Bowing To The CIA, The National Archives Won't Release 1,100 Secret Assassination Documents In 2013 [View all]

[WillyT]

Last edited Sat Jun 16, 2012, 07:27 PM - Edit history (2)

Bowing to the CIA, the National Archives says it won't release 1,100 secret assassination documents in 2013

Jim Garrison (Played By Kevin Costner): All these documents are yours. The people's property, you pay for it! But because the government considers you children who might be too disturbed or distressed to face this reality, or because you might possibly lynch those involved, you cannot see these documents for another seventy-five years. I'm in my early forties, so I'll have shuffled off this mortal coil by then, but I'm already telling my eight-year-old son to keep himself physically fit, so that one glorious September morning, in the year 2038, he can walk into the National Archives, and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew! They might even push it back then, hell it may become a generational affair, with questions passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, but someday, somewhere, somebody will find out the damn truth.

Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/quotes

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National Archives: No new JFK docs
Bowing to the CIA, the National Archives says it won't release 1,100 secret assassination documents in 2013
BY JEFFERSON MORLEY - Salon
THURSDAY, JUN 14, 2012 03:00 PM PDT


President and Mrs. Kennedy ride through Dallas moments before
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. (Credit: Reuters)

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Acquiescing to CIA demands for secrecy, the National Archives announced Wednesday that it will not release 1,171 top-secret Agency documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy in time for the 5oth anniversary of JFK’s death in November 2013.

“Is the government holding back crucial JFK documents,” asked Russ Baker in a WhoWhatWhy piece that Salon published last month. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In a letter released this week, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Record Administration, said the Archives would not release the records as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing declassification campaign. Stern cited CIA claims that “substantial logistical requirements” prevented their disclosure next year.

“This is a deeply disappointing decision that deprives everyone of a fuller understanding of the JFK assassination,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, who is writing a book about the impact of JFK’s assassination on American politics. “The 50th anniversary of that terrible event is the perfect opportunity to shed more light on the violent removal of a president. This adds to the widely held public suspicion that the government may still be hiding some key facts about President Kennedy’s murder.”

The records, requested by the nonprofit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), will remain secret until at least 2017, when the 1992 JFK Records Act mandates public release of all assassination files in the government’s possession. (Full disclosure: AARC president Jim Lesar is my attorney in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking JFK records from the CIA.)

Among those seeking expedited disclosure were Notre Dame Law School professor G. Robert Blakey, who served as chief counsel for Congress’ JFK investigation in the late 1970s. In an email he accused the NARA of using “bureaucratic jargon to obfuscate its failure to vindicate the public interest in transparency, a goal touted no less than by the Obama administration. “

“It beggars the imagination to assert that documents (or portions thereof) can only be released in 2017, but not 2013,” said independent scholar Max Holland in an email. “I can understand a 100-year argument, in order to protect the identity of confidential sources (say a spy in Castro’s Politburo who said he didn’t do it); a 100-year rule would protect him or her. But 54 years versus 50? Doesn’t make sense … While it is true that JFK assassination is the most declassified event in U.S. history, in some respects NARA has done a poor job of carrying out the letter, spirit and intent of the JFK Act.”

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More: http://www.salon.com/2012/06/14/national_archives_no_new_jfk_docs/