoing controversy as to the so-called bona fides of Nosenko whether the story he came over from Russia with saying we had nothing to do with him and didn't know anything about him is true or not.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I think it is too early to tell. I think this is stuff that's at the detailed enough level that it will take a bit of time before we really learn what's in them because, there's a lot of detail.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]While there may be no bombshells in this material, do you get the sense that they will shed some light on areas that have been previously explored?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]They certainly will, for instance, I've already come across new cryptonyms. The CIA records are full of buzz words, so-called cryptonyms, and CIA records are much more readable if you understand what those cryptonyms mean. They're names of people, names of agents, names of agencies, names of projects and in fact at the Mary Ferrell Foundation, we have an ongoing project to use in the public record to decode them and have several hundred that are either well established or reasonably inferred from documents. I think that this treasure trove will help unlock sort of more readability in those records.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]There may be some very interesting stuff about Oswald. I don't believe, although I haven't really gone through enough to check, whether this set has it. Give you an example of a record, which I can't imagine why is still withheld, unless, either government idiocy or there is something interesting in it. That is the testimony, to the House Select Committee, of a guy named Orest Pena. He ran a bar in New Orleans. It's well known that he told the investigators that Oswald was an FBI informant and palled around with Federal Agents including in his bar. His testimony to the House Committee, even though they summarized it, it's withheld in full to this day.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I'm curious to read that for instance. Again, it's too early to tell, there may very well be highly interesting things in these, I really don't know at this point.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]How are all of these materials released, what is the method by which they have been kept and how have they been released to the public when these various release times like last week come about?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]This one is a brand new thing for the Archive. These documents were released in PDF form online. That's new to them. One of the problems with access to this voluminous record is that the way it works normally is the paper originals are stored at the National Archives in Maryland, at National Archives II facility in College Park.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I've taken several trips there to review and liberate documents from there. Although, it's back breaking and time consuming because you have to use a high speed photocopier a page at a time or bring your own flatbed scanner a page at a time or photograph them with a camera, which doesn't come out so good and that's back breaking work.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I was very fortunate to meet Jim Lesar of the AARC that I mentioned early on. Because over 80% of the documents we have online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation come from the files of the AARC through the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits where the AARC was given paper copies of them so that we could pull the staples out and run them through sheet fed scanner, which you can't do at the National Archives, which speeds up the process by a huge amount.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Several thousand pages of what we have has been done by back breaking trips to the Archives but it's a problem. I'm very glad to see that the National Archives is putting these things online. Well, they put them in a form that's not super accessible. You can download zip files and they have individual PDFs and you can read them so that's fine but there's no mechanism for searching them for instance.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]My intent and I have not gotten to it yet, it has only been a few days, is to take these PDFs and integrate them as part of the Mary Ferrell searchable collection so they're more accessible than they are in the current form for people doing research.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Come October when the balance of these documents have been released and there are no more, are we convinced that, that really will be it, that, that really will be all of the documents?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I view this whole process as peeling layers of the onion. One thing that the National Archives hasn't highlighted too much is that they're actually not making all of them public. They are reserving exceptions for IRS records, which there's a fair number, so some of Jack Ruby's tax returns for instance will remain sealed and some others. Ruth Payne, a woman who housed Marina Oswald in Dallas, I think her tax returns were part of what was in this collection but will also be sealed. Oswald's tax returns themselves were released in the 90s by Marina Oswald so they're not private even though I think they are part of this collection because they were never officially released.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Another one of great interest but will remain withheld for different reasons is William Manchester's interview with Robert Kennedy in 1965, which was donated under a deed of gift, which seals it for, I don't know how long, another 50 or 75 years or something. The National Archives is respecting that. There's certainly a handful of things, mostly IRS records that will remain released.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Then you get to the question what is the universe of these things? I'll give you one example, a colleague of mine named Jeff Morley who runs JFKFacts.org stumbled several years ago on the story of a guy named George Joannides who was the House Committee's liaison, he worked for the CIA. He was presented to the House Select committee as the archivist who would help them process requests for CIA records when they're doing their work.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]It was not until Jeff Morley's work more than a decade after the House Committee was done that they found out that George Joannides was in fact somebody who was in charge of the DRE Cuban exile group in the 1960s at the time of the assassination. When House Committee staffers, including a guy named Robert Blakey, who ran the committee heard about this, they were flabbergasted. Because, it's the fox guarding the hen house, here is somebody who was in charge of Cuban exile groups that had had dealings with Oswald and he's presented as just a guy who's going to help you with records requests. This happened unfortunately so late in the Review Board's lifetime in the 1990s, that they basically never got Joannides records to find out more about what he was up to. The name had been unknown before really. Morley has had an ongoing lawsuit with the CIA. They have claimed that his reports from the 17-month period in question when he was the head of that group are just missing or never created, which is not plausible so they're missing. Again, there is an ongoing legal battle so those records are not part of this because the Review Board wasn't aware of it and didn't collect them from the CIA.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]The battle for transparency sort of writ large in America in respect to this particular affair it sort of goes on, the JFK Records Act and these documents was a huge significant part of that. It's really part of a larger story of people trying to get relevant material out of their own government.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]It's also so interesting that with millions and millions and millions of pages of documents in all of this that there are still so many questions to this day?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I mean, it is amazing. There are certainly people who take the position oh cripe, you've five million pages and you still can't put together a counter narrative, it's Oswald, get over it. I don't take that position. I think that:[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]A. You have to understand that, I don't know how to describe without someone who is sort of familiar with all these documents, sort of what they're all about. Take the Warren Commission, for example. My personal view of the Warren Commission is that these guys were basically whistling in the dark. The CIA and FBI who they're relying upon for all their documents were sort of leading them down the garden path of the pre-ordained conclusion. The Commission itself was more than happy to do that. I think actually in the documents of the 1990s we learned a lot about why. Johnson's selection of Earl Warren to head the Commission was a stroke of genius. Warren was highly respected among a wide swath of America, particularly liberal groups, who might otherwise be not too keen on believing a Dulles Commission for instance.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]The big question why would Earl Warren lie come up? One answer to that came out in the 1990s, Lyndon Johnson taped many of the phone calls he had in office. Those came out as part of the 1990s releases. There was a fascinating one, among many, that he had with Richard Russell, his old Senate mentor, Johnson's old mentor in the Senate, who he also appointed to the Commission. On the day that he appointed him to the Warren Commission, which Russell vehemently did not want to serve on, Johnson told him in this tape recording the story of how he got a reluctant Warren to serve.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Warren had said he was head of the Supreme Court, he was not appropriate, it was not appropriate for him to sit on the President's Commission and he apparently turned down. Robert Kennedy went over to talk to him, that's a whole other story.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Johnson tells the story to Richard Russell, well, I brought him down here, he told me no twice in the oval office and then I pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City. I told him now I want you to serve on this Commission. He basically gave him the 40 million Americans will die story. That there were swirling allegations of Oswald being in league with Castro and Khrushchev. That's a whole subject in its own right. I believe ultimately it's false but it was a big deal in government that week at the highest levels. Warren, if you listen to this story and read other things, it becomes highly plausible that Warren was led to believe that he needed to lead this Commission and they needed to find Oswald guilty and tamp down any speculation that this was a Communist plot in order to save us from World War III. Johnson was literally talking about World War III in these phone calls.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]If people are interested in doing their own research and reading and looking at some of these documents, Rex, what's the best way for the laymen to do that today?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Well, there's many avenues, I will certainly plug the foundation I run. The Mary Ferrell website at maryferrell.org, m a r y f e r r e l l.Org is certainly the premier online home for primary source documents. There's certainly many other avenues, there's a lot of stuff on the internet, there's many good books for people that like to read paper or electronic books as well. The documents though, really there's only a couple of places, there's these few websites, primarily the Mary Ferrell Foundation and then there's the paper copies at the National Archives themselves.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]It's not for the faint of heart. This is a story, which is now over 50 years old that has become so layered that I guess the good news is there is so much information online that it is easier to get started than it might have been 30 years ago.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Just learning the history of the assassination aftermath alone is just a vast, vast topic, which is sort of important to understanding what went down.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Jeff Schechtman:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]Do you think you'll ever get to the point where you'll have seen all of this and/or listened to all of this?[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"]Rex Bradford:[/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I don't think anyone person can do 5 million pages. Maybe if you're a speed reader I guess. There're certainly many of us that sort of feel like we've seen enough that we kind of get it although many people get it in a different way than other people. I don't know what to say about that.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]One thing, I find them interesting in a different respect. There's the whole who killed Kennedy part. I think there's two other respects in which I find this document collection fascinating.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]One, which I touched upon briefly, is just the window into foreign policy in the Kennedy administration. It was the height of the cold war, the war against Castro was a huge undertaking, there were other crises particularly Vietnam brewing at the time. These documents are a treasure trove for learning the details of that stuff. There's taped phone calls and will not get transcripts of the same secret meetings that you might in a more modern administration now. There's just a lot for historians of that period.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I guess the second thing I would say is that I guess I would be one of the people who says that yes Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy and yes there was coverup. But, I think coverup is one of these sort of broad overly used words that sort of bring up the image of a bunch of people conspiring in a room together to bury the truth about something. I think what I've learned from all of this is that's not how the mechanism worked at all. There were all kinds of honest people involved in the investigation of these things that had limited roles and didn't have any sense of the big picture. The field guys and the FBI and that sort of thing. At the higher levels I think you learn about how people who are in positions of authority can, I don't know what to say, avoid the truth rather than have to actively cover it up.[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 154"][/TD]
[TD="width: 436"]I don't know how to summarize it, but the mechanism by which our country has failed to come to an understanding of the Kennedy assassination, that mechanism itself can be learned from these records and it's highly revealing.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

