The Washington Examiner is reporting that Trump is saying he'll release all the files if he becomes President again. But what stopped him from releasing everything last time he was President? He released some, but not all, even though the1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act set 2017 as a deadline to release everything.
In 2018, Trump delayed the full release of the tranche of Kennedy documents until October 2021 amid national security concerns. President Joe Biden later postponed that until December 2022, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.
ADDED: In other JFK assassination news, "Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, Courtney Love Board David Mamet’s JFK Thriller ‘Assassination'" (Variety).
Here’s the official synopsis for the project: “1963. During a crucial justice hearing against organized crime, the head of the Chicago mob orders the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Jr. [sic], creating a deadly conspiracy while altering the fate of a nation.”
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70 comments:
Trump-speak for I don't remember.
That's infuriating. We already know JFK was a horndog, and a cold inconsiderate lover at that.
It was a class thing you know. They can do things we can't.
Is it even worse than that?
If it was the Russians they would certainly tell us that.
Because he knew how rotten the CIA was, then and now?
But what stopped him from releasing everything last time he was President?
Trump, like Flounder in Animal House, fucked-up: he trusted the "experts" in the intelligence community, law enforcement, justice, public health, etc?
so what sort of concerns linger for 50+ years after an event?
the easiest to think of is : how many pussies did JFK grab with secret service ogling along?
assassinate John-John? Oh, no!
Mamet! Must see!
This is just another Trump trick. I'm tired of the games.
Please read "Reclaiming History" about the JFK assassination and written by Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted the Manson gang. Over 1,000 pages long. Conclusion: no conspiracy; Oswald acted alone.
Trump finally figured out that the intelligence community "have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you." I detest Chuck Schmucker, but he had that one right and Trump had it wrong at the beginning of his administration.
Scape goating the Mafia bosses is one more smokescreen. The CIA Secret State was behind it ( see, The Devil’s Chessboard). But after 60 years the most important need for disclosure is of the Coup’s mechanics in order to teach the public how our CIA and FBI cover up truths that we cannot be trusted with. That is where our “all lies all the time” Media came from.
On second thought, maybe that is why the plane went down. Hmmm.
Mamet. Interesting.
Blogger Readering said...
Trump-speak for I don't remember."
What's Biden's excuse? JFK was murdered sixty years ago and the records have yet to be fully released. What is in the undisclosed records that is so embarrassing that sixty years on they still have not been disclosed?
When I was a kid, the newspapers were full of La Cosa Nostra. The Italians were the bogey-man. For an hour every Sunday night, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. would lead the FBI in a battle against the forces of the Mob, and Commies.
I was sold.
Years later, I actually interviewed with the CIA. I thought the interviewer was a lunatic. She told me there was an appliance in my kitchen that the CIA invented, but she couldn't tell me what it was. At the time, I thought she was full of bullshit. Today, I think it was a test of gullibility.
Intelligence people are paranoid-schizophrenic NUTS!! Trump doesn't want his head blown off.
"But what stopped him from releasing everything last time he was President?"
From the moment he was sworn in Trump was under a hoaxed up investigations and attacked from all sides and from both parties and Ryan and McConnell made it very clear there were sufficient GOPe votes in both the House and Senate for impeachment if Trump went too far.
In the end the only things the uniparty could gin up was the ukraine phone call and the senate GOPe-ers knew that was far too much of a complete joke to go with...but even THAT was still sufficient for BLM fanboy Romney to vote with the dems.
ADDED: In other JFK assassination news, "Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, Courtney Love Board David Mamet’s JFK Thriller ‘Assassination'"
Paraphrasing Henry Kissinger......It's too bad they all can't be assassinated.
The mob still runs our nation.
See Obama, Biden, Hillary et al.
Moron Kamala is up next to head the front group. She's just so inspirational.
I think Mark Groubert has the best analysis on this subject. It seems pretty clear that the intelligence community and LBJ had the most to gain, and LBJ, both ambitious and utterly ruthless, was the one prodding JFK into making the trip to Dallas, down to specifying the exact route for the motorcade and becoming enraged when any changes were proposed. Inside job.
