JFK's 50-Year Government Disgrace

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright November 23, 2013
All Rights Reserved.                                      

            Marking the 50-year anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, government apologists continue to disparage conspiracy theories, expecting the public to buy the Sept. 24, 1964 Warren Commission report handed to President Lyndon Johnson.  Shortly after Kennedy’s death Nov. 22, 1963, Johnson ordered the records sealed for 75 years, citing “U.S. national security.”  When Johnson accepted the Warren Commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, not aided-or-abetted by any other group or individual, what possible reason was there to cite U.S. national security as the reason behind hiding the records?  As the calamity unfolded with Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby murdering Oswald two days later at point-blank range in the basement of the Dallas Police Dept., eyebrows raised.  Too many suspicious events belied the Warren Commission Report.

            Citing national security as the basis for sealing the records suggested far more than the Warren Commission’s conclusions:  That Oswald acted alone.  “I look back at the hard evidence of the case, the real evidence, the evidence admissible in court, and all of that points to Oswald acting alone,” said John R. Turnheim, chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, currently a federal judge in Minnesota.  Turnheim claims his group unearthed thousands of unknown records on which to conclude that Oswald was the lone killer.  What Turnheim doesn’t admit is that the FBI, CIA and Secret Service haven’t coughed up all the records required under the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act, requiring all agencies to purge their files.  Neither the Warren Commission nor Turnheim know what’s missing from government files that prompted Johnson to seal the files for 75 years.

             Warren Commission investigators got nothing from the CIA, FBI or Secret Service on the agents responsible for tracking Oswald to a meeting at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City meeting Cuban officials only weeks before the assassination.  Turnheim can’t explain what happened to those CIA and FBI records.  “People just don’t want to believe that a 24-year-old misfit that has had really an awful life, who has these pro-communist tendencies, difficulty navigating life, could publicly assassinate the leader of the free world,” said Turnheim, giving the most feeble excuse to discredit all so-called conspiracy theories.  Whether or not Turnheim continues to deliberately obfuscate or just doesn’t have a clue, is anyone’s guess.  CIA and FBI records showing U.S. agents tracking Oswald’s movements and contacts before the assassination are not part of Turnheim’s “hard” evidence.

             Warren Commissions 888-page report found no evidence of conspiracy in Kennedy’s assassination.  Much of the conspiracy theories focused on whether or not it was possible for Oswald to fire the kill shorts from a sixth-floor window of the Texas Book Depository in the Dealey Plaza area of Dallas.  Thirteen years after the assassination, the House of Representatives convened the House Select Committee on Assassinations [1976-79] to look into the deaths of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert, both in 1968.  While the HSCA concluded that JFK “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” it ruled out the CIA, FBI, Cuba, the Soviet Union and organized crime.  Yet the chief legal counsel and staff director of the committee, former Notre Dame Law professor G. Robert Blakey, admitted in 2003 that the committee couldn’t get necessary records from the CIA.

             Turnheim and his colleague William L. Joyce, a former Penn State history professor, insist they found nothing to conclude conspiracy theory.  “We never found anything,” said Joyce, yet admitting that there were serious gaps in the record.  Both admit that they couldn’t find CIA or FBI records of Oswald’s trip to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City weeks before the assassination.  Somehow the records “disappeared.”  Even Blakey didn’t include in his final HSCA report that Oswald “friend” George de Mohrenschildt committed suicide after receiving a subpoena from the committee.  Mohrenshildt admitted to author Edward Jay Epstein he was ordered by CIA agent J. Walton Moore to befriend Oswald.  Some think Mohrenshildt was a covert CIA agent.  Covert CIA agent George Joannides, stationed in South Florida in 1963 to monitor pro-Castro groups, was assigned CIA liaison to the HSCA.

             Using Joannides as HSCA liaison prevented him from testifying directly to the committee.  “The fact that they appointed Joannides to be liaison between the CIA and House Select Committee of Assassinations tells me they consciously were determined to withhold information from this second major investigation of the Kennedy Assassination,” said Larry Sabato, the highly respected and often-quoted University of Virginia political science professor.  Sabato’s observation of CIA stonewalling confirms HSCA director Blakey’s 2003 admission that the CIA refused to give his committee the needed files and documents.  CIA officials often disparage conspiracy theories while their lack of transparency fuels the problem.  If the government really wants to honor JFK’s memory, it’s time to open up the CIA files and finally end all the wild speculation about Nov. 22, 1963.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.