Documents trove now being heavily scrutinised by CAPA, independent investigators
JUSTICE INTEGRITY PROJECT
By Andrew Kreig
11/10/2017
The National Archives announced on Nov. 9 the release of 13,213 additional records pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
Most of the documents were previously released in redacted form as part of a long-term process to comply with a 1992 federal law. More than four million pages have been released previously in full or with parts blocked out. Released records are available for download
here. The announcement by the National Archives is excerpted below, as are several hard-hitting commentaries by experts analyzing three previous releases this year as the Archives and Trump administration seek compliance with law that required release of all such documents by Oct. 26 last month.
President Trump's announcement on Oct. 26 said the White House was postponing some releases — estimated by experts to be some 98 percent of the more than 30,000 documents still at issue — for up to six months to enable further review on "national security" grounds.
The Justice Integrity Project along with Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) have been monitoring this process closely. That grows out of the decades-long experience of most of CAPA's leaders in documenting why the major 1964 Warren Commission findings on the assassination were wrong.
Yet the vast majority of major news organizations have parroted the commission's claims and ridiculed critics through current times as crazed "conspiracy theorists." The Commission's major findings were that that former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald (shown above in custody in Dallas after the shooting) acted alone with no accomplices in killing JFK with three shots from behind.
To counter this clearly false history that even Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson did not believe (according to a now declassified tape-recording), CAPA is co-sponsoring with the South Texas College of Law /Houston a unique mock trial,
State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, from Nov. 16-17 at the law school.
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CAPA Chairman, renowned forensic pathologist, consultant and author Dr. Cyril H. Wecht |
Archives Releases On Nov. 9
Regarding the Archives releases, nearly all mainstream media have relied on so-called experts with long track records of advancing their journalism and academic careers by endorsing with slight modifications the official story first promoted by the Warren Commission.
The seven-member commission was led by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. All of the commission's members had arduous full-time jobs aside from former CIA Director Allen Dulles, whom Kennedy had forced out of office in late 1961 along with two deputy CIA directors because of the young president's growing anger at CIA attempts to involve him and the nation further than he thought appropriate in covert and military actions, most notably the overthrow of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The nation's media have long presented the 26-volume Warren Report as the definitive word on the Kennedy assassination, with a few minor adjustments arising out of 1970s disclosures of massive CIA-led propaganda, assassination programs that supposedly operated only overseas, not in the United States. The last official investigation of the Kennedy assassination was by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, whose report in 1979 suggested the possibility of a conspiracy in the death motivated by Mafia anger towards Kennedy for his administration's crackdown on them.
Most of the critics cited below, however, debunk the Warren Commission process and point to the overwhelming evidence against the official conclusion.
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Dulles at left, with President Kennedy |
Wecht has harshly criticized media outlets that routinely ignore forensic and other scientific professionals and instead cite University of Virginia politics professor Larry Sabato and former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon to assess scientific evidence that two claim supports the Warren Report. We summarized the case against media relying on Sabato and Shenon for commentary in a September column,
CAPA Challenges Warren Report Defenders Sabato, Shenon, but the pack journalism tradition of the major media in relying on those two has continued unabated.
Among other experts typically neglected by media commentaries about released documents are Douglas Horne, an author and former military expert for the Assassinations Record Review Board appointed by Congress to oversee document disclosure in the 1990s. Another of the many neglected experts cited below is Dan Hardway, who worked 18 months for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, focusing especially on purported ties of Oswald to Cuba and Mexico.
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Jacob Hornberger |
Jacob Hornberger (shown at left), a book publisher of Horne's five-volume series, an attorney and the head of the Libertarian-conservative think tank Future of Freedom Foundation, has been harsh in attacking mainstream media and its supposed experts.
In columns excerpted extensively below, Hornberger attacks especially those media commentators who claim that recently released documents lack a "smoking gun" that debunks the Warren Report.
Hornberger argues that assassinations plotters rarely if ever outline their plans in written documents, much less in records that are preserved for disclosure.
Instead, he says, truth-seekers must look for the circumstantial evidence that is typically decisive in criminal cases involving non-political murders and other crimes. Further, his most recent column on Nov. 10 argues that authorities cited phony autopsy evidence to support their claims that the slain president was shot from the rear with his fatal wound. Hornberger says the phony autopsy reports should be enough to provide a "smoking gun" -- except that reporters are two lazy or fearful to report the evidence or books about the autopsy reports released years ago.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), led by a five-member board confirmed by Congress, prioritized document release during the 1990s, and established a 25-year deadline for final release that expired Oct. 26.
That Justice Integrity Project news report, excerpted on CAPA's news site, contains an appendix of many news reports and commentaries since last week about the document releases. An appendix to this column updates those news reports and commentaries to focus especially on important materials published in November.
The
appendix also includes links to our project's so-far 43 part "Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination" linking to important books, films, archives and reports covering the range of commentary on the assassination from pro-Warren Report advocates to critics.
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.
Appendix.