I have been reporting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy for almost 30 years and have always been skeptical about the theory that a smoking gun will blow the case open.
A serious investigative reporter doesn't seek a single piece of evidence to prove wrongdoing. Good investigative journalism assembles a lot of evidence into a mosaic that shows a small story of wrongdoing not previously visible to the public. Most prize-winning journalistic investigations don't depend on a piece of evidence. The JFK assassination story should not be told.
There are new pieces of evidence that fill in blank spaces in the historical record of JFK's assassination. Think mosaic, not a gun.
I began to rethink my caution after the Biden White House announced that the last JFK documents would not be released until December 2022. The White House press office takes out the president's smelliest garbage on Friday nights in hopes that it will pass by Monday. The announcement that the CIA and other federal agencies had delayed compliance with the 1992 JFK Records Act for the second time in four years was a story the White House wanted to ignore.
Smoking a gun?
The delay was a smoking gun in itself, as was University of Texas Professor James Galbraith. The slow-walking tactics of the CIA are not conclusive proof of a JFK conspiracy. The CIA does not intend to obey a law regarding the assassination of a president.
The desire to hide embarrassment is the most plausible explanation for the CIA's long history of deception. The order on the JFK files indicates that the CIA cannot afford full disclosure about what happened in Dallas in the 1960s.
There are other possible explanations. The CIA is hiding legitimate non-JFK secrets, according to a leading national security attorney. If not probable, this is possible. The CIA faced a deadline set by President Trump in October of last year and did not release any JFK documents. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if non-JFK secrets are being kept.
JFK researchers know what the CIA is hiding. The JFK files have been partially declassified. A paragraph, sentence or single word remains secret in some documents. We can deduce a lot from the context.
A redacted 123-page CIA file on Howard Hunt, which was released in April 2018, may shed light on what President Richard Nixon called the Bay of Pigs thing. H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, said that Nixon used this phrase as a reference to JFK's assassination. Haldeman's claim is supported by the Hunt file.
Cuba policy.
In 1970, Hunt, a leader in the failed invasion of Cuba, sent the manuscript of his memoir, "Give Us This Day," to JFK, which denounced his Cuba policy as weak and traitorous. Hunt did not go through the pre-publication clearance process. The Hunt file contains five documents that can be found in the JFK files. I don't think these documents include a smoking gun, but they are relevant to the assassination story.
The CIA file of Frank Sturgis has more potential than Hunt's. In the 1960s, a soldier of fortune named Sturgis was involved in anti-Cuba operations. He was accused of involvement in Kennedy's assassination and denied being in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The FBI considered him a plausible suspect in JFK's murder, according to the man behind the closed doors. There are questions about Mafia involvement in JFK's murder.
The agency has an interest in a man named Robert Maheu. He was a corrupt FBI agent who helped the CIA assassinate Castro. Jack Anderson was a syndicated columnist in 1971 and he was told about the Castro plots. Johnny Rosselli, a Mafia hitman, said that the assassination of JFK was caused by the CIA trying to kill Castro. Rosselli threatened to tell the whole story to a Las Vegas grand jury if he was deported to Italy. The ploy worked. Rosselli was protected from deportation by the agency. Rosselli was found stuffed in an oil drum in the bay before his appearance on Capitol Hill.
There is a secret file concerning a Miami man. Some of his associates believed that Kennedy was assassinated. The 1966 murder of Del Valle was never solved. David Kaiser, a diplomatic historian and author of "The Road to Dallas," sought to get access to Del Valle's CIA records. The Del Valle file is classified in its entirety.
It was aware of Oswald.
There is a file that shows the career of James Moore, the Domestic Contacts Division chief in Dallas. Moore was aware of Lee Harvey Oswald a year before he killed Kennedy. Oswald, a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union out of sympathy for communism, returned to Texas with a Russian wife. If the official JFK story is true, Moore was one of a half dozen senior CIA officials who failed to notice the threat Oswald posed.
The JFK investigations were largely kept out of Moore's mind by the CIA. He was never asked about his knowledge of the accused assassin. His personnel file was partially released. There are a dozen pages that are redacted.
The files of George Joannides, the chief of CIA covert action operations in Miami, are even more sensitive. Before and after JFK was killed, a network of Cuban agents under the code name AMSPELL was recruited and used to create propaganda about the pro-Castro Oswald. The documents from the personnel file of Joannides are kept secret because they would hurt the national security of the United States in 2021.
I think this claim is crazy but I think I will believe it. The reputation of the CIA could be damaged by the release of these records. I obtained a heavily redacted memo in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about a security clearance that was granted to Joannides in the summer of 1963. The memo will show that certain CIA officers were involved in Kennedy's murder.
The AMSPELL file was partially declassified by the CIA. There are a dozen pages that are hidden. The CIA cover-up that followed JFK's murder may be revealed if these pages are declassified.
My educated guesses could be wrong. I can't see the redacted material. Only top CIA officials know what the agency will do in compliance with Biden. The JFK files show the scope of the agency's JFK problem today. There is a lot of potentially embarrassing JFK material that the CIA doesn't want to give to the Congress or the American people.
Do any of these pieces add up to a smoking gun?
In my opinion, I don't think any significant JFK files will be released in the coming weeks or in December. The CIA could prove me wrong by releasing the entire files at any time. That is not going to happen. The JFK assassination story is smoking in the CIA's files.
The editor of JFK Facts is the author of the forthcoming book "Scorpions Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate."
