© Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from National Archives / Wikimedia and Justin Grimes / Flickr
A new batch of files, mostly secret CIA records, related to the November 1963 assassination of US president John F Kennedy was released by the National Archives on Friday.
Nearly 680 records were made public
including 553 never-before-seen files from the Central Intelligence Agency, which had objected to their release previously on national security grounds.
Among the CIA files released were detailed records, for example, of efforts to recruit Soviet diplomats serving in foreign missions, complete with transcripts of wiretaps.
The National Archives said the other documents published online were from the Justice Department, the Defense Department and a House committee which conducted an inquiry into Kennedy's November 22, 1963 assassination in Dallas, Texas.
The official Warren Commission which investigated the slaying of the charismatic 46-year-old president determined that it was carried out by a former Marine Corps sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
The commission's formal conclusion that Oswald killed Kennedy has done little, however, to quell speculation that a more sinister plot was behind the murder of the 35th US president.
Hundreds of books and movies such as the 1991 Oliver Stone film "
JFK" have fed the conspiracy industry, pointing the finger at Cold War rivals the Soviet Union or Cuba, the Mafia and even Kennedy's vice president, Lyndon Johnson.
Kennedy scholars have said the new documents are unlikely to contain any bombshell revelations or put to rest the rampant conspiracy theories.
Friday's document release by the National Archives is the third this year and in compliance with a 1992 act of Congress that mandated that all Kennedy documents be released within 25 years.
President Donald Trump has given the FBI and CIA six months -- until April 26, 2018 -- to make their case for why remaining documents should not be made public.
The National Archives released 2,891 assassination documents on October 26 and 3,810 records on July 24.
Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 but returned to the United States in 1962.
He was shot to death two days after killing Kennedy by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, as he was being transferred from the city jail.
Comment: Many of these files, previously withheld in full and now released for the first time, are still heavily redacted. WhoWhatWhy points out just one such example:
Here is a CIA personnel file on David Sanchez Morales, who is believed to be a key suspect in the JFK assassination by many researchers. Notice the number and extent of the redactions.
A key suspect, yet the CIA heavily redacts the file. If the government were really concerned about "dispelling conspiracy theories", they would release the files. This just further fuels distrust. Rightly so. Because there WAS a conspiracy to kill JFK. Obviously, anything in these documents that could possibly support this fact will be heavily redacted - because an official admission would harm U.S. "national security". Ergo, we will never learn the truth from the horse's mouth.
Among the "revelations" that CAN be
found in these documents:
A CIA document dated 1975 details the hunt for Oswald's name on lists of informants and potential recruits. The confidential files, released on Friday, reveal the CIA was concerned that Oswald may have somehow established links with security sources through his time in the USSR.
The investigation into whether "Oswald had ever been used by the Agency or been connected with it in any conceivable way" began on November 22, 1963, five days after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.
However, checks on intelligence databases, including lists of informants used in the USSR, Mexico, and Cuba found no evidence that Oswald had turned up on the CIA's radar for employment.
A search to see if JFK's assassin was debriefed by any government agencies on his return from the USSR in 1962 also came back negative. The CIA report concluded that it was aware of claims linking Oswald to the Agency, but said the allegations "are totally unfounded."
The CIA document also cites five files on Oswald available to the agency from the FBI, the US Department of State, and the US Navy, before the president's murder in Dallas.
"It should be noted that no particularly great urgency was attached to the handling of the records regarding Oswald before the assassination because Oswald's name had not particular meaning before that fatal event [the JFK assassination]," the document reads.
Which is total nonsense. Would the CIA ever admit as such, now, or in the days after the assassination? Hardly. Oswald's record would have been hidden, obscured by cover names and other attempts at misdirection, or simply destroyed.
Comment: Many of these files, previously withheld in full and now released for the first time, are still heavily redacted. WhoWhatWhy points out just one such example: A key suspect, yet the CIA heavily redacts the file. If the government were really concerned about "dispelling conspiracy theories", they would release the files. This just further fuels distrust. Rightly so. Because there WAS a conspiracy to kill JFK. Obviously, anything in these documents that could possibly support this fact will be heavily redacted - because an official admission would harm U.S. "national security". Ergo, we will never learn the truth from the horse's mouth.
Among the "revelations" that CAN be found in these documents: Which is total nonsense. Would the CIA ever admit as such, now, or in the days after the assassination? Hardly. Oswald's record would have been hidden, obscured by cover names and other attempts at misdirection, or simply destroyed.