[Peter Lemkin]

Very interesting what was under the redaction! While no surprise that CIA has engaged in assassinations and that they used guns at times for them, the use of diplomatic pouches for the movement of guns for assassination is very interesting indeed.....hmmm...and just how did Jean Souetre and or other possible assassins move their guns that day? While a diplomatic pouch is for movement of things through international borders, they can be used to move things both in and out without being searched in any way.

AUGUST 15, 2017 | DOUG VAUGHAN AND JIMMY FALLS

WHAT CIA HID FROM THE ROCKEFELLER COMMITTEE




State Department diplomatic courier delivers pouched items to a US Embassy Paris officer on the airport tarmac in Paris (left). Diplomatic courier hands a diplomatic pouch through a window of the Orient Express to the US Vice Consul Raymond Baine in Milan, Italy (top right). .38 caliber revolvers. Photo credit: DS Records / DoS, DoS and Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Hmaag / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
"JUSTIFICATION: Murder is not morally justifiable. Self-defense may be argued if the victim has knowledge which may destroy the resistance organization if divulged. Assassination of persons responsible for atrocities or reprisals may be regarded as just punishment. Killing a political leader whose burgeoning career is a clear and present danger to the cause of freedom may be held necessary.
But assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it." CIA Training Manual, 1952
Nor, apparently, should the morally squeamish be assigned to examine the means by which such noble ends are accomplished.
July 24 was a big day for JFK assassination researchers. The National Archives began releasing the remaining trove of classified/redacted documents related to the tragedy of November 22, 1963.
WhoWhatWhy is now combing through these files, which were either fully or partially held back from an earlier release of several hundred thousand documents during the 1990s. By law, the remaining files must be made public by this October unless President Trump agrees with the originating agency's appeal to yet again keep the documents secret.
The release included over 3,000 "formerly released in part" documents meaning they had previously been seen only with some key portions redacted. However, documents, especially official documents, do not always say what they mean, or mean what they say.

