Will The CIA’s JFK Assassinated-Related Records Ever Get Released?

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

By this time, it should be sinking into everyone’s consciousness that the American people are never going to be permitted to see the rest of the CIA’s 60-year-old secret records relating to the JFK assassination…

Yes, I know, President Biden says that the new deadline for disclosure is December 22, 2022, which just happens to fall after the November 2022 congressional elections. But that’s just like the mechanical rabbit that is used in dog races — the dogs are never going to catch that rabbit. And the American people are never going to see those records.

Don’t forget, after all, that this isn’t the first deadline that has been set for disclosure. There was the 25-year deadline that was set back in the 1990s. That deadline came due during the Trump administration. 

What happened when that deadline came? It got extended of course. Trump surrendered to the CIA’s demands for continued secrecy, just as Biden now has. Every president will do so. The CIA will demand it. National security depends on it!

Ever since Kennedy was assassinated, there has been a segment of society that has fallen for the official story — that a lone nut communist former U.S. Marine shot and killed the president. This segment has also bought into what has become known as the magic-bullet theory, which holds that a bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the neck, exited his throat, broke ribs and a wrist bone in Governor Connally, lodged in Connally’s thigh, and ended up in virtually pristine, never-been-shot condition. 

What this segment of society has never been able to explain is why it was therefore necessary to shroud the investigation of the assassination in national-security-state secrecy. In other words, if the assassination really happened because a lone-nut communist former U.S. Marine suddenly, without any motive, decided to kill the president, what in the world would that have to do with “national security,” no matter was definition is put to that nebulous, meaningless term?

Let’s consider the other alternative, the one set forth in the best book that has ever been written about the assassination: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass. Let’s assume that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation to oust a president from office whose policies, it had been determined, posed a grave threat to national security. 

In other words, consider the principles that led to the U.S. regime-change operations on both sides of the Kennedy assassination: Iraq (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959-2021), and Chile (1973), and simply apply them to Kennedy. Ousting the leaders of those countries was necessary, we are told, because such leaders posed a grave threat to national security. Let’s assume that that was the case with Kennedy. (See my article “What If a President Is a Threat to National Security?)

Such being the case, wouldn’t the malefactors want to hide any semblance of incriminating evidence? That just makes sense.

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone would ever find a written confession within those still-secret CIA records. Including such a confession would have been stupid, and the people within the CIA in 1963 were not only not stupid, they were actually very brilliant people. Many of them were Ivy League graduates who were putting their brilliant minds toward the study of assassination and cover-up.

Moreover, from the very beginning of the CIA, when it adopted the power of assassination, there was a strict rule against ever putting anything about an assassination into writing. That rule would especially apply to the assassination of a president or prime minister.

But there are so many moving parts to an assassination and its cover up that it becomes imperative to keep all records secret so that sharp-minded researchers and investigative reporters are unable to put individual pieces of the puzzle together. 

That’s why national-security state secrecy on what was purported to be a lone-nut assassination was imperative from the very moment of the JFK assassination.  

The Kennedy assassination took place in November 1963. In 1991 — almost 30 years later — Oliver Stone came out with his movie JFK, which, not surprisingly, created all sorts of controversy. The movie rejected the official lone-nut/magic-bullet theories of the assassination and instead posited that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment.

What shocked — and actually outraged — a large segment of the American people was Stone’s disclosure that the national-security establishment was still keeping its assassination-related records secret. 

Why would they do that? It had been 30 years — 3 decades! — since the assassination.  That’s a long time for secrecy in what is purported to be a lone-nut assassination. 

So, a large number of Americans were naturally suspicious. They demanded that Congress mandate a release of those records. It was one of those rare instances where the public is able to force Congress to do something that Congress doesn’t want to do. 

The fact that the national-security establishment fiercely opposed disclosing their assassination-related records to the public makes it even more remarkable that the JFK Records Act of 1992 was enacted. 

Why did President George H.W. Bush, who had served as CIA director, sign the bill into law? Because Bill Clinton, against whom he was running for president, came out publicly in favor of the law. Bush was trapped, politically. He decided he’d better sign the bill into law to avoid letting Clinton turn it into a campaign issue.

Thousands of records were released, some over the fierce objections of the Pentagon and the CIA. No, there were no confessions. But there was a mountain of evidence establishing that the national-security establishment had conducted a fraudulent autopsy on the president’s body on the very evening of the assassination. See my two books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2. 

There were three unusual aspects of the JFK Records Act. 

One was that the Assassination Records Review Board, which was called into existence to enforce the law, was absolutely prohibited from investigating any aspect of the Kennedy assassination.

Thus, when the ARRB uncovered the evidence establishing the fraudulent autopsy, it was not permitted to conduct an extensive investigation into what it had uncovered. 

The other unusual provision was that the CIA and other federal agencies had the prerogative of keeping some of their records secret for another 25 years, on grounds of “national security.” 

Now, I ask you: If you have committed a criminal act and you know that the ARRB has already uncovered what you did to commit a fraudulent autopsy, what evidence are you going to keep secret for another 25 years? Aren’t you going to keep the most incriminating evidence secret for as long as you can, hopefully forever? Isn’t that just logical?

No, not a confession, but other pieces to the assassination puzzle that fill in more portions of the regime-change mosaic, such as Lee Harvey Oswald’s purported trip to Mexico City just before the assassination, which is still shrouded in mystery and cover-up almost 60 years later.

Another unusual aspect of the JFK Records Act was that it failed to automatically call the ARRB back into existence when that 25-year deadline came due. That’s what has enabled the national-security establishment, especially the CIA, to secure forever extensions for secrecy.

What are the chances the balance of the records will ever be released to the American people. Nil. That’s because there is virtually no chance that Congress will call the ARRB back into existence to enforce the JFK Records Act. And even if it did, it is a virtual certainty that the CIA would require any president to veto it. 

Only a large public outcry against continued secrecy, similar to what happened after Oliver Stone’s movie, could change that. Unfortunately, there is little indication that that is going to happen. 

One thing is clear though — the CIA’s need for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records on the ridiculous ground of “national security” is about as close to an implicit admission of guilt as one can get. After all, there is no Fifth Amendment right to remain silent for the CIA and the rest of the national-security establishment.