Thousands more secret JFK files set to be released next week

Thousands of classified documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are set to be released next week, despite several government agencies desperately trying to keep them under wraps.

More than 15,000 documents concerning the assassination remain locked away at the National Archives 59 years after his death – including dozens which experts believe would be the ‘smoking gun’ proving direct ties between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. 

President Joe Biden ordered a review into the documents which will likely see a large batch of files still under lock and key released by December 15, after 1500 were released on the same date last year.

But his administration is now facing a federal lawsuit from a New York-based lawyer who discovered that the CIA, FBI, DEA and other agencies are hell-bent on keeping the files secret – lending more credence to the incredulity of conspiracy theorists with each passing year.

US President John F Kennedy (1917 – 1963) and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (1929 – 1994) arriving at San Antonio airport during a campaign tour of Texas, 21st November 1963. The President was assassinated in Dallas the following day

President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Minutes later the President was assassinated as his car passed through Dealey Plaza

Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, was arrested for the assassination. He was then killed two days later while being transported by police. He was shot by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby

Jefferson Morley, the Vice President of the Mary Ferrell Foundation – one of the US’ largest sources of assassination records – said there are at least 16,000 documents yet to be released.

He believes 44 of them contain information about a covert CIA program relating to Cuba that directly involved Oswald.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is one of several clients of Larry Schnapf, a New York lawyer who filed the lawsuit against the Biden administration and the National Archives in October, demanding the release of all JFK-related documents.

It comes after Schnapf obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request internal communications between the National Archives and several government agencies, telling POLITICO that the CIA, FBI, DEA went to great lengths to prevent the files from being shown to the public. 

The lawsuit alleges that the government has not met an obligation to release all files within 25 years of the assassination under the JFK Records Act of 1992.

Meanwhile, an NBC poll conducted on Tuesday revealed that more than 7 in 10 Americans want the government to release the remaining document still classified.

‘There’s not a lot that unites a lot of American voters these days, but one of the few things that does is to see President Biden release the long-overdue JFK files as he promised,’ said pollster Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Amandi public opinion research firm. 

The Kennedy family is among those who have repeatedly called for the documents to be made public, with JFK’s nephew Robert Kennedy Jr. declaring last year: ‘It’s an outrage. It’s an outrage against American democracy. We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government.’ 

JFK and Jackie Kennedy are pictured in his car in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, moments before he was assassinated

More than 1,500 previously classified JFK assassination files were released last December, after months of delays by Biden who had promised to make them public but then stalled, blaming the delay on the pandemic.

The documents released on December 15, 2021 include memos detailing anonymous phone calls to the US embassy in Canberra, Australia, a year before the shooting, in which the caller said the Soviet Government was plotting to kill Kennedy.

They also included details of a meeting between Lee Harvey Oswald – Kennedy’s supposed killer – with a KGB agent at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City two months before the shooting. 

Among the files is a memo which reveals that the Naval Attaché in Canberra, cabled the CIA in 1962 to report a call of someone warning that ‘Iron Curtain countries’ were plotting to pay a Polish chauffeur $100,000 to kill Kennedy – though the caller was dismissed as a crank. 

A 1963 memo written by CIA agent Tennent H. Bagley on November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination details how Oswald – whose wife was Russian – met with a KGB agent in September 1963 in Mexico City 

In September 1963 – two months JFK’s death – Oswald met with Consul Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, a KGB agent in Mexico City.

‘According to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Lee Oswald was at the Soviet Embassy there on September 23, 1963 and spoke with Consul Valeriy Vladimirovich. 

‘Oswald called the Soviet Embassy on October 1, identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating the above and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was ”anything concerning the telegram to Washington”,’ read a a memo written by CIA officer Tennent H. Bagley a day after Kennedy’s assassination. 

Then on November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy was killed, the Naval Attaché in Canberra cabled the CIA that someone claiming to be a Polish chauffeur at the Soviet Union’s embassy had telephoned to report that the Soviet government had financed the assassination.

The call was extremely similar to the one made a year prior to the assassination in which the caller stated that ‘Iron Curtain Countries’ planned to pay $100,000 for Kennedy to be killed.

However, the memo noted that Australian security services considered the caller a ‘crank’ and were unable to identify any Polish employees at the Soviet embassy.

‘Avail. evidence would tend to show caller was a crank but can’t confirm this,’ the memo stated. 

Flowers lie on a plaque with a quote from former President John F. Kennedy on the Grassy Knoll at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Tourists walk around the Grassy Knoll at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas – the scene of Kennedy’s assassination

The tranche of documents released in December 2021 also included previously sealed files on Operation Mongoose, the CIA’s plan to destabilize the Cuban government and remove Fidel Castro from power.

Evolving from the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, Mongoose involved a wide range of plots for economic sabotage, espionage, and even proposals to garner public support for an invasion through ‘false flag’ attacks attributed to Cuba.

The program fell apart in the wake of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

High-level US Mafia figures have long been rumored to have been involved in Mongoose, due to their connections in Cuba and anger at Castro for shutting down Mob-run casinos in Havana.

Unsealed files from the 1975 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities state that President Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was part of the secret National Security Council group overseeing Mongoose.

The report said Robert Kennedy was ‘a vigorous participant in its activities and to many seemed the principal driving force.’

Mongoose has long figured prominently in conspiracy theories involving the JFK assassination.

Details of Lee Harvey Oswald’s address book which contained the details of journalists in Moscow, including Aline Mosby, a famous trailblazing journalist who was one of the first female reporters to cover the Kremlin. The notes suggest she had Russian connections 

There are also previously classified files about Operation Mongoose, the US’s attempt to overthrow the Cuban communist regime

Conspiracy theorists continue to question why the government wants to keep some of the files redacted. 

JFK was sitting in the backseat of a convertible with First Lady Jackie Kennedy when he was shot in the neck at 12.30pm on November 22, 1963.

He was taken to the hospital but was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. 

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a theater a short time later, and denied shooting Kennedy in police interviews. 

Oswald, a former Marine and Marxism enthusiast, was shot and killed by local Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days later.

The murder was witnessed by the media and policemen, and Ruby claimed that his rage over Kennedy’s assassination is what motivated him. 

But some conspiracy theorists believe that Oswald was not involved in Kennedy’s assassination, or at the very least could not have acted alone.

Last year, filmmaker Oliver Stone released a documentary entitled ‘JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass’ which provided a host of evidence to suggest it would have been impossible for Oswald to have shot and killed Kennedy in the way the official narrative suggests.