ALMOST SOLD OUT! COME TO CHARLESTON! The Ron Paul Institute and The Future of Freedom Foundation are co-hosting a conference on U.S. foreign policy in Charleston, SC, on Sunday, April 29, from 1-5 pm. Speakers: Ron Paul, Dan McAdams, Richard Ebeling, and Jacob Hornberger, with special guest Congressman Mark Sanford. Details here.
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Tomorrow, April 26, is the new deadline set by President Trump for the release by the National Archives of JFK-assassination-related records of the CIA and other federal agencies. Despite all the hoopla in the mainstream press last fall about how the National Archives had released some of the records, many in redacted form, it is estimated that the National Archives is keeping more than 368,000 pages still secret from the American people.
Keep in mind that the reason the JFK Records Act was enacted in the first place in 1992 was to bring an end to this secrecy. That’s why the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was brought into existence — to force the CIA and other federal agencies to do what they had fiercely resisted doing for some 30 years back then — disclose their JFK-assassination-related records to the public.
But someone slipped a provision into the law that gave the CIA and other federal agencies another 25 years of secrecy. In 1992 CIA officials must have breathed a big sigh of relief. Twenty-five years is a long time. Many of them would undoubtedly be dead by the time the new deadline was reached.
That legal deadline was reached last October. Nonetheless, the CIA went to President Trump and either requested or demanded more time for secrecy. They said that “national security” was at stake. After more than 50 years of secrecy, Trump gave them another six months of secrecy.
That period expires tomorrow. Will President Trump and the National Archives comply with the law deadline and release those 368,000 pages of 50-year-old secret records?
My prediction: It’s not going to happen. Those records have been kept secret for more than 50 years for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with “national security,” no matter what definition one puts on that nebulous term.
The reason those records have been kept secret for more than 50 years is the same reason why the CIA wants them to continue to be kept secret: Because they will fill in more pieces of the overall mosaic that has developed as more and more circumstantial evidence has been uncovered in the JFK assassination — a mosaic that points to a national-security domestic regime-change operation on November 22, 1963, one that removed a president from office who was perceived to be a grave threat to national security and replaced with a president whose Cold War, anti-communist, anti-Soviet Union mindset was the same as that of the CIA, the Pentagon, and the rest of the national-security establishment.
Keep in mind what these people were able to keep secret for decades: that they were at war with John F. Kennedy over the future direction of the United States. In their eyes, Kennedy was a coward and a traitor for refusing to provide air support for the CIA’s invaders at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, which was ruled by a pro-Soviet communist regime that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were convinced constituted a grave threat to national security. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy refused to accede to Pentagon demands to bomb and invade the island. To resolve the crisis, Kennedy agreed that the U.S. would no longer invade Cuba, which meant that the communist dagger would remain pointed at America’s neck on a permanent basis. The Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Kennedy’s action to be a disastrous military defeat at the hands of the communists.
Later, after the crisis was resolved, Kennedy openly declared an end to the era of anti-Soviet, anti-communist fervor that had guided the national-security establishment since World War II. He began pulling U.S. troops out of Vietnam, which, in the eyes of the Pentagon and CIA, would cause the dominoes in Asia to begin falling to the communists. Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, he entered into secret, personal negotiations with both Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to establish normalize relationships between their two nations, which, needless to say, would have ended the justification for converting the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after WW II and would have threatened ever-growing budgets for the ever-expanding military-industrial complex.
All of that was anathema to the U.S. national-security establishment. They were convinced that America was in grave danger of falling to the communists if Kennedy was permitted to remain in power. But they had no way to remove him by impeachment or through an independent counsel. They also knew that he was likely to win the 1964 election. The only way to save America from a communist takeover at the hands of a naïve, incompetent, philandering president was through a regime-change operation consisting of assassination.
In the 1990s, the CIA was forced to reveal an assassination manual that it began developing in 1954, as part of its regime-change operation against Guatemala, where it planned to assassinate Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, another president who was considered to be a grave threat to U.S. national security. The manual revealed that the CIA was studying and specializing in the art of assassination. Among the recommended methods was by killing a person with a high-powered weapon.
Equally significant, the manual revealed that the CIA was studying and specializing in ways to avoid detection — that is, ways to ensure that no one suspected that the CIA had committed the assassination.
Although a frame-up was not mentioned in the assassination manual in that early state of development, it obviously would have been considered at some point as a way to avoid detection in a state-sponsored assassination.
That’s what Lee Harvey Oswald was alleging after his arrest. That’s what he meant when he declared “I’m a patsy.” He was declaring that he was being framed for committing a crime he didn’t commit.
One of the allegations against Oswald was that he was a communist. The very first organization to publicize Oswald’s communist bona fides was an organization in New Orleans called the DRE. Immediately after the assassination, the DRE issued a press release telling everyone that Oswald was a communist. What no one knew at the time — and for more than 30 years — was that the DRE was being generously funded and supervised by the CIA.
Why didn’t anyone — including the Warren Commission in the 1960s, the House Select Committee in the 1970s, and the ARRB in the 1990s — know about the CIA’s connection to the DRE? Because the CIA kept that fact secret from everyone. It wasn’t until former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley discovered it that it came to light.
To this day, the CIA steadfastly refuses to reveal its files relating to the CIA agent who was supervising the DRE, George Joannides. In fact, the CIA didn’t even turn over its Joannides/DRE files to the National Archives back in the 1990s, when the JFK Records Act required it to do so. That’s why those files are not in the records that are supposed to be released tomorrow. The CIA needs to continue keeping the Joannides/DRE files secret from us. “National security,” they say, requires it.
The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to a frame-up in the Kennedy assassination, especially since the evidence incriminating Oswald is a bit too pat, as it would be in a frame-up. After all, how many communist Marines have you ever heard of? Why would a supposed communist join a military organization that hates communists and kills communists? Don’t forget: the Marines had just killed hundreds of thousands of communists in the Korean War. It was entirely possible that the Marines, including Oswald, could be suddenly called back into Korea to kill more communists.
The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes that former U.S. Marine Oswald was working as a U.S. intelligence agent whose cover was posing as a communist. As such, he would have made for the perfect “patsy” because only a few people within the CIA would know his real identity.
As part of creating this false identity, Oswald was sent down to Mexico City to visit the Soviet and Cuban embassies. But obviously everything went wrong with that part of the frame-up operation. That’s why they quickly shut down that part of the post-assassination investigation and never returned to it. For example, they came up with a photograph of someone they said was Oswald but turned out to be someone else. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told President Kennedy that they had audio recordings of what were supposed to be Oswald in Mexico City but the voice was someone other than Oswald. The CIA later said that its cameras overseeing the Cuban embassy were broken during that time.
At least some of the CIA’s records relating to Oswald’s trip to Mexico City are among those 368,000 records slated to be released tomorrow. Don’t hold your breath. They have kept that part of their regime-change operation secret for more than 50 years. They simply cannot afford to let people see them now. Whatever it takes, the CIA will not permit President Trump to release those records. “National security” is at stake. If Americans were permitted to see those records, the argument goes, the United States would fall into the ocean or the federal government would be taken over by the communists.
For more information, read:
The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger
JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne (who served on the staff of the ARRB)
Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger
The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger
CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley.
