What are they hiding? (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). The National Archives says it won’t release the over 1,000 secret assassination documents they are holding, due to the insistence of the CIA that they keep them secret.
In Salon.com, Jefferson Morley quotes investigative reporter Russ Baker as saying, "Is the government holding back crucial JFK documents? Journalists were hoping that these would be released on November 22, 2013, in time for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, as part of the Obama administration’s declassification campaign.
The records 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. The decision comes at the same time as two former CIA agents have gone public with the theory that Fidel Castro had advance knowledge of the assassination.
Morley quotes political scientist Larry Sabato as saying, "This is a deeply disappointing decision that deprives everyone of a fuller understanding of the JFK assassination. 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" (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show too).
These aren’t the first government documents that have mysteriously been withheld or disappeared. Morley quotes National Archives general counsel Gary Stern as saying that the CIA claims that "substantial logistical requirements" prevented their disclosure next year.
He quotes G. Robert Blakey, who served as chief counsel for Congress’ JFK investigation in the late 1970s, as saying that the NARA is using "bureaucratic jargon to obfuscate its failure to vindicate the public interest in transparency (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show), a goal touted no less than by the Obama administration."
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