Notable in Harvey's planning for operational security is his order that there be no notes or records of the recruitment of hitmen and that the Agency's own "201" personnel files be phonied up to disguise their mission. The Agency blinded itself and anyone else who would rely on the documentary record.

Each of these releases must be examined not simply for what they literally say, but for the deeper meaning, revealing or obfuscatory, when placed in context with earlier and subsequent versions.
One eye-opening document we found was a report from the Rockefeller Commission titled Summary of Facts: Investigation of CIA Involvement in Plans to Assassinate Foreign Leaders (file name: DOCID-32105829.pdf; previously released under RIF# 178-10004-10116, dups. 178-10003-10355, 178-10004-10189, 178-10003-10241; also in the Ford Library).
Photo credit: WhoWhatWhy screenshots

Written in 1975, this report spelled out the lengths that the CIA was willing to go to in 1960 to effect regime change. It describes a secret operation to help dissidents overthrow an old ally, military dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Fearing Trujillo's sadistic tyranny had so alienated the population that his continuation in power would spark a communist-led uprising like Cuba's the year before, the Eisenhower administration opted to support liberals who hoped to replace the dictator with a pro-US military-civilian junta.
That's not news. This is: The newly unredacted portions of the document (quoted below in bold) shed new light on a gun-smuggling operation via diplomatic pouch:
On March 22, the CIA Station Chief renewed his request that headquarters send him three .38 calibre revolvers and ammunition by diplomatic pouch.
[…]
Three days later, on March 25, the Deputy Director of Plans (Editor's note: Richard M. Bissell, Jr.) cabled the station setting forth United States policy with respect to the Dominican Republic and stating that the revolvers and ammunition would be sent by diplomatic pouch in the near future.
[…]
The use of a diplomatic pouch to send weapons for such purposes was prohibited by regulations of the CIA's Clandestine Services, and it is also illegal under international law. The Deputy Director of Plans approved the waiver of the internal regulations. There is nothing to indicate that the Department of State was informed of the use of the pouch, and the fact that the March 25 cable instructed the Chief of Station not to advise the Consul General of the use of the pouch suggests that the CIA acted unilaterally in this regard.
The CIA files indicate that the revolvers were passed to the dissidents, and the Department of State files indicate that one was passed by the Consul General and the other two by Agency officers. Neither the Consul General nor the former Chief of Station has any particular recollection of the matter.
[…]
(Editor's note: The following section refers to a separate attempt to smuggle in three M3 submachine-guns.)
The Chief of Station returned to Washington for consultations in early April. He was able to convince his superiors that the pouch was the only feasible and secure means of getting the weapons into the Dominican Republic for delivery to the dissidents. The Deputy Director for Plans approved on April 10, and the pouch was sent on April 14 but with the restriction that the weapons not be passed without further approval.
[…]
…and that the United States could not afford a precedent which might convince the world that our diplomatic pouches are used to deliver assassination weapons.
In each document of this trove, the same question arises: Why exactly did the government initially withhold or censor this particular phrase or fact? Beyond the usual reasons disclosure of sources and methods that could put spies and agents at risk what justification might there have been for withholding evidence of official law-breaking, even murder of political foes, from investigative agencies and the public?
At first glance, you might think this document was censored in order to disguise an embarrassing exception to the general prohibition against using diplomatic cover that repeatedly redacted word "pouch" to transfer weapons in violation of international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, which codified earlier bilateral treaties.
The shipping country certifies that the container (and there's no limit on size) does not hold anything inconsistent with diplomatic use; in return, Article 27.3 bars the host country from opening or inspecting the contents, even with an X-ray. But such secrecy was (and is) simply too tempting for criminally inclined diplomats and countries alike.
The US has always denied using diplomatic pouches to smuggle contraband, drugs, guns, poisons, detonators, nuclear material Or, at least, its representatives have "no particular recollection…" while demanding that its word be taken as true.
Conveniently, there's no way of proving otherwise, except with a confession or accidental discovery.
Cynicism and hypocrisy lie behind this diplomatic word of honor. "Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail," President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson once sneered. (They leave that to the FBI and CIA, both of which established long-running and illegal programs to do just that.)
More likely, the key to the redactions comes in the last line of the above quote: The real motive was to hide the fact that the weapons were to be used in an attempted assassination of a head of state an action specifically prohibited by both internal policy and US law.
The punctilious obedience to policy expressed in this report was actually the exception, whereas breaking the rule, in the manner described here, was common practice in CIA tradecraft as evidenced by the fact it required authorization from higher authority in the CIA in order to avoid embarrassment by "rogue" operations. So the earlier release of a strategically redacted version actually served as a kind of meta-cover-up, a strategy to reveal a little to conceal a lot.
President Gerald R. Ford meeting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, April 28, 1975.
Photo credit: National Archives / Wikimedia

This can be seen more clearly if viewed in historical context. The President's Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, empanelled in 1975 by President Gerald Ford in the wake of the Watergate scandal, was headed by Ford's newly installed Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller.
Rockefeller had a long and intimate relationship with the CIA. His family's businesses worldwide provided information, cover for agents, and safehouses going back at least to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, and the future vice president himself supervised operations in Latin America for CIA's forerunner, the Office of Policy Coordination. And Ford's National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had been plucked from academia as Nelson's foreign policy tutor in 1958, then loaned to Nixon.
Damage Control

.