.....and have you ever been to the window in the Texas Book Depository??
Shooting down, and to the left at a moving vehicle going down an incline?? Try it sometime. It ain't easy.
This kind of secrecy is the sort of thing that leads one to believe conspiracy theories.
There's no reason why the CIA and the mob couldn't have coordinated the assassination. The mob provided the actual shooter(s) and the CIA provided the patsy and cover story. That's a powerful alliance if they wanted to work together.
Excuse me......it's down, and to the right. I messed up.
Suicide
mad as hell.
Been there. If we couldn't train our Infantry trainees to make that shot with iron sights, we'd have had a Deep Talk with a commander.
Occam's Razor puts a nutcase with a rifle in the Depository. Probability theory puts a nutcase commie with a rifle getting a job overlooking the parade route before the visit is contemplated as damn' near unlikely.
Pick one.
Then there's Ruby...?
Yeah well. Except that it was Meyer Lansky. Who never did any time for running the mob for half a century. When the law started to close in, he moved to Israel.
I’m with Wince at 12:33.
Trump got suckered by the intel cabal.
"There's no reason why the CIA and the mob couldn't have coordinated the assassination."
You're missing something here. It is well-known and widely attested that the CIA was paying the mob to kill Castro. When the CIA wanted a hitman, they hired one from the mob.
Something Americans seem to have a hard time grasping, is that when you create an agency, and tell them that you want them to break laws in the service of "national security", but keep quiet about it. they are going to break laws when they decide it is in the service of "national security". And they're gonna cover it up. Kind of makes sense, though, if you think about it. And then we're all "But, we didn't mean that law ..."
Rosalyn C. said...
"There's no reason why the CIA and the mob couldn't have coordinated the assassination. The mob provided the actual shooter(s) and the CIA provided the patsy and cover story. That's a powerful alliance if they wanted to work together.'
So of all the people in the world that the CIA and the mob (and LBJ and Castro)
coordinating together, would get to pull off this assassination , they come up with 2 incredible losers and nutcases like LHO and jack Ruby. Sure.
What I find funny with this whole thread, is the idea that if anyone were to release the files, we'd see them publicized. The swamp constantly ignores the law when it suits them, and the media won't publish anything that contradicts its agenda.
NARA is looking for “citizen activists” to transcribe more of the JFK assassination records.
Why can’t the Feds pay for this?
https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/jfk-mission?utm_campaign=JFKrecords-april2023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
I was 8 when JFK was killed, so basically all my life I've been hearing conspiracy theories about how Oswald was just the fall guy and it was really the CIA, or the mob, or LBJ. Now that our so-called intelligence agencies have been caught red-handed directly undermining the elected president I'll at least say that it's possible. Before the 2016 election Trump promised a lot of policies I supported. On energy production he largely succeeded, on the border he made some progress, but on draining the swamp he failed miserably. The fact that these records are still under wraps exemplifies that the swamp still rules. Of course, after watching the last few years, even if 'all' the records are released you would be justified in suspecting that the key records would still remain missing. So clearly, I will never outlive the conspiracy theories.
My interest is not who the five shooters were so much as how the FEDS covered it up. That was a professional job. I guess they had practiced well on so many foreign heads of state that Dulles bros wanted eliminated. The Dulles brothers took their oath too seriously that their job was to knock off all enemies of the USA ,foreign and domestic. Trouble was JFK was was their enemy , not the USA’s enemy.
Trump has the same problem. He is the Clinton and Obama’s enemy for not being totally corrupt. He refused to be bought off. But none of the current Intelligence and FBI guys could be like Trump. They were all dirty crooks, except for Admiral Rogers.
Richard.
Have you ever been to Dealy Plaza? The longest shot would be 80-90 yards.
