5 decades later, JFK files still sealed
Press TV – August 18, 2013
US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Five decades after his death, thousands of pages of official documents over the case remain withheld from public view.
The contents of these files are only partially known and thousands of documents relating to the case remain confidential. What secrets do these documents hold? Why are they still off-limits to researchers?
Documents pertaining to Kennedy’s assassination are set to be released by 2017. But why then and why not sooner? This as researchers demand transparency urging the classified files be made public on eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination.
The Associated Press reports that researchers demand the CIA to declassify documents detailing what the government knew about Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, before the assassination.
Several hundred of the still-classified pages, according to the AP, concern a CIA operative “George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years.”
Joannides left the CIA in 1979 and died in March 1990.
Researchers believe Joannides played a key role in the case both before and after the assassination. Some critics believe that Joannides was involved in a conspiracy to link Oswald with the government of Fidel Castro.
The AP reports that “Joannides was the CIA case officer assigned to an anti-Castro group called the Student Revolutionary Directorate, which had an altercation in the streets of New Orleans with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization that counted Oswald as a member. After the fight, it was discovered that Oswald was passing out pamphlets that contained the address of a known anti-Castro operation, leading many to believe that Oswald was part of a CIA effort to sabotage the pro-Castro group from the inside.”
It was only after Joannides’ death that it came to light that he was in contact with the Directorate (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil of DRE) in 1963, the same year that JFK was assassinated. The CIA has so far refused to release files concerning the activities of Joannides in 1963 fueling suspicions that it might be covering up some secrets about the assassination. The agency was paying the anti-Castro group.
Author Anthony Summers states “By withholding Joannides material, the agency continues to encourage the public to believe they’re covering up something more sinister.”
The Warren Commission, assigned by President Johnson in 1963, concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone and was not part of a conspiracy. But an investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) which was established in 1976 to probe the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, concluded that Kennedy was very likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
Most Americans believe Oswald conspired with others to kill JFK. In November of 1963 some 52% of Americans thought others were involved in the assassination. The percentage was 50% in 1966, 81% in 1976, 74% in 1983, 77% in 1992, 75% in 2001 and 75% in 2003. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up in the case.
No comments yet.
Featured Video
American Military Failure in Afghanistan
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Frlom the Archives
The Fiction of the Jewish History in Palestine
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan | The Palestine Chronicle | April 8, 2011
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NNC Pierce Morgan on March 18, 2011 that he might agree to a Palestinian state through negotiations. And he added, “We will make territorial concessions although it is very painful to do that in our ancestral land.” Netanyahu was not talking about Poland where his ancestors lived. He was talking about Palestine where generations of its indigenous population ancestors lived, cultivated the land and are buried.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism created a new Jewish identity of blood and soil. To mobilize their followers and supporters and appeal to their emotions, the Zionists created myths. Zionism started as a tribal religion without god, but in order to fulfill its function as a unifying force, Zionism required external religious and race symbols, not inner content. Its leaders regarded metaphysical religious belief and purity of race as having value in itself. They created a divine paradisiacal state of merger with the gods. Despite his non-religious ideology, Herzl’s writings were replete with religious references. The Jews should settle in Palestine because, in his words, “the Temple will be visible from long distance, for it is only our ancient faith that has kept us together”.
The Zionists and their supporters have invested tremendous financial and scholarly resources to work within the Hebrew Bible historical narratives to affirm the links between the intrusive Zionist population and the ancient Israelite past, and by doing so assert the right of that population to the land. The political end-game shaped the investigation and the outcome. Tracing the roots of Israel’s ethnic state in biblical antiquity is effectively to silence the indigenous Palestinian claim to the past and therefore to the land. The Biblical scholarship employs a bewildering array of terms for the region: “the Holy Land”, “the Land of the Bible”, “Eretz Israel”, “the Land of Israel”, or “Judah and Samaria.” To the casual reader these names appear interchangeable, but they all imply connection to ancient Israel.
Biblical narratives or poems that cannot be supported by archeology and common sense are treated by the Zionists and their supporters as historical language. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Lawyers’ groups demand end to British military bases in Cyprus
- CIA Assessment: The Resistance Cannot Be Crushed
- Hezbollah Returns: It Didn’t Start a War, It Is Ending One
- EU states seek ‘talks’ with Iran for access to Strait of Hormuz: Report
- Trump on Hormuz: “Others must take care of it” after US falters
- Who Is closer to collapse?
- A War that Backfired: Why the US-Israeli Campaign Is Strengthening Iran
- How Zionist Control Is Hurting US Interests
- Iran warns it may target US missile launch sites in UAE cities
- American Military Failure in Afghanistan
- If Americans Knew
- As US-Israel war on Iran rages, Gaza faces massive dust storm – Not a ceasefire Day 156
- No let-up in attacks on Gaza as Israel takes on Iran, Lebanon – Not a ceasefire Day 155
- ‘Of Course’: IDF Drops Case Against Soldiers Accused of Raping Palestinian Prisoner
- Don’t Fall for the Regime Change Talk. Israel Is ‘Mowing the Lawn’ in Iran
- Will Israel and the US wreck the Gulf States along with Iran?
- US so far burned through ‘years’ of munitions in Iran war: Report
- How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
- Outdated intel likely led to deadly U.S. strike on Iranian elementary school, sources say
- Pentagon insider says high U.S official Douglas Feith reported to Netanyahu
- In fond memory of Walid Khalidi, the historian of Palestine
- No Tricks Zone
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
- Televised! Leading German Political Candidate Tells Schoolchildren CO2 Makes Sun Hotter!
- New Study: A Century Warming Of 1.1°C Is ‘Commonplace’ And ‘Not Unusual’ During This Interglacial
- New Study: ‘Internal Noise’ And Volcanic Forcing Can Trigger 10-15°C Warming Within Decades
- Glaciers Worldwide Are Suddendly Surging, Experts Blame Warming!
- Surprising Discovery: Sahara Is Greening…Billions Of Trees Where Once Thought To Be Barren
Aletho News 
Leave a comment