With Donald Trump re-assuming the presidency in January, it is time to ask the question: What will or what can President Trump do about the withheld JFK assassination records?
Not many experts expect to see a “smoking gun” document explaining exactly what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963. I do not. Such a record likely does not exist today and probably never did. But what is in the remaining withheld assassination records? Most certainly, the answer is in the records that agencies, chiefly the CIA, are fighting so very hard to keep secret. We have a very good idea of what information is in those records, and only full public disclosure of those records can prove otherwise.
Here is what we know today, and there is no legitimate dispute about it.
We know that the CIA sponsored an operation known as AMSPELL, which was designed to infiltrate leftist organizations in the U.S. that supported Castro’s regime in Cuba. The AMSPELL network included the DRE, an anti-Castro organization that operated in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
We know that the AMSPELL/DRE network had direct contact and involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963. Those activities resulted in a public and staged altercation with Oswald, leading to his arrest.
We know about operation AMSANTA, a joint FBI/CIA program designed to place willing Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) members into Cuba to collect intelligence. We also know that Oswald met at length with the FBI after his arrest, while in police custody in New Orleans.
After Oswald’s arrest in New Orleans in August 1963, the DRE leaders arranged for Oswald to appear on local TV and radio stations, where he flashed his fake FPCC credentials and talked about his beliefs as a “pro-Castro Marxist.” The FPCC was the exact organization that these intelligence operations were targeting, and Oswald was in the middle of it all.
We know that a CIA operation was used weeks later in Mexico City, to further advance the fiction that Oswald was a “Castro patriot” desperately seeking entry to Cuba. Six weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by the alleged “lone assassin” Oswald.
Oswald’s intelligence connections are discussed at length in “The JFK Assassination Chokeholds.” He was no “lone nut” assassin.
We know that within hours of the assassination on November 22, CBS broadcast to the world Oswald’s radio and TV interviews from New Orleans, where he discussed his “work” with the FPCC and claimed to be a “Marxist.” Where did CBS get all of this information on Oswald so suddenly? The CIA’s AMSPELL/DRE network likely fed CBS.
We know of an operation known as “Operation Northwoods,” a Pentagon scheme designed to provoke war with Cuba by using a “spectacular” act of violence in the United States, using covert CIA personnel to arrange for the blame to fall on Castro, creating pretext and public support for the president to finally invade Cuba. Sound familiar to what happened in Dallas on November 22? With Oswald in perfect position to take the immediate blame? Certainly looks like it.
A complete release of the withheld JFK assassination files would disprove the above if it’s not true. So why not release them? Because the intelligence agencies will not do so. The bottom line is that agencies, chiefly the CIA, cling to a fierce belief that it has the unrestricted power to break the law. The belief it has the authority to continue dictating to the president and to Congress the information that can be shared with the American public.
Yes, the JFK Records Act of 1992 authorized agencies to request continued withholding of sensitive assassination records that could or would disclose an intelligence “source or method.” Those requests (thousands of them) were made to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s, and the ARRB was the arbiter. Only the president had authority to continue postponement if there was still clear and convincing evidence that a record, if disclosed publicly, could still harm a current intelligence source and method.
Here's the ultimate problem today. It is already known that agencies were using operations like AMSPELL and AMSANTA to infiltrate the FPCC. It is already known that the AMSPELL/DRE network had direct and public involvement with Oswald in New Orleans. It is already known that CIA officer George Joannides managed the AMSPELL operation in New Orleans that utilized Oswald’s fake FPCC credentials. We already know about the CIA operation in Mexico City involving Oswald (or an imposter). Is the AMSPELL/DRE operation involving Oswald and the FPCC still a current source and method? No.
There is an undeniable conclusion here. The only plausible reason for the intelligence agencies to fight tooth and nail on the remaining withheld records is that all information on Oswald, AMSPELL, AMSANTA and Mexico City will be public. And that those intelligence operations played a part in what happened on November 22, 1963, in Dallas.
The agencies will not give up the fight. Clearly. Now, all the president and Congress have to do is enforce the JFK Records Act and direct the United States Archivist to release the records. Perhaps the final records will not show much at all and that we are simply dealing with stubbornness and belief from agencies that they are above the law. Logic certainly dictates otherwise. It is time to let the records, already reviewed with scrutiny by the ARRB in the 1990s, speak for themselves.
Mark Adamczyk is a Florida attorney who has studied the history of the Kennedy assassination for 25 years. He is co-author of the book The JFK Assassination Chokeholds. In recent years, Mark has become an expert on the JFK Records Collection laws and spends significant time in looking at solutions for problem of government transparency and full disclosure of the JFK records.