Can anybody verify this report that just came in over the wire?
JFK FILES RELEASED - NEW INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY
Government Officially Reopens JFK Case
National News Wire Service (NNWS) 04/01/13
WASHINGTON D.C. In response to overwhelming evidence
presented at the Wecht Symposium on the assassination of President Kennedy, President
Obama decided to quell increasing public pressure and issued an Executive Order
releasing the remaining government records on the assassination, and ordered the
Department of Justice officially reopened the case.
In response to the President’s order, the Department
of Justice appointed a Special Prosecutor and convened four special federal grand juries in Washington, Dallas,
New Orleans and Miami that will review the evidence and take the testimony of
witnesses to determine if there are any grounds to indict anyone for crimes
related to the assassination, including perjury, destruction of evidence,
obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
A Department of Justice spokesman said, “Since
evidence produced at the Pittsburgh conference clearly demonstrated that Lee
Harvey Oswald alone could not have committed the assassination, we have decided
to abide by the principles and procedures of the constitution and present the evidence in its proper legal venue – the grand jury.”
According to the government spokesman, it wasn’t any one piece
of evidence or new witness, but all of the evidence taken together that crimes
were committed by individuals other than Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin
who was killed while in Dallas police custody.
It has been suggested that the federal government is
trying to counter a Dallas grand jury that has been convened by District Attorney