Given this nexus, it defies the odds that either man was not already privy to the Agency's secrets, including assassinations. The purpose of releasing the carefully redacted documents was not to reveal those activities but to head off congressional investigations already underway in short, damage control as Kissinger and former DCI Richard Helms made clear in this "memorandum of conversation" in the White House.
The Rockefeller Commission gingerly examined allegations that the spy agency had engaged in assassinations of foreign leaders, among other activities that violated US and international laws. The assassination targets included not only the much-hated dictator Trujillo but earlier the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, as evidenced by materials finally released by CIA in 1997.
These included a carefully compiled and vetted hit-list of suspected communists with the victims' names still redacted 25 years after the fact to prevent disclosure of whether the murders contemplated on the "Junta disposal list" were successful.
Later, Patrice Lumumba of the newly independent Congo and other leaders were marked for murder, most notably, Fidel Castro in Cuba, along with, possibly, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, during the Kennedy years and later, Salvador Allende of Chile and his military chief, Gen. Rene Schneider, by Nixon, Kissinger himself and DCI Helms, all of whom denied responsibility for the work of their henchmen.
"The Health Adjustment Committee"

.

The assassinations were planned by the CIA's Special Affairs Staff, which had a "Health Adjustment Committee" to evaluate targets. This was an operational unit hidden in the Signals Intelligence section "D" of the Foreign Intelligence division, code-named KUTUBE/D. The actual program, dubbed "Executive Action" and the Cuban component code-named ZR RIFLE, was managed by a veteran CIA officer, William Harvey, and his deputy, Sam Halpern.
To maintain the "plausible deniability" of the president and of the CIA itself, the so-called "wetwork" was hired out to henchmen of organized crime (the Sicilian-American Mafia), who recruited foreign gangsters and mercenaries as cut-outs, decoys and patsies.
In some cases, Harvey's program empowered ambitious and sympathetic foreign military units or mercenaries on loan to do what the US wanted but couldn't do without unacceptable repercussions, ranging from diplomatic embarrassment to war. Harvey notoriously called this murder program "the last resort beyond last resort and a confession of weakness."
Notable in Harvey's planning for operational security is his order that there be no notes or records of the recruitment of hitmen and that the Agency's own "201" personnel files be phonied up to disguise their mission. The Agency blinded itself and anyone else who would rely on the documentary record.
Then, to compound the epistemological problem (how do we know what we think we know?) veteran CIA officers like E. Howard Hunt, hired by the Nixon White House to conduct psychological warfare against political opponents, fabricated cables to implicate JFK personally in the decision of the CIA's coup plotters to kill Diem.
Rafael Trujillo's bullet ridden 1957 Chevy.
Photo credit: LatinAmericanStudies.com

Trujillo was in fact assassinated in March 1961 by Dominicans who riddled his car with a machine gun.
The CIA, of course, claimed it had nothing to do with it. Presumably, any fingerprints, literal or figurative, had been carefully wiped from the guns slipped into diplomatic pouches or otherwise conveyed to the assassins. (In Arbenz's case, United Fruit Co. loaned CIA a freighter for a multi-ton delivery of weapons to troops it trained for the coup, but Arbenz fled into exile and later committed suicide in a New York hotel room.)
It was the bungled attempts to kill Castro that prompted the so-called Church and Pike Committees Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Sen. Frank Church, (D-ID), and the House subcommittee chaired by Otis Pike, (D-NY) to reveal the existence of the program in 1975 and to request documents like this one.
But according to historian John Prados, Ford's deputy, Richard Cheney, personally edited materials, including the summary provided to the Rockefeller Commission that was based on a CIA history of the Guatemala coup, commissioned in 1967. The Guatemala operation, codenamed PBSUCCESS, provoked an uprising of peasants who were denied the land reforms Arbenz had promised; this led to a 50-year civil war in which tens of thousands were killed by the US-supported army and police.
In the Dominican Republic, the assassination of Trujillo ("he may be a son-of-a-bitch but he's our son-of-a-bitch," FDR once said) led to a crackdown by his son, which provoked an uprising that the US suppressed by sending in airborne troops in 1965 to install another regime.
In the end, the Rockefeller Commission accepted the CIA's word that is, Cheney's heavily redacted version that such operations were prohibited by policy and law. Nonetheless, as suggested by the Commission in its 1975 report, Ford issued an executive order that formally reiterated a ban on political murder a policy that remains honored in the breach.
In other words, "We didn't do it and we promise to never do it again."
WhoWhatWhy will continue to bring you updates.
Correction notice, 8/15/2017, 9:57pm: This article originally and incorrectly stated that Henry Stimson was FDR's Secretary of State. He was Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State and served Roosevelt as Secretary of War.

[Peter Lemkin]

Kelly's Top Ten Newly Released Records

Bill Kelly's Top Ten Newly Released Records

JFK Assassination Records - 2017 Additional Documents Release


The National Archives and Records Administration is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part.


This first batch of releases consists of 3,810 documents, including 441 formerly withheld-in-full documents and 3,369 documents formerly released with portions redacted. The documents originate from FBI and CIA series identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. More releases will follow.

Except for the Collins Radio file, most of these records are among the first batch previously released with redactions.

NARA:
JFK Assassination Records - 2017 Additional Documents Release | National Archives

Many thanks to the folks at Black Vault who downloaded the complete batch and reformatted it so they are more easily scanned and reviewed.

Black Vault:
The Withheld JFK Assassination Documents - The Black Vault

These are not in any particular order other than the order I reviewed them.

1) The Collins Radio - 104-10107-10191 - (Not from the previously released with redactions group).
DOCID-32358065.PDF - [ JFKCountercoup2: New Collins Radio Document Released ]

2) Martin and Mitchell - 104-10219-10088. 104-10219-10088.pdf - Report from inside Russia on NSA defectors William H. Martin and Beron F. Mitchell, confirming they went to Moscow via Mexico and Cuba, the same route Oswald wanted to take.

