On this day 58 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down on the streets of Dallas. Almost immediately, federal officials enunciated what has become known as the lone-nut theory of the assassination. It holds that a supposed communist former U.S. Marine, without any ostensible motive, suddenly decided to kill Kennedy.
Over the decades, however, as more and more official information began leaking out, it became increasingly clear that the assassination was actually a highly sophisticated regime-change operation in which the U.S. national-security establishment determined that Kennedy’s domestic and foreign policies posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security” and that the only way to save the nation was by terminating Kennedy and elevating Vice-President Lyndon Johnson to the presidency.
The watershed period was the 1990s — some 30 years after the assassination. That was when the Assassination Records Review Board was enforcing the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. That law, enacted in the wake of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, required all federal agencies to disclose their assassination-related records to the public.
It was not a popular law within the military establishment, the CIA, and the Secret Service. They had kept their assassination-related records secret for 30 years. They thought that they would be able to do so forever. In fact, the Secret Service was so upset and concerned about disclosure that it intentionally destroyed its records after receiving specific directions not to do so.
The way to view the JFK assassination is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Suppose you have a puzzle that consists of 1,000 very tiny pieces. You’ve lost 25 percent of the pieces. You proceed to put together the remaining 75 percent. You finish the job. Even though you’re missing 25 percent of the pieces, you can still tell what the puzzle depicts.
That’s where we are in the Kennedy assassination. We’ve got around 75 percent of the pieces to the puzzle. We will never have all of them. But with the 75 percent we have, we can now determine with certitude that this was a national-security state regime-change operation.
A loophole in the JFK Records Act was that it enabled the CIA and other federal agencies to keep thousands of assassination-related records secret for another 25 years. The CIA took full advantage of that loophole.
When that 25-year deadline came due under President Trump, the CIA prevailed on Trump to extend the secrecy until 2021, on grounds of protecting “national security.” When that new deadline came due under President Biden, the CIA prevailed on Biden to extend the secrecy again, citing “national security” and also COVID-19. Thus, today — 58 years after the assassination — those long-secret CIA’s assassination-related records remain hidden from public view.
Those records do not contain a confession by the CIA that it orchestrated and planned the November 22, 1963, regime-change operation. From the very beginning of the CIA, when it adopted the power to engage in state-sponsored assassinations, it was firmly established policy to never acknowledge an assassination in writing.
But it is a virtual certainty that those remaining secret records consist of additional pieces to the assassination puzzle — pieces that fill out more of the regime-change mosaic, so that instead of 75 percent of the puzzle, we would have 80 percent of the puzzle.
One of the fascinating aspects of Biden’s decision to grant the CIA”s request for additional secrecy is that, as far as I know, no lone-nut theorist has come to his defense in any op-eds or editorials within the mainstream press. My hunch is that even they know, even if only on a subconscious level, that those secret remaining records are incriminatory. After all, it stands to reason that if you’ve done something bad, you’re going to want to try to keep hidden the most incriminating evidence to the end, perhaps even forever.
Americans have come to accept as part of our nation’s legacy as a national-security state the deaths, destruction, and suffering produced by such national-security regime-change operations as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1960-to date), Congo (1961), and Chile (1970-1973). If we are to restore to America a society based on liberty, peace, prosperity, morality, and harmony, Americans must also accept that the Kennedy assassination is as much a part of our legacy as a national-security state as those other regime-change operations.
For more information, I recommend:
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass. This is the best book on the JFK assassination ever written.
JFK’s War with the National-Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who served on the ARRB staff. This book discusses the vicious war between Kennedy and the military-intelligence establishment, a war that he ended up losing.
The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger. These two books detail the fraudulent nature of the autopsy that the U.S. military conducted on President Kennedy’s body. Both books are in essence a synopsis of Douglas Horne’s 5-volume book on the assassination, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.
Inside the Assassination Records Review Board by Douglas Horne. This is the watershed book in the assassination. It is not an easy read but anyone who works his way through it will inevitably conclude that the autopsy that the military conducted on Kennedy’s body was fraudulent.
Regime Change: The JFK Assassination and The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger.
CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files and Morley v. The CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation by Jefferson Morley.
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot.
Conferences/Videos
The National Security State and JFK
The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination
Altered History by Douglas Horne
The JFK Assassination by Jacob Hornberger
CAPA 2021 Virtual JFK Conference. CAPA’s annual conference on the JFK assassination has long been my favorite. It was an honor to be invited to serve on two panels for this conference.