I was 11 when JFK was assassinated, and during our elementary school outdoor recess that afternoon we speculated on who was behind it, and the winner that day was Lyndon nimrod fountain pen Johnson. Tho happenings over the next couple of days ended that speculation. I was already involved in a UFO club (Project Blue Book/Allen Hynek anyone?) then so diving into JFK assassination conspiracies was easy and quite fun. Years later I read Don DeLillo’s “Libra” and to this day feel it best covers what likely occurred. That CIA agents pissed off over the Bay Of Pigs fiasco were behind it (& likely directly involved in the act itself), and used Oswald as their fall guy. Grassy knoll baby!!
"President Joe Biden later postponed that until December 2022, citing the COVID-19 pandemic."
So what's the hold up?
madAsHell said...
"Shooting down, and to the left at a moving vehicle going down an incline?"
Said vehicle had just made a sharp left turn (about 135 degrees) right in front of you and moving slowly at just 10 mph.
"Try it sometime. It ain't easy."
It's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home.
Elvis was the real shooter.
Jupiter writes, "You're missing something here. It is well-known and widely attested that the CIA was paying the mob to kill Castro."
Jupiter is missing something here. There is no attestation linking the CIA to actual payments to the mob to kill Castro. (The phrase well-known ought to stimulate your bullshit detector.) The Church Committee uncovered memos suggesting various means to eliminate Castro, including slipping him a drug that would cause his beard to fall out, thus eliminating El Presidente by making him a laughing stock. Several suggestions, both lethal and non-lethal, involved using Meyer Lansky (if you don't recognize the name think Hyman Roth) as a go-between, exploiting his close relations with hundreds of Cuban underworld figures. Some of those documents pointed out that Lansky was officially "clean" (he was never convicted of any federal crime) and he had sought compensation from the Federal government regarding his lost assets in Cuba. The memo writers thought he could be recruited by promising such compensation. However, marginal comments attached to some of those memos pointed out that most of Lansky's associates were either refugees, inmates in the Cuban gulag, or dead. In other words, no payments were made because there was no one to pay.
These documents all date from 1961 and the first half of 1962. In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved by Kennedy's promise not to invade Cuba or attempt to depose Castro. However, Kennedy informed Khrushchev that the United States would resist Castro's efforts to destabilize other countries in the Western Hemisphere. Khrushchev informed Castro that he was safe on his island. These conditions satisfied Fidel but enraged Ernesto Guevara, who, as an avowed Trotskyite, hoped for more Communist revolutionary excitement. Che grew bored with ruining the Cuban banking system and in 1965 he when on his own. Once he departed Castro's island empire he became fair game for the CIA, which arranged his death without recourse to American mobsters.
Jupiter suffers from Mafia envy. Gangsterneid suffers think the Mob is all-powerful, that it can and does kill anyone anywhere. That's almost too silly for children let alone adults, but then, some adults read comic books. The known history of the Mafia reveals that the Mob mainly kills fellow mobsters. They rely on familiarity to get within pistol range, and they get away with it because Omerta protects the assassin. (Law enforcement generally isn't interested in prosecuting Mafia assassinations, mainly because the mobsters that get whacked are often big problems for everyone, legit or not) The Mafia isn't nearly as competent at killing a stranger as any special operator in the pay of governments around the globe.
Along with the problem of figuring why the bad guys would pick a couple of loons to carry out their machinations, there's the problem of the visibility of the killing. People notice these things. There will be investigations. Were I as all-powerful as the spooks are supposed to be, I would do something like: arrange for the Prez with his already near-lethal cocktails of medicines to get just a little too much of one. He'd autopsy just fine. Everyone nearby would be motivated to accept it and bury the problem along with the Prez. Bidda bing.
I saw Jack Ruby execute Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV when I was 10 years old.
It seemed really suspicious to me then, but I have been told by the authorities that there is nothing to worry about. It's not like Ruby was trying to shut Oswald up or anything.
I have been to the Dealy Plaza, and seen the window Oswald shot from- it shocked me how close it actually is. I had long been under the impression that it was a long distance shot- it wasn't. The hard part was Kennedy was a moving target, but I doubt a trained marine would find it difficult to make those shots in those handful of seconds.
