I have spent far too much time over the course of my life reading and thinking about the Lincoln assassination and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it. It was not until 1983 that I found a single source that attempted to explain why there is so much uncertainty surrounding Honest Abe’s death in a book I bought at The Smithsonian, “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.” There has always been trivia game of collecting the “amazing” parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the death of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1962, but one parallel is undeniable: government incompetence, inefficiency, bureaucratic stubbornness and deliberate defiance of law created the fertile soil for conspiracy theories to thrive regarding both events.
In part propelled by his “Odd Couple” ally Robert Kennedy, Jr., President Trump has ordered all of the information, papers and materials related to JFK’s assassination released: after all, it’s only been 61 years since Lee Harvey Oswald sent a bullet through his brain. That release still hasn’t happened, and if past experience holds, it won’t this time either.
The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to the Warren Commission or a later board charged with determining once and for all why Kennedy was killed and who was responsible. The records were discovered among the 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found when they undertook to obey Trump’s order, which I’m sure some of my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends will claim is illegal. (If Trump does it and it undermines progressive power, it is illegal by definition.)
That thousands of records possibly shedding metaphorical light on one of the most important and catastrophic events in U.S. history have been buried for this long, says reporter Marc Caputo in his piece at Axios, “is likely to raise questions about the procedures for vetting and releasing information across the entire government.” Gee, ya think? The DOGE efforts to discover what is really going on in the U.S.’s agencies and what they are spending money on has already raised questions, and some answers too. Here’s one answer: our federal bureaucracy at all levels is staffed with people who have power to deceive the public, defy elected officials and ignore the law to advance their own agendas, personal, political and ideological. And they use that power to do it.
Jefferson Morley, an expert on the Kennedy assassination and vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, which is the nation’s largest source of online records of Kennedy’s killing, told Axios, “The FBI is finally saying, ‘Let’s respond to the president’s order,’ instead of keeping the secrecy going.”
That’s big of them.
The 1992 JFK Records Act required that all assassination records be handed over to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board and then to the National Archives, which maintains the collection of documents that were supposed to be fully disclosed in 2017. “All” means all, bu these newly discovered records never made it to review board or the National Archives.
An innocent oversight I’m sure.
Trump, in his first term, delayed disclosure of some of the records on the advice of the CIA, which many conspiracy theories hold was complicit in Kennedy’s death or has at least covering up the participation of persons unknown. The various intelligence agencies controlling records of the assassination are still recommending redactions. Caputo writes, “Government secrecy advocates argued to Trump and Biden that full disclosure of the assassination documents could compromise “sources and methods” of intelligence gathering, and unfairly implicate officials involved in the controversy.”
Right. The records of Lincoln’s assassination were also buried, destroyed or lost because of earlier “secrecy advocates.” Among the materials the public has never been allowed to see or hear are, for example, the jailhouse recordings of mobster Carlos Marcello, who claimed he was involved in the assassination. You may recall that among his other adulterous flings, JFK had a sexual relationship with the girlfriend of a Mafia boss. The transcripts of the Marcello confession were released, but not the tapes—you know, like with Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview.
New focus is also on the CIA files of George Joannides. He was the chief of covert action at the CIA station in Miami and was a case officer for a New Orleans-based, CIA-funded exile group that had a series of contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. . Joannides never informed a House committee investigating the assassination about his ties to Oswald even though he was formally involved with the inquiry. That’s exactly the kind of connect-the-dots fact that launched the Lincoln assassination conspiracy theories. Why was the drunken guard at Lincoln’s Ford’s Theater box who was conveniently AWOL when Booth came calling never investigated or even punished for his dereliction of duty?
I don’t expect the new material to prove that LBJ conspired to murder Kennedy (which was one of the assertions of Oliver Stone’s indefensible “JFK,” which I walked out of in protest), just as none of the Lincoln assassination records that had been withheld showed that War Secretary Edwin Stanton helped Booth kill Lincoln. The significance of this episode, rather, is in its clear demonstration of why the public cannot and should not trust the government to be open, honest, straight or transparent, even when laws and Presidential edicts demand otherwise. There is a “deep state,” and that has always been the case, but the larger and more complex the government gets, the deeper the partisan, power-abusing staffers with their own agendas get, like determined ticks. The JFK assassination files, like the Lincoln assassination files, are relatively unimportant examples of the kinds of deception and sabotage that flourish under the fog of bureaucracy.
Those who deny this dangerous and democracy-eroding phenomenon, which reached its tipping point (I hope) with the cover-up of Joe Biden’s incapacity for at least two years, are like the deniers of progressive media bias. They are allies of the enemies of the people even if they really believe their delusions.
Ethics Alarms 
Two Years? Joe was fully demented when they propped him up in 2019 in his basement. It was four years of “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Grr.
I stopped thinking about the JFK case after Stone’s movie. I realized then we were treading in wacko land.
On a parallel point, I would like to see the DOGE audit regarding how much thee state spends in those blackout pens they use is the redaction process. I once asked for a document pertaining to myself. Of the one page report all but my first name was blackened.
This was a property tax document.
Another parallel peeve, In the last months I’ve gotten notices from my pharmacy that says, something like “Your prescription starting with M is ready for renewal.” I have three meds that begin with the letter M. When I contacted the pharmacy to see if i can opt out of the “secret” messaging I was told they were protecting my privacy so there was no option to opt out.
I really do not care if the world knows I am taking Metformin, Manjoura, or Metamucil.
Its a rainy day in Alabama so my peeve monitor is on high alert.
They are legally required to honor your messaging preferences. Send a “STOP” reply to that text message, then when the next one comes after it, send a demand letter and invoice for $500 citing 47 U.S.C. § 227.
There are many problems with what has occurred with the different assassinations and government actions. One of the key problems is the lack of understanding, which creates legends significantly when information is suppressed. The base truth of many legends is disappointing and often rather mundane, and disappointing when finally brought to light.
The creation of legends often goes hand-in-hand with deification (more common when the individual has public notoriety before the event or events) or vilification (more common when an individual has limited public notoriety before the event or events). The combination of legend and deification/vilification creates a situation wherein the potential for cognitive dissonance increases if information unavailable becomes available. Additionally, people and institutions can benefit from the creation of legends, deities, and villains; benefits will likely go away with evidence that goes against the legend/deification/vilification narrative(s).
It is common for high-ranking government officials to decide, based on their “wisdom,” that something would affect the public too much. Those high-ranking officials are often so wrapped in their echo chambers that they do not realize how far off the mark they are. This is the same issue with mis/disinformation, where select groups decide, based on the members’ “superior” brain waves, that they “know” how something will or does affect others. This often occurs when people in power are naive about a subject. Still, because they “know they are superior,” they cannot acknowledge discrepancies in their knowledge and/or abilities. Moreover, because said high-ranking individuals often have sycophant advisors, they feel extraordinarily confident that they know best.
While we would like to think that government officials are top-notch people, many are, at best, mediocre. The upward seepage of mediocrity in the government is incredible (the government is not the only place this occurs). Anyone who believes that the mediocre are capable of some of the fantastic things claimed in legend and/or deification/vilification is fooling themselves. The “Deep State” is not a club. It is a culture of mediocrity wrapped in the veneer of superiority.
As an aside, I am currently witnessing the mediocre scramble as the administration asks questions. Some of the questions are not tough, but you would think they are given some responses.