50,000 Pages of JFK Assassination–Related Documents Still Classified
June 1st, 2012Via: Salon:
Next year will be a half-century since the death of JFK. And the Obama Administration thinks we need to keep secret the records on the matter … a little longer yet.
Believe it or not, more than 50,000 pages of JFK assassination–related documents are being withheld in full. And an untold number of documents have been partially withheld or released with everything interesting blacked out. But why?
Since the government and the big media keep telling us there was no conspiracy and that it was all Lee Harvey Oswald acting on his own, why continue to keep the wraps on?
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For some perspective, meet Sheryl Shenberger. She’s the head of the Archives’ National Declassification Center. What would you guess Sheryl’s professional background would be? Library of Congress? Academic research? Nope. Before NDC, Sheryl worked for … the Central Intelligence Agency.
The most logical and reasonable explanation for this is that the Obama administration placed an ex-spook in charge of declassification because this would induce her old colleagues in Langley to cooperate. (Which of course raises the question of whether, in a real democracy, you would want to have a bunch of people secretly deciding to do whatever they wanted with 50-year-old documents pertaining to a supposed loony loner who whacked a president.)
Frustrated by the administration’s foot-dragging on JFK, AARC sent a letter urging the government to get off its duff. One signer was G. Robert Blakey, who served as a Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which in its 1978 final report said that, um … it looks like an organized conspiracy was responsible for JFK’s death.)
ARRC’s letter was dated January 20, 2012. According to Lesar, there has still been no reply — though NARA says it is working on it.
Release of the remaining documents, under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, can be postponed until October 26, 2017. Not so bad, you say? Actually, the Act further states that even in 2017, the president may decide to drag this on further, by withholding records indefinitely.
As long as George H W Bush is alive ( and a couple generations of his offspring), you arent going to get the truth. He was involved, Johnson was involved, Nixon was involved, the watergate burgler/CIA agent E. Howard Hunt was involved, and so were a lot of other people. Even when they do release the info, its not going to ever be the whole truth because the CIA has too much credibility to lose and do does the presidency. Thats just the facts if life and death.
all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing. or for good kennedys to say nothing. the what ifs just slay me. what if john jr. were still alive -what would he say? or rather, could he live with it? like ted did? the whole pot of tin foil hats the family won’t wear will always await any kennedy heirs. the longer, the worse for them. my god, what a legacy for any family. it staggers the mind. and world.
the sad thing to me is how the whole JFK death conspiracy thing eclipses what he was on the verge of. call it The Verge Syndrome. MLK, RFK, Malcolm X, & on & on -the damned verge is like a guillotine blade edge. hope & change my ass. the verge is like a live wire. vest your life significantly & there it is waiting -for all the amy goodmans of the world, all the keith olbermanns, all the cenk uygurs, all the cornel wests, etc ad infinitum & that’s just the punditry for crying out loud. & the longer things continue as they are, the worse it gets. which is why it ain’t now time -Ever! -to release squat.
think of the kids born in 1990 & grown up under W’s tenure. what is ‘normal’ to them? ye gods. etc…
my weird paste/links file link above does need to be formally writ to it’s own unspeakable page, true, but if i were pluck out any 2 significant links, it would be kennedy’s american university speech & bill hick’s wry ‘elite’ comment. with kennedy, it seems to me everything turned on that speech.
one of my biggest regrets in life is how i’ve failed my heroes when i could’ve done the most to support them. -when i could’ve simply anything for that matter. -but it’s never too late.
meanwhile it’s eternally true;
all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing.
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There are an interesting collection of recent interviews of Jim Marrs by Jeff Rense:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmOeLRxkil0
Lee Harvey Oswald is the most infamous patsy in modern history. Jim Marrs presents rock solid
evidence exposing that deceit and strongly suggesting Harvey was, in fact, a hero. He warned the Secret Service of an impending plot to kill the president in Chicago three weeks prior to Dallas.
An interesting fact is that that the former Secret Service agent that helped collapse the Chicago plot was Abraham Bolden.
Bolden, now 72, of Chicago, was a young agent in 1963. After a few years as an Illinois state trooper, Bolden joined he Secret Service and was invited by Kennedy onto the prestigious White House detail.
He was the youngest and FIRST BLACK AGENT assigned to protect a president.
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In a book that Bolden wrote with his wife, he will cited another contributing factor in the JFK murder: on-duty drunkenness by Secret Service agents.
http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-3261-first-black-secret-service-agent-assigned-to-a-president-speaks-out-in-new-book.html
“I told the chief of the Secret Service this, that if anything happens, an emergency situation develops with President Kennedy, that their reflexes are going to be in a condition that they won’t be in a condition to respond, and Dallas, Texas, proved I was right,” he said. “The president’s life was in grave danger because of the inefficiency of security around him, too many weaknesses.”
“When that bullet struck the head of the president, it struck me too because I saw it coming,” Bolden said.
When the Warren Commission began investigating JFK’s assassination, Bolden says, he attempted to inform members about the Chicago plot and misconduct by his fellow agents.
During that time Bolden was arrested and prosecuted for soliciting a bribe from a counterfeiter and served a six-year sentence. He says it was a setup to silence him. The main witness has since recanted, and Bolden hopes now to clear his name.
A spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington said that officials “would not have any comment whatsoever about Mr. Bolden’s statements.”
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Fast forward to 2012 where the Secret Service is constantly being smeared in the media. It would appear a future event is planned where they will take the fall???
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@Kevin Thank you for posting this. I often hear “conspiracy theories” mentioning that various documents are classified, but that always seemed silly since withholding documents would effectively be an admission of conspiracy. Obama’s choice of administrator is quite telling.
My own research has mostly been on classified documents from WWII which use the National Security excuse. What is the rationale for keeping the JFK documents classified?
Does anyone here have a good source for a list of FOIA requests that have been denied?