3) Drew Pearson's interview with Khrushchev - 104-10003-10064 DOCID-32105956.PDF. Khrushchev disbelieves the Warren Report and criticized American intelligence agencies. "Pearson repeated that the reaction of Chairman Khrushchev and his wife was one of flat disbelief and archetypical of the universal European belief that there was some kind of American conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Oswald....could not believe that the affair had happened as it apparently did and Mr. Pearson made no headway whatsoever in trying to change their belief that something was not on the level. Chairman Khruschev greeted Mr. and Mrs. Pearson's efforts with a tolerant smile..."

4) ROSELLI:CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS. 157-10014-10236. DOCID-32423624.PDF. Drew Pearson's protege Jack Anderson interviews John Rosselli immediately after he testified in secret Congressional hearing about his CIA Cuban activities, four plots to kill Castro and his case officer William Harvey. "The CIA has maintained throughout that the Oswald 201 file was a complete compilation of the material related to the assassination of President Kennedy. However, information relating to who Lee Harvey Oswald was, and what he was doing are not included in their files. The Oswald 201 file does not attempt to question Oswald's connection with both pro-Castro and anti-Castro groups or any of the AMLASH information. The most notable subject missing was information relating to CIA/U.S. Government attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro." Note: Anderson's story beings on page 27 and the Rosselli Chronology begins on page 38. Anderson: "So here is Rosselli's own account of a real-life 'Mission Impossible' - the attempt to kill Castro. It is a story of cash payments, poison pellets, high-powered rifles and powerboat dashes to Cuba."

5) Rock Com transcript of Fletcher Prouty interview. 178-10004-10418. DOCID-32105600.PDF.
Air Force Colonel Prouty recalls his role as Air Force Liason to CIA at the Pentagon. "The Agency and the government can say that an assassination is not our business. An assassination is when everything else fails.

6) Rock Com memo of interview with Ed Lansdale. 178-10004-10217. DOCID-32105801.PDF
TITLE: OUTLINE OF COVERT OPERATIONS. 31 October 1962. Report to Roswell Gilpatrick on the covert activities inside Cuba. "As for psychological operations, all CIA assets had been turned over to USIA for operational use." Two action teams in side Cuba.

7) Report on 1960 briefing of William Paley. 104-10265-10074. 104-10265-10074.pdf. 30 March 1960 Memo regarding contact with William Pawley in Miami. Items of operational importance. "Mr. Pawley was told that the time had arrived for careful coordination of all activities: that permission had been granted for an all-out operation..."

8) Sheraton Notebook. 104-10006-10026. DOCID-32106450.PDF. Report on notebook with Assassination related items found in a Sheraton Hotel room. "The text is redacted because it reveals the identity of an intelligence agent..." Investigation concerning notebook found in room 2422, Sheraton-Dallas Hotel, Dallas, Texas, containing handwritten notes in English regarding Oswald and the assassination of JFK. (Note: I believe the notes were from a reporter)

9) CABLE - ALVARADO. 104-10015-10398. DOCID-32341750.PDF. Report Alvarado is fabricating his story of seeing Oswald taken money in the Cuban embassy. "The fact that Alvarado is a calm, nice and intelligent young man does not mean he is not a fabricator."

10) Profile of Guy P. Johnson. 104-10170-10468. 104-10170-10468.pdf. New Orleans attorney who represented Clay Shaw early in the proceedings. Former ONI Naval Distric Intelligence officer on Guam. "According to Edward SUGGS, (Jack MARTIN - not a reliable source) JOHNSON claimed to have a secret U.S. Senate document called the "Homme Report." This report allegedly proves that Robert KENNEDY 'had contract out on' Fidel CASTRO at the time President Kennedy was assassinated."

Top Ten Records - Part 2

Kelly's Top Ten New Released Records 2

/ 29

11 - CIA Report on early November 1973 CTIA Conference proceedings. 104-10433-10165 The Committee To Investigate Assassinations (CTKA) was set up in DC by Bernard Festerwald and became Assassinations Archives and Research Center (AARC)

[URL="http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/jfk-july_2017_release-formerly_withheld_in_full-3of9/DOCID-32397482.PDF"]http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/jfk-july_2017_release-
formerly_withheld_in_full-3of9/DOCID-32397482.PDF[/URL]


22 - Accidental release of two CIA agents names in IG Report. 104-10331-10027 As John Newman has pointed out, simple slip ups like this have led to the identity of a number of Crypts.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...404157.PDF


33 - Creation of CIA Segregated Section of Records Requested by Congressional Committees. 104-10331-10014 -

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...404144.PDF


44 - Interagency Source Register (ISR) 104-10330-10125 "The ISR is simply a device whereby agencies within the intelligence community which recruit or deal with sources of foreign intelligence outside the United States try to keep from bumping into each other in the pursuit of such information." This ISR should have DeMohrenschilt, June Cobb and Veciana on tap.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-
Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32404110.PDF -


55 - AMLASH-1 Cover Letter to be sent to Cavaliere' Hilton Jewelry Shop, Rome. 104-10183-10215 Note it is apparent from Col. Brandy that Hilton Hotels worked closely with CIA and more closely with ACSI Army Intelligence.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...10183-1021


66 - 1962 Plans for Manuel Ray to form new organization 104-10179-10156 -

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...10156A.pdf


77 - Manuel Ray (Chief Engineer at Havana Hilton) and JURE (Odio affiliated with) have 1964 training camp in Puerto Rico, large boat and shipment of arms. 104-10179-10214 -

