Withheld Documents [BONUS]

Four thousand, six hundred eighty four. That's the number of documents related to the JFK assassination that as of November twenty twenty three, still remain fully kept from the public eye.

For those of us who want to know the truth of who killed JFK, why after sixty years are documents still being withheld.

In December of twenty twenty two, the CIA released a statement that the withheld information quote consists of intelligence sources and methods, the release of which would currently do identifiable harm to intelligence operations.

The common refrain of protecting sources and methods gets harder and harder to accept the further we get from nineteen sixty three, with virtually all the people that were involved no longer with us. Many of the documents that are being withheld are from the CIA, which only increases suspicions about their role. To discuss the JFK files, what might be in them, why they're still being hidden, and what we've learned from recent files that have been released, we

Okay, So, the JFK Records Act called for the disclosure of all government related records, and as a result of it, we got a huge body of records, mostly in the nineteen nineties, and a steady stream ever since. The law had a twenty five year sunset provision in it, which said after twenty five years all the records should be made public.

To make the timeline clear, the JFK Records Act that passed in nineteen ninety two required that all government agencies send any records concerning the JFK assassination to the National Archives and Records Administration. These records would then be held by the National Archives twenty five years before being released to the public on October twenty six, twenty seventeen, that is, unless the President sees a quote identifiable harm coming from

The CIA went to President Trump and said, we couldn't possibly release all of these records. And Trump's CIA director Mike Pompeo agreed with the agency and the government in twenty seventeen requested the withholding of about fifteen thousand documents, eleven thousand of which were CIA records. Well, when that happened, the press start paying attention, and the press attitude towards the JFK story started to change a little bit because this level of secrecy after twenty five years just struck

So the agency in charge of the decision is now the agency that likely has the most to hide. It's dullest on the Warren Commission and George Joanned's on the House Select Committee all over again. You can't let us suspect have control of potential evidence.

Is it safe to say we're never going to see those files?

There is no schedule for their release.

In the past, whenever a batch of documents would get released, researchers would scramble to make sense of it.

I'm thinking of this example of a document that came out in December. This guy writes a detailed memo. His name didn't come out until twenty twenty two, you know, And when we get the name, you going, look, the guy died in twenty seventeen. If we'd had document in twenty seventeen, that would have been a very important interview. The CIA knows what they're doing. The point of this secrecy is that witnesses die and they can't talk about it, and the story becomes harder to get.

It's so frustrating. I mean, it's the greatest murder mystery in the history of this country, and with so much disinformation amplified by the Internet, it's becoming almost impossible to get the truth out.

What's come out in recent releases and what else might still be in there.

Another document that came into view last a year ago was a story that we had never known before, which was the CIA station in Miami. At a time when the White House, the FBI, the Dallas Police, and the Secret Service were saying one man alone did it. The CIA station in Miami rejected that idea and began to investigate anti Castro exiles for a possible role in Kennedy's assassination. The people who hated him the most, so the people who knew the Cuban exiles the best, did not believe

This is another one of those moments where you think, how is this possible? People within the CIA were so suspicious of the Cuban exiles that they conducted their own investigation and their results remain hidden.

The fact that the CIA did their own investigation into the assassination and wanted to hide it from us is a perfect example of why there's been such a loss of trust in our government.

Do we know anything about what might be in that report from the Miami CIA office?

Their premise was that it was not a loan gunman, and they never released the results. They have never released the results of that investigation to this day.

What else should we know about these records?

I talked before about the CIA was reading Oswald's mail, the story about Ruben Ephron. We knew that they were reading Oswald's mail. We didn't realize how high that went up in the CIA because of who Ephron was. The other example is are the files of George Johannedes, the man who ran the Cuban students who had encounters with Oswald and who stonewalled the Congressional investigators.

Joan Edes died in nineteen ninety.

His records from nineteen sixty three when he handled the Cubans in nineteen seventy eight, when he stonewalled Congress, those records are classified at the very highest level. Rod whatever Joan Edes was doing in nineteen sixty three, the CIA is determined to keep it secret forever, and so right now we have no prospect for ever seeing those types of documents and answering those types of questions.

Do you think that if we're given the access to the documents that are still being witheld, that we would find a smoking gun in there.

I think that the Joeannedese file would be smoking gun proof that senior CIA officials were running an operation using Lee Harvey Oswald in late nineteen sixty three for their own purposes, which they are still keeping secret. Right if the Joan Edese documents are released and it's shown that senior CIA officials were running an operation using Oswald and they've been hiding it for sixty years, that'd be a devastating blow to the CIA.

Which is why the CIA will likely never release them. Why do you think this is still important today?

Why it matters today is, you know, can government be held accountable? It's a test of American democracy.

And for us to pass that test, we have to trust our institutions. The JFK story is the perfect test of that.

Who killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner, Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me Solidad O'Brien. Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell. Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pineto. Our senior producer is Julie Pineto. Our producers are Tristan Nash, Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Laudo. Our project