As why the files are never released- it is hard to explain the reason that doesn't involve embarrassment for some US institution/s. If Oswald were the only person involved, and he acted on his own volition, then why not release these files?
At this point, I am wondering if JFK had information on the Clintons.
Mutaman: LHO defected to the Soviet Union. How many returned defectors do you think the CIA had access to? How many were former Marine riflemen? Is this what passes for logic on the left?
Yes.
Toured the Depository, which is some kind of national monument and looked out the actual window. It's probably my aging memory but I seem to recall they have a simulation of LHO's lunch box, for verisimilitude or something. Maybe not.
See 11B and 71542.
I wouldn't want to bet money on taking that shot with a pistol, but any rifle reasonably well zeroed.
On the other hand, bracing the wrist on the window sill with sufficient range time to calc elevation....if a pistol was all I had...maybe.
You can make it all LHO up until the time that Ruby just happens to be doing some banking nearby and was able to get to the cop shop in the short period between coming out of the building and going into transport. Somebody once said that transfer was noted publicly including time. Seems nuts to me, lousy procedure. But...maybe. You'd think a lot more people would have shown up to see the thing if it were known in advance.
"coincidence" is considered a thing. But it contains a complicated concept which is usually not noticed. "coincide". Two or more things--usually each unlikely--have to coincide and do so against the law of probability. And they coincide with JUUUST the right time to do somebody some good he doesn't deserve.
And it doesn't take many coincides to get out into skeptical territory. One chance in five...yeah, so? Coinciding with one chance in six (yeah, one in six, so?) is...one chance in thirty.
But what stopped him from releasing everything last time he was President?
I assume he took advice from someone he mistakenly trusted. He will trust government experts who claim unstated “national security concerns” quite a bit less in his second term.
"My interest is not who the five shooters were so much as how the FEDS covered it up. That was a professional job."
You don't know the half of it. They took the body to DC, in open and forcible defiance of Texas law. They got the Zapruder film, flew it to DC, and removed some frames and altered others. They faked the head X-rays. They got Allen Fucking Dulles, who probably approved the hit, to manage the inquiry.
"I was 8 when JFK was killed, so basically all my life I've been hearing conspiracy theories about how Oswald was just the fall guy and it was really the CIA, or the mob, or LBJ."
Try all of the above, plus the Mossad.
The most horrifying prospect of the Kennedy assassination was the possibility of Soviet or Cuban involvement in a conspiracy. That would constitute a clear act of war that could easily and rapidly go nuclear. This is why certain details of the Warren investigation are murky and remain classified.
Lee Oswald was very frustrated and very lazy. He thought of himself as some sort of leftwing Robin Hood, but no one on the left, including the leftist bigwigs in the Kremlin, treated him as anything other than an egomaniacal nuisance. Oswald also wanted special treatment from everyone. He had no detectable talent and no marketable skills. No one would pay him what Oswald considered his objective worth. This is why he defected to Russia in 1959 and un-defected in 1962. He spent much of the following 18 months either unemployed or subsisting on minimum-wage jobs that he quickly abandoned. He also spent time trying to attract the attention of Fidel Castro, hence his "Fair Play for Cuba Committee", an organization of one member (Oswald) that spent considerable sums of Oswald's meager earnings printing propaganda leaflets. Oswald knew Russia as a dreary place ruled by unimaginative men unwilling or unable to recognize his genius. Ah, but Cuba! A tropical paradise made even more paradisical by Marxism-Leninism! If only, he thought, if only he could get there! Cuba would welcome him. Cuba would honor him.
According to his widow, Oswald hatched a scheme to hijack an airliner and fly it to Havana. Unfortunately, Marina categorically refused to cooperate in any of his harebrained stratagems. If she had, who knows? Perhaps they would have made it to Cuba, where Oswald would have been forever exiled as a felony suspect. Or, more likely, the Oswalds would have been caught, convicted, and imprisoned far, far away from Jack Kenndy.
