Comment: Again! This release was delayed twice during the Trump administration too...
© Evan Vucci/APUS President Joe Biden
The move was announced in a memo signed by President Joe Biden and released by the White House Friday. Biden wrote:
"Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure."In 1992, Congress ruled that
"all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy . . . should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination."The act allowed the government to postpone the release to "protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations," according to the memo.
This year, the National Archives and Records Administration ruled that "unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies," and NARA needed additional time to research the material and "maximize the amount of information released," the memo said.
Comment: Half a century?
The most sensitive information will now be released in December 2022 and material that has already been deemed "appropriate for release to the public," will be dumped on Dec. 15 of this year.
Some 250,000 records have already been released, but the public cannot view them unless they drive to NARA's College Park, Maryland headquarters, the memo said. Under the new order, all records would be digitized.
Kennedy was killed while riding in a motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder, but was shot two days later on live television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who died in 1967.
The enigmatic case continues to spawn countless books, theories and debates.
David Ferrie, a CIA contract agent, said: "Anyone can hide in the bushes and kill the president." So, containing the CIA at Bay of Pigs (meaning refusing to allow Marines on the Navy carrier USS Essex to storm ashore at Trinidad, Cuba and start a war with Castro's 200,000-man army and the 17,000 Russian tank troops on the island) was strike one. Kennedy alienated the military higher-ups by not allowing them to invade Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis--strike two. Word got out that they would do nothing if anything were to happen to Kennedy. (Nothing did--no roadblocks, airports kept working, border stayed open, etc.)
Obtaining the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty with Russia in 1963 was looked at as colluding with the enemy--strike three. Oswald was a CIA go-fer since the age of 15, and Ferrie's protege. Ruby was allied with the Mob in New Orleans and Tampa, the Mafs brought in to do the legwork and because Carlos Marcello, the NOLA capo della tutti capi hated RFK for deporting him. He said: "If a dog is biting you, then you don't cut off the tail--the dog will keep biting. You cut off the head," his metaphor standing for JFK. Emilio Santana, a CIA asset, admitted to NOLA DA Jim Garrison in 1968 that he fired at Kennedy from the Dal-Tex Bldg. second floor. Howard Hunt, the CIA Watergate man, admitted on his deathbed he was a spotter in Dealey Plaza for a shooter whom he wouldn't identify. Charles HItman Harrelson admitted he was sent by Marcello to shoot Kennedy from near the picket fence. Roscoe White, a CIA asset, admitted on his deathbed that he also fired a rifle at JFK from near the Knoll.
A "different" America was born Nov. 22 1963. We live in it now.