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General News 9/16/2014 at 12:28:27
CIA and the National Archives Thwart The JFK
Act and Obstruct Democratic Accountability
By Jim Lesar (about the author) Permalink
(Page 1 of 1 pages)
Related Topic(s): CIA; Government Law-breaking; Government Secrecy; JFK Assassination; National Archives; Secrecy - Transparency, Add Tags Add to My Group(s)
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All records related to the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy ("JFK") are already supposed
to be public. That's what Congress intended when it unanimously passed the President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 ("JFK Act"). It
hasn't happened. The National Archives and the CIA are still withholding
thousands of pages of JFK Act records in their entirety, even though it has
been more than a half century since the Warren Commission issued its Report on
the murder of the President. NARA's actions violate the law and its intent, and
severely erode the principle of democratic accountability, on which America's
government is based. This violation directly raises the issue of who writes the
law, who rules in the United States: the elected representatives of the people
in Congress or the intelligence agencies?
Over 1,100 CIA files dealing with the John F. Kennedy assassination remain classified in apparent defiance of the JFK Records Act which requires them to be speedily reviewed and made public.
(image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org))
The
Assassination Archives and Research Center ("AARC"), a nonprofit
organization dedicated to obtaining, preserving and disseminating information
on political assassinations, is holding a conference on the 50th anniversary of
the Kennedy assassination this September 26-28th, at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency
Hotel. Entitled "The
Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant
Disclosures," the conference will show that a large number of
significant disclosures have been made over the decades since the Report was
issued and have severely wounded its credibility. Its conclusion is now a myth.
There was no single rifle, and there was no lone assassin. There were multiple
shots from multiple locations fired by multiple assassins.
But the demise of the Warren Report
still leaves us without the full truth that we are entitled to because
important information about JFK's murder continues to be withheld. In the wake
of the huge outpouring of public opinion caused by Oliver Stone's movie
"JFK," Congress
unanimously passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). It directed that Government agencies would
promptly disclose to the American people all the records and information needed
for the public to determine the truth about the assassination. That mandate has
not been implemented. Rather, the CIA and the National Archives continue to
withhold thousands of pages of documents in their entirety -- despite this
intent. Such records must be released as promptly as circumstances permit.
Instead, NARA, deferring to the CIA,
continues to refuse to release these records until 2017 -- if then. The present
circumstances clearly warrant immediate release. This is an egregious violation
of the JFK Act and the unanimous intent of Congress.
These records are, almost without
exception, more than 50 years old. Under President Obama's new executive
order on national security classification, E.O.13526, nearly all
information more than 50 years old is subject to automatic declassification and
must be released. Yet the CIA and NARA continue to insist that these materials
should continue to be withheld. I invited the National Archivist, Mr. David
Ferreiro, to address this policy at our conference on the Warren Report. He did
not respond directly, but conveyed his decision to decline the invitation
through a phone call to me by NARA's legal counsel Gary Stern.
The NARA/CIA refusal to obey the law is
egregious. The JFK Act was passed unanimously to get Kennedy assassination
information to the public in a timely fashion, so the people could assess the
controversies over JFK's death. The 50th anniversary is the perfect opportunity
for NARA and the CIA to produce these withheld records and to stop violations
of the JFK Act. Instead, NARA has reneged on its previous commitment to make
these records available by the end of 2013.
This is not simply a matter of academic
interest. There are other implications that flow from the conduct of NARA and
CIA.
Many startling revelations bearing on
the Kennedy assassination controversy have been unearthed in the 50 years since
the Warren Report was issued. Allen Dulles sat on the Warren Commission, and
was its most active member, despite the odd circumstance that Kennedy
forced him out of his CIA office as Director of CIA after the Bay of Pigs
disaster. Years after the Report was issued, it was learned that Dulles was
privy to the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate President Fidel Castro, but
failed to mention this obviously relevant circumstance to his fellow
commissioners. A more recent jaw-dropping disclosure is that the integrity
of the last official investigation into President Kennedy's murder, that
conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), was
compromised by the CIA, when it assigned as liason to the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, a retired official named George Joannides, while
withholding information about his background which suggestsd that he should
instead have been a focus of their investigation. Federal Judge and former
chair of the Assassination Records Review Board, John R. Tunheim, has accused
the CIA of "treachery"
in its handling of the Joannides matter and suggests
that "if [the CIA] fooled us on that, they may have fooled us on other
things," while calling on the CIA to release those and implicitly all
other files that "clearly have become relevant to the assassination,"
Ironically, the JFK Act was passed to
remedy the failure of the Freedom of Information Act to provide for meaningful
access to Kennedy assassination records. Now assassination researchers are
compelled once again to resort to FOIA - which Congress sought to eliminate
with its JFK Act legislation - by providing a more efficacious, prompt, and
less costly remedy.
It is time, now, for NARA to fulfill
its mission as library for the United States of America. According to its
charter, it is not an appendage to the CIA. It is obligated as an independent
agency to give its professional judgment and advice to the White House. NARA's
mission statement reads:
"We drive openness, cultivate
public participation, and strengthen our nation's democracy through public
access to high-value government records.
"Our Mission is to provide public access to Federal Government records
in our custody and control. Public access to government records strengthens
democracy by allowing Americans to claim their rights of citizenship, hold
their government accountable, and understand their history so they can
participate more effectively in their government."
When the records of greatest interest
to the public are the JFK Act records it is withholding, NARA has not complied
with its Mission Statement.
James
Lesar,
President,
AARC
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