Then comes the rifle. In March 1963, Oswald bought a mail-order Carcano Modello 38 carbine with a 4-power telescopic sight. He wanted something with more range to kill "fascists" than his Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver could deliver. But why the Carcano? Because it was by far the cheapest rifle sold by Klein's Sporting Goods. (Conspiracy nuts, like some here, can't explain that any more coherently than they can explain anything they believe. Try flat-earth theories, next time.) Barely three weeks elapsed before Oswald took that rifle to the home of a right-wing nutter called Edwin Walker and took a shot at him. The bullet was recovered from an interior wall along with traces of Walker's hair. Oswald missed, but not by much. Killing an "enemy of the Cuban revolution" was to be Oswald's ticket to Havana, but he missed. Imagine his frustration.
Later that year, barely 8 weeks before the fateful day in Dallas. Oswald went to Mexico City, where he visited both the Russian and Cuban legations. What did he want? What did he say? We can theorize Oswald wanted to defect to Cuba. But we don't know. All we know is he returned to Dallas and shot Kennedy. We know Oswald did not join a conspiracy to kill JFK in September, because smart people don't believe in time travel. But Oswald could have made his intentions clear, intentions to kill someone prominent, someone known for his anti-Castro creds. It would be entirely in character for Oswald to have boasted to the Cubans about his attempt on Edwin Waker. but we don't know. I think the CIA knows but doesn't want to tell us. They claim their agents assigned to surveil the Cuban embassy took a coffee break and failed to ID Oswald when he entered and left, but that seems lame to me.
Blogger Rusty said...
Richard.
Have you ever been to Dealy Plaza? The longest shot would be 80-90 yards.
I've stood in that window Oswald used. At 3 miles per hour, that was an easy shot.
"On energy production he largely succeeded, on the border he made some progress, but on draining the swamp he failed miserably. The fact that these records are still under wraps exemplifies that the swamp still rules."
An example of where The Swamp's priorities lie. Cue Mel Brooks...
Governor Lepetomane: We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!
From my deep experience reading spy novels. The CIA has professional operators. If it was a sanctioned hit, using a rifle is a public statement, slipping something funny into Kennedy’s Dr, Feelgood’s pharmaceutical supply (sending some bad painkiller drugs from the pharmacy) is a private statement.
So who wanted to make a public statement? Qui Bono? The CIA, no. Castro, perhaps. A crazy guy who was in love with world communism, sure. The Mob, only an insane vengeance seeking mob, who thought that Kennedy crossed them.
So I conclude that it was done by an individual or group that didn’t have the skill set and connections to do the job in secret, and did not mind letting the public see the blow by blow. That leaves Oswald or the insane Mob acting alone, sans CIA.
The CIA would have preferred Kennedy to die in bed. The Russians would have gained nothing, Johnson was not going to be more friendly.
Does he want to comment on his assertion that Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK? Or does that lie no longer serve him politically?
Jack Vaughn, whom I was writing about, told me he was in the White House on 11/22/63 and saw Bobby Kennedy sitting on the ground on a walkway outside, his back to the wall, weeping, and muttering repeatedly, "What have I done?" Which Vaughn took to mean crossing the Mob.
Some years later I was interviewing the then-retired lawyer for the Florida Mob (incredible rococo house) and asked him whether the Mafia was responsible for JFK's assassination. He coyly said yes, which sounded more like bragging than the truth.
Occam's Razor says LHO was a nutcase who acted alone. Is there a single piece of actual evidence pointing elsewhere. This has been the most-studied murder in human history.
lanc709 said...
"Mutaman: LHO defected to the Soviet Union. How many returned defectors do you think the CIA had access to? How many were former Marine riflemen? Is this what passes for logic on the left?''
So the CIA hired LHO to kill the POUS but they won't provide him with a rifle, he has to order one through the mail. Then they won't provide him with an escape, he has to take the bus back to his apartment. They also hired him to shoot General Edwin Walker. And then they hired a local insane strip club owner to shut him up. Etc, etc. And to this day nobody has spilled the beans.Come on Sparky, even you're not that stupid.
Richard Aubrey said...
