{"id":356040,"date":"2021-10-20T17:34:59","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T17:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=373351"},"modified":"2021-10-20T17:34:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T17:34:59","slug":"biden-faces-deadline-for-release-of-more-jfk-assassination-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/10\/20\/biden-faces-deadline-for-release-of-more-jfk-assassination-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Faces Deadline for Release of More JFK Assassination Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Joe Biden<\/u> will soon decide an obscure but potent question: Which secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be made fully public?<\/p>\n

When President Donald Trump faced the same decision four years ago, he delayed in the name of national security. While releasing thousands of files about the 1963 Kennedy assassination, Trump acquiesced to the demand<\/a> of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to keep portions of thousands more secret until October 2021, 58 years after Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the gunman. For all his \u201cdeep state\u201d rhetoric, Trump issued a memo<\/a> giving the executive branch agencies four more years of secrecy.<\/p>\n

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Will Biden follow the law<\/a>? The JFK Records Act, passed unanimously by Congress in 1992, called for \u201cexpeditious public transmission<\/a>\u201d of all JFK files into the public record. Twenty-nine years later, the intent of Congress has been effectively nullified by the demands of federal agencies, particularly the CIA, which is responsible for 70 percent of the withheld records. The National Archives website<\/a> says 15,834 JFK files which have been released remain redacted, though some redactions involve only a single word.<\/p>\n

Kennedy was shot dead as his motorcade passed through downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963. Oswald, a 24-year-old leftist, was arrested 90 minutes later. He denied shooting Kennedy, claiming he was a \u201cpatsy.\u201d The next day Oswald was shot dead on national TV by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with organized crime connections. The causes of Kennedy\u2019s death have been debated ever since.<\/p>\n\n

Federal Judge John Tunheim, chair of the civilian review board which declassified more than 300,000 JFK documents in the 1990s, called on Biden to release the JFK files without exception. \u201cWhy keep on holding back stuff?\u201d Tunheim told The Intercept. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is any reason to protect any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in the files?<\/p>\n

The most sensitive JFK secrets involve U.S. operations against Cuba in 1963. Oswald was a public supporter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or FPCC, a popular campus group which defended Fidel Castro\u2019s government from aggressive U.S. policies. Records declassified in the 1990s revealed that the CIA targeted the FPCC for disruption in September 1963. Within the records that have been partially released, propaganda sources, deception methods, and surveillance techniques are often redacted.<\/p>\n

One passage in a file on Operation Northwoods, a top-secret Pentagon operation that aimed to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba, is still off-limits to the public. Approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May 1963, the Northwoods plans envisioned an \u201cengineered provocation<\/a>\u201d to replace Cuba\u2019s socialist government with a pro-American regime. Northwoods called for the \u201cthe most trusted covert personnel\u201d to stage a spectacular crime on a U.S. target and arrange for the blame to fall on Castro, so as to create a \u201cjustification for U.S. intervention in Cuba.\u201d The Northwood plans were discovered by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. Two paragraphs<\/a> of the 200-page document remain classified in 2021.<\/p>\n

Other files that have not been fully released include the following:<\/p>\n