Experts gather to delve further into circumstances and unanswered questions
JUSTICE INTEGRITY PROJECT
By Andrew Kreig
03/08/2017
Federal judge John Tunheim, former chair of a congressionally appointed board to review secret documents, headlines a unique press conference March 16 about this year's deadline for disclosure of records about President Kennedy's 1963 assassination.
The JFK Records Act, approved unanimously by Congress in 1992, mandates the release by Oct. 26 of all U.S. government records related to the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Under Tunheim’s leadership, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) reviewed and released some four million pages of assassination-related material in the 1990s.
Judge Tunheim, now the chief federal judge for Minnesota, will speak at the National Press Club about the law as a milestone in open government legislation and about its provisions that mandate the release of some 3,600 still-secret JFK documents later this year on the 25th anniversary of the law’s passage.
Tunheim (shown below) will address the challenge of secrecy in a democracy at the news conference, which begins a high-level forum on the topic in Washington, DC.
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Federal judge John Tunheim |
In a 2013 Boston Globe column, he and former ARRB deputy chair Thomas E. Samoluk wrote that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deceived House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigators by not disclosing the role of deceased CIA officer George Joannides in the events of 1963.
"It really was an example of treachery,” Judge Tunheim said in an interview. “If [the CIA] fooled us on that, they may have fooled us on other things."
After the press conference leading experts in history, intelligence, law and science will discuss the relevance of the still-withheld records to the JFK assassination story and to current issues, including the credibility of officials and media outlets, as measured by polls.
Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, chair of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) and a leading forensic pathologist, will open the 1 p.m. briefing at the National Press Club. Based in Pittsburgh, he is shown below in his lab.
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Dr. Cyril H. Wecht |
Other speakers include Dr. John Newman, a history professor and former intelligence officer, and attorney James Lesar and his client Jefferson Morley (shown below), lead plaintiff in Morley v. CIA, a lawsuit seeking the JFK-related records of the CIA officer Joannides.
The event organized by CAPA is timed for Sunshine Week and Kennedy’s 100th birthday anniversary on May 29. The news conference begins at 1 p.m. March 16 and is designed for the working media to ask questions.
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Jefferson Morley |
The Justice Integrity Project has supported the inquiry and assisted in organizing the conference. Our project's "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination" now constitutes 35 columns, each with extensive appendices. They are excerpted below with links to the columns.
Specifics on the news conference and subsequent forum are announced here in three columns, including this one:
Both media and interested members of the public are invited to subsequent parts of the no-cost program beginning at 2:25 p.m. The locale is the Zenger Room on the club's 13th floor on 14th Street NW in downtown Washington, DC. Members of the press should pre-register if possible with our project to help obtain a good vantage point during the opening news conference.
Related Events
At 5:15 p.m., CAPA will host a cash-bar networking reception for speakers, CAPA members and prospective members in the Cosgrove Room. Then experts will speak on “How To Study the Kennedy Assassination – and why it remains important in the Trump era” at a 6 p.m. forum organized by the CAPA and the McClendon Group. An optional no-host dinner is available.
Speakers include Randolph Benson, the award-winning producer and director of The Searchers, author and press club member Andrew Kreig, independent researcher and CAPA board member Jerry Policoff, and McClendon Group Chairman John Edward Hurley, a former White House correspondent and museum curator whose late father worked at the JFK White House. They will discuss why so many in the public feel so strongly about such research and its continuing relevance.
CAPA, a non-partisan research organization, organized these events. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) founded Sunshine Week to foster open government via events like this throughout the nation. For further information, contact Andrew Kreig at andrew @ justice-integrity.org or (202) 638-0070.
Andrew Kreig
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Andrew Kreig, Esq. |
Andrew
Kreig is Justice Integrity Project Executive Director and co-founder with over
two decades experience as an attorney and non-profit executive in Washington,
DC. An
author and longtime investigative reporter, his primary focus since 2008 has
been exploring allegations of official corruption and other misconduct in federal
agencies. He has been a consultant and volunteer leader in advising several
non-profit groups fostering cutting-edge applications within the communications
industries.
As
president and CEO of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCAI)
from 1996 until 2008, Kreig led its worldwide advocacy that helped create the
broadband wireless industry. Previously, he was WCAI vice president and general
counsel, an associate at Latham & Watkins, law clerk to a federal judge,
author of the book Spiked about the newspaper business and a longtime reporter
for the Hartford Courant.
Listed
in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World from the mid-1990s and
currently, he holds law degrees from the University of Chicago School of Law
and from Yale Law School. Reared in New York City, his undergraduate degree in
history is from Cornell University, where he was a student newspaper editor,
rowing team member, and Golden Gloves boxer.
Contact the author
Andrew Kreig.