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...10214A.pdf


88 - LICOOKY1 (June Cobb) Strangely and Inexplicably reluctant advice of urgent need two hundred dollars to get pamphlet published. 104-10175-10343 Note: June Cobb translated the Spanish pamphlet "The Shark and the Sardines" by former Guatemalan president Juan Jose Arevalo, that Oswald read. She served as Castro's secretary when he first arrived in Havana and stayed at the Havana Hilton at the invitation of Colonel Frank M. "Brandy" Brandstetter, the Havana Hilton manager, who reported to US Army Intelligence ACSI.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...-10343.pdf


99 - LICOOKY1 Cover Blow. 104-10174-10026- June Cobb "gets money from Uncle Sam, a doubleagent" -

http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...-10026.pdf


110-Ted Shackley JMWAVE progress report Feb. 1963 Re: AMDENIM/1 (Alberto Fernandez Hechevarria (aka Echevarria), Cuban exile whose boat Tejana was used in anti-Castro activities. Leader of the paramilitary wing of Unidad Revolucionario (UR) and source on CIA unsanctioned exile missions such as those conducted by Alpha 66.


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...-10127.pdf


Posted by Bill Kelly at 10:27 AM

Top Ten Recently Released Records - Part 3

TOP TEN RELEASED ASSASSINATION RECORDS -

Part 3



11 - Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee Re: Assassinations. 157-10014-10099 Inventory of records related to assassinations reviewed by Church Committee including 57 Executive Session interviews. http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...423487.PDF


22 - International Rescue Committee (IRC) 104-10171-10151 The IRC Leo Cherne received three letters from Lee Harvey Oswald in USSR requesting assistance to return home. Though these records predate the assassination by a decade, and Oswald is not mentioned here, Cherne was a good friend of conservative columnist William Buckley. The IRC's primary mission of assisting refugees carried on Reinhold Gehlen's Project Wringer and the use of refugees escaping Nazi Germany and Communist countries for for intelligence information http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...-10151.pdf


33 - Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) 104-10336-10018 - request for computer search on specific individuals and organizations including Andy Anderson, Leo Cherne, Ed Butler, Hunter Leake, Gordon Novel, Spas Raikin, John McVickar, INCA and Permindex.


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...404591.PDF


44 - ARRB Request for information on CIA dealings with Organized Crime and Cuba, 104-10336-10012. It includes excerpts from Sy Hersh's "Darkside of Camelot" that tries to falsely implicate RFK in the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro using an intermediary CIA officer Charles Ford. In an important 9 page summary of his operational work Charles D. Ford, Chief, Training Services Staff, explains what he really did for RFK. Note: Ford, originally from Atlantic City, NJ and Princeton, served in OSS and went on WWUU mission to China with J. Walton Moore, the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division chief in Dallas in 1963 who dealt extensively with DeMohrenschildt.


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...404585.PDF


55 - Brother of CIA Deputy Director (until Bay of Pigs) and Air Force General Charlds P. Cabell, Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell's work for CIA from 1956. 104-10215-10213.


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...-10213.pdf




66 - Document still being withheld from 13 December 1963. 104-10057-1000. Disposition FOIA "on this document was denied. The document consists solely of information received from a foreign liaison service….the substance involved in this document related to the transit of Lee Harvey OSWALD through a European country in 1962….This particular document also contained operations cryptonyms, information concerning the existence of an Agency station in a specific city aboard as well as…."


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...344818.PDF


77 - Outline, LHO, The CIA, and Mexioc City. Document Withdraw Notice. Still Withheld.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...271723.PDF


88 - CIA officer Cleveland Cram's Review of Counterintelligence Literature 1975-1992. 104-10431-10107. "1974 a watershed in literature about the CIA."


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...397298.PDF


99 - More Disinformation on Cuban involvement in assassination of JFK. 104-10429-10065.


http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...397007.PDF


110- Marina Oswald and Issac Don Levine. 104-10440-10072. Levine wrote a book on the Soviet assassination of Trotski in Mexico City, but only sees Oswald as a lone nut.



http://documents.theblackvault.com/docum...395634.PDF



Posted by Bill Kelly at 11:39 AM

[Peter Lemkin]

List of JFK Assassination Records Missing from the Archives

LIST OF JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS MISSING FROM THE ARCHIVES

If Peter Dale Scott's "Negative Template" theory is correct, what is missing from the extant history is more significant than what is in the documentary record.

As researcher Malcolm Blunt has said, "It's amazing we have anything left. It's sickening, just sickening, and a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. The ARRB should have pressured these people into doing a proper search."

At the CAPA Press Conference at the National Press Club in March former ARRB chairman Judge John Tunheim asked me to send him a list of missing JFK assassination records that should be in the JFK Collection at Archives II and open to the public. This is my list, so far.

Send me along any serious additions that I may have missed. - Billkelly3@gmail.com


1. Oswald CIA Office of Security File Volume 5, last seen by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which recently garnered some publicity.

2. Files of the first chief council to HSCA Richard Sprague, who took his files home with him when he was fired for conducting a real investigation. The Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), responsible for identifing and obtaining records, missed them because they confused the attorney Richard Sprague with the computer programer of the same name whose extensive files on the assassination are part of the JFK Collection. Sprague's HSCA files, paid for by taxpayers that rightfully belong at the Archives, are currently in Sprague's Philadelphia law office.

3. Soviet KGB records of Oswald's time in Moscow and Minsk that were obtained by Norman Mailer are now in the possession of Mailer's former associate Lawrence Schiller, who refused to turn them over to the ARRB.

4. Unedited AF1 Radio Transmission tapes from November 22, 1963. Two different edited versions of these tapes are available, one on cassette tapes released by the LBJ Library and a reel to reel version discovered among the personel effects of General Clifton. The White House Communications Agency (WHCA) is responsible for these tapes.

5. Church Committee interviews with Gerry Patrick Hemming, Orest Pena, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs officials, and other Church Committee testimony are missing.