" You can make it all LHO up until the time that Ruby just happens to be doing some banking nearby and was able to get to the cop shop in the short period between coming out of the building and going into transport. Somebody once said that transfer was noted publicly including time. Seems nuts to me, lousy procedure. But...maybe. You'd think a lot more people would have shown up to see the thing if it were known in advance."
Ruby didn't go to a bank, it was Sunday. He went to Western Union to wire $15 to one of his strippers who was stuck in Austin and needed bus fare. Then he left his beloved dog Sheba in his car while he wandered over to the police station where unbeknown to him the transport had been delayed by an hour and as he happened to be walking in, here comes LHO.
History has never told us what happened to poor Sheeba. I think the CIA is covering that up.
I agree with Yancey above. I very often agree with Yancey, but in this case I have looked out that same window so I double-agree.
As for JFK's movement: he was in a back brace, stiff and upright and softly moving away.
Oswald's first shot missed. A quick minor adjustment and Zapruder is a household name.
Let's do Sirhan Sirhan next.
I am Laslo.
Yes, Yancey Ward. If you've not walked Dealey Plaza and also been up in the book depository, you may have a mistaken impression of how small a space the assassination happened in and the shot LHO would have taken.
From my previous comment on Kennedy, the third option is that it was done by a CIA adjacent person who did not have the contacts or ability to poison Kennedy secretly but could “egg on” Oswald to do the shooting, and that is where Ruby was needed.
That is what I think will be in the secret files.
Lefty Boomers just can’t accept one of their fellow travelers killed the god-emperor. Lol.
Laslo Spatula said...
“I agree with Yancey above. I very often agree with Yancey, but in this case I have looked out that same window so I double-agree.”
Most Americans agree.
Rethought this after conspiracy theorists have been 32-0 in the last two years.
bob baer disproved the second gunmen but he thinks oswald was working with another faction, based on his ticket stub, the cia did have someone joannides watching the new orleans cell, that confronted oswals,
Mutaman. Thanks for the correction. I had recalled something about one of his employees and...something something and called it "banking".
As I've said before, "coincidence" requires coincide. What were the chances Ruby would have been downtown that time? As in, how many times did he need to do some minor financial stuff on Sunday, or, for that matter, at any time? Okay. That has to coincide with the transport, for anything to be random.
If we apply various probabilities to the required items coinciding, and we come up with, say, one chance in a hundred, we mean one chance in a hundred it happened by random. But since it happened, we're left with 99 chances in a hundred it wasn't random. Now what?
ruby often paid off the dallas police, to keep the cops fro rousting his clubs
don de lillos libra, has several company supergrades staging a false hit, and then one agrieved party spoils the punch,
of course there is gus russos speculations about who oswald could have met in minsk, two future high ranking cuban intelligence officers, one who was nabbed in the ochoa witchhunt,
hpudding: "Does he want to comment on his assertion that Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK? Or does that lie no longer serve him politically?"
Team Cornpop has thoughts.
This is just another Trump trick.
Interesting comment from Dave who was recently spotted lecturing us about how Trump is incapable of NOT commenting or demonstrating self-control but here he is growing tired of Trump. For being circumspect. For being normal. But the ones like me keeping an open mind on the Trump ‘24 issue are the ones out of touch. Dave and the Hooker are DONE with the Orange Man.
Biden if he was lucid would appreciate all the help you can give him.
“Ruby didn't go to a bank, it was Sunday. He went to Western Union to wire $15 to one of his strippers who was stuck in Austin and needed bus fare. Then he left his beloved dog Sheba in his car while he wandered over to the police station where unbeknown to him the transport had been delayed by an hour and as he happened to be walking in, here comes LHO.”
Why do you say unbeknown to him? Ruby could have been hiding out waiting for a message from someone telling him when the transport was actually on the way, sending western Union money out as a time filler, why impute something to Ruby that can’t be proven? Nothing he said later can be believed, he committed a crime. If you are going to kill the person that killed the president, is it possible you don’t care too much about a dog?
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