6. U.S. Customs records on Cubans requested by the HSCA were so volumeous they couldn't be given to the HSCA, but now consist of only a few records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

7. The audio tape recording of Gaeton Fonzi's interview with Mitch Werbell was erased and the transcript is missing, only Fonzi's notes remain.

8. John Newman says that Eisenhower era reports on assassinations of foreign leaders that he copied years ago are now missing from the NARA, and he believes such records are being delibertly stollen.

9. Bill Simpich notes that CIA Mexico City Station (MCS) cable to Headquarters from September 26-30, 1963 are missing as well as cables from CIA HQ to MCS, JMWAVE to HQ and HQ to JMWAVE cable traffic on the same dates, and all cable traffic between MCS and JMWAVE between September 26 and October 20 and November 22 to December 30, 1963 are missing.

10. The CIA's study of the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, as mentioned by Desmond FitzGerald in his September 23, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the subject of a FOIA lawsuit by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).

11. Office of Naval Intelligence - ONI Defector File, as identified as an assassination record by Navy Lt. Com. T. Pike, but never turned over to the Archives.

12. ONI 119 investigation reports on Oswald's defection and the assassination, as referred to by the Navy investigators who wrote them and the officers who read them.

13. The assassination files of the Director of the ONI Rufus Taylor, whose office had undercover agents working in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, installing and maintaing the sound system, who reported, in the only surviving document, that Oswald was seen in the club.

14. James Mastrovito - the Secret Service Agent responsible for the SS records on the assassination acknowledged to the ARRB that he "culled" - destroyed many records and flushed into a food processor a vile of material labled "JFK brain - Armed Forces Institute of Pathology," with no repercussions.

15. The Secret Service destroyed many records, including the Advance Reports for the Tampa trip after the JFK Act was passed by Congress, although copies of some of these records were found among the personal effects of Agent Gerald Blaine, who wrote the Tampa Advance report. Do other agents also have copies y of official records among their personal effects? Is anyone looking?

16. The "Homme Report" from a Congressional subcommittee reportedly contains information on Robert F. Kennedy's knowledge and approval of CIA plans to kill Fidel Castro.

17. RFK's date book for 1963 is missing from the Kennedy Library.

18. Four boxes of witness testimony turned over to NARA in April 1965 by US Attorney now missing.

19. OSI - Office of Special Investigation military intelligence review of Oswald's State Department file is missing.

20. When former US Marine officer Oliver Revill joined the FBI he reported on an investigation of Oswald and files on him at a US Marine base in North Carolina, records not in the public record.

21. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel had documents excluded from the Warren Commission, according to a memo sent to ARRB and NARA archivist Steve Tilly, "more stuff lost in the shuffle," says Malcolm Blunt.

22. The ARRB tried to obtain Oswald's New Orleans court records but were told they were accidently destroyed when sent for microfilming.

23. Army Intelligence files on Oswald were kept from the Warren Commission and then "routinely" destroyed.

24. In 1976 when the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) staff were reviewing JFK assassination files the Security Office did not hand over their "secondary files" on Oswald, aka "research files," that were not seen by HSCA or any other component of the CIA, as Malcolm Blunt says "they are like a whole separate agency."

25. Larry Haapanen notes, White House Situation Room Incoming-Outgoing Message Log for 11/22/63-11/30/63 (the extant log for November 1963 ends abruptly on the morning of 11/2263).

26. Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military (Strategic) Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) unit histories and rosters 1962-1963.

27. Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald whle in police custody as well as post assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald phones, as reported by Irving police chief Paul Barger.

28. White House Communications Agency (WHCA) records for 11/22/63 i,ncluding tape of Secret Service motorcade security radio channel that included Roy Kellerman talking as the third shot was fired, and radios in LBJ's car, the AF1 cockpit and the WHCA base station at the Dallas Sheraton hotel.

29. Missing Mexico City records include LILYRIC (Soviet embassy photo records, Sept. '63); LIFEAT (wiretape records, for all of 1963), daily resumen wiretap summaries for 1963, and records withheld by ARRB at request of CIA and FBI that may be released in the October 26, 2017 data dump.

30. Many relevant FBI 134 Informant records are missing or being withheld.

31. FBI dispatch tape of Dallas calls for 11/22/63 is missing.

32. The Harper Fragment bone found at Dealey Plaza on 11/23/63 and believed to be a bone from JFK's head disapeared.

33. The photographer who took autopsy photos claims to have taken photos not among those at the NARA today.

34. The National Photo Interpetation Center (NPIC) report on their study of the Zapruder film and Art Lundal's briefing of CIA Director John McCone is missing, though McCcone told RFK that the CIA said there were two gunman.

35. The JMWAVE NPIC records and other NPIC assassination records were, according to a NPIC secretary, boxed and at the orders of Robert Kennedy sent to the Smithsonian Institute instead of the NARA.




Bill Kelly at 10:06 AM

2 comments:

1. 
   
   spearmanSeptember 28, 2017 at 12:47 PM
   Missing as mentioned in #13 in your list are the SS trip records from the end of Sept/63 Conservation Tour records. The only doc in those file boxes is a single sheet saying "withdrawn for national security purposes".Reply
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   bsimpichSeptember 28, 2017 at 3:02 PM
   The ARRB's definition of an "assassination record" was broad in scope. 36 CFR 1400.1 defined the scope: "(An assassination record) includes, but is not limited to, all records, public and private, regardless of how labeled or identified, that document, describe, report on, analyze or interpret activities, persons, or events reasonably related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and investigations of or inquiries into the assassination." Further guidance can be found online at Appendix D of the ARRB Final Report.
   
   The Board's Final Report states that the agencies were often far from timely in providing their documents, and that they encountered significant resistance in obtaining the documents.
   
   A quick look in the files reveals that, at a minimum, the ARRB was unable to obtain the full assassination-related records for 1963 and other relevant dates for Angleton's CI-SIG unit, the CIA Office of Security, the signals/communications intelligence section Staff D, the Miami CIA station, the Mexico City CIA station, and similar documents within NSA, Army Intelligence, ONI, Marine Intelligence, and Customs. As an example, look at the counter-intelligence and security forces at the Miami station, which was composed of Cubans ready to take over Cuba at a moment's notice in the midst of a US invasion. Virtually all of the AMOT records are missing, as well as the related units AMCHEER and AMFAST. This inability was and remains a political problem - a new ARRB is going to be necessary as we go forward.

[Peter Lemkin]

OCTOBER 17, 2017 | MILICENT CRANOR

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION: EVIDENCE SEEN BY JFK'S DOCTOR SUPPRESSED

ARRB Smothers George Burkley Comment

Rear Admiral George Burkley MD. Despite his position, his face was never seen at the Warren Commission Hearings. Photo credit: US Navy
The highly anticipated release of long-withheld US government documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is scheduled for October 26. In the runup to this event, the media have devoted more attention to this history-altering political murder than at any time since the Oliver Stone film "JFK" came out in 1991.
As one of the outlets digging deep into the tragedy, WhoWhatWhy has pointed out that many questions remain unanswered and many key issues are yet unresolved. Accordingly, we are dedicating more articles to the topic leading up to the highly-anticipated data dump , and we are putting together a crack team to analyze the documents once they are released.
WhoWhatWhy Staff

---

The story of Captain James Young, a Navy doctor who said he found a bullet in President John F. Kennedy's limousine on the day of his assassination, could have been corroborated by the president's own physician. However, for unknown reasons, JFK's doctor Rear Admiral George G. Burkley, who was present in the trauma room in Dallas, and also at Kennedy's autopsy never got a chance to talk about the events of that day.
Below is proof that Burkley wanted to testify, and that what he had to say was suppressed at several levels. What survives is a memo concerning Burkley's belief that other people participated in Kennedy's assassination. Whether this opinion is based on the discovery of the bullet described in our earlier story, or something else, we will never know.
Although Kennedy was shot in the back, indicating the presence of a shooter behind him, there was also a suggestion of a shooter in front, according to some of the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, including the chief of Neurosurgery: Because of the condition of the skull and brain, he had the impression JFK was struck from the front or from the side, as opposed to the official conclusion of all shots from behind. Did Burkley have the same impression?

1964

.

The year of the Warren Commission hearings. Thousands of people were called to testify, but Burkley was not.

1976

.

In 1976, the US House of Representatives established the Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the murders of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Burkley tried to reach out to them through his lawyer, William Illig, as reflected in a March 18,1977 Memo to the File, written by Richard A. Sprague, chief counsel to the HSCA. Here is a key excerpt from that memo:
Dr. Burkley advised him [Sprague] that although he, Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President Kennedy in Dallas, he had never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.
It seems that nothing ever came of this.
This opinion "that others must have participated" is reflected in the JFK Library Oral History Interview of Burkley in 1967. When asked if he agreed with the Warren Commision as to the number of bullets that entered Kennedy's body, Burkley responded, "I would not care to be quoted on that."

1998

.

In 1992, Congress had passed the JFK Records Collection Act which, in turn, created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). The purpose of the act was "to provide for the expeditious disclosure of records relevant to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy." This resulted in the publication of the Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), prepared especially for the media.
Every time there's an official investigation into the Kennedy assassination, all kinds of astounding facts come to light during hearings behind closed doors but those facts are buried beneath mountains of minutiae, often recorded on faded Xerox paper.
In contrast, the reader-friendly books and reports summarizing these hearings, such as The Warren Report, published in 1964, are all well-packaged and pre-digested for easy swallowing by the media and the public.
From these summaries, you would never guess what was in the material their authors were supposed to have summarized. And they contain many more words devoted to undermining the witnesses.
The Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) contains stunning examples of deception based on euphemism, vaguery, and omission. What follows is how the authors of the Final Report handled the memo from George Burkley's lawyer to the HSCA, in their chapter, "Medical Evidence."
There were three closely related problems that seriously impeded the Review Board's efforts to complete the documentary record surrounding the autopsy: a cold paper trail, faded memories, and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. An example of the cold paper trail comes from Admiral George Burkley, who was President Kennedy's military physician and the only medical doctor who was present both during the emergency treatment at Parkland Memorial Hospital and at the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In the late 1970's, at the time of the HSCA's investigation, Dr. Burkley, through his attorney, suggested to the HSCA that he might have some additional information about the autopsy. (Page 123)
From this bland statement, you might think Burkley was referring to something both indefinite and possibly trivial instead of a definite claim (true or not) that challenges the very foundation of the official story. As mentioned above: "he has information in the Kennedy assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated."
They did finally admit that Burkley believed in conspiracy. But they did so without acknowledging that his belief was based on first-hand information, and they buried it in a place where you would not expect to find it in the chapter "Pursuit of Records and Information from Non-Federal Sources."
Burkley's personal attorney apparently told the HSCA that his client believed there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Mr. Illig, Burkley's attorney, however, is now deceased. The Review Board staff asked Burkley's daughter, the executor of his estate, to sign a waiver allowing the Review Board access to papers at Illig's law firm, but she declined to sign and return the waiver. (Page 131)
Notice the wording: he "apparently told the HSCA" as if it had only been a rumor; as if they could not confirm the rumor because Illig is dead; as if no paperwork existed documenting Burkley's comments to Illig which, in turn, were conveyed to the HSCA. That Memo to the File still exists:
Photo credit: HSCA

We may never know what it was George Burkley saw or heard that made him believe Kennedy was killed by conspiracy, but he certainly wasn't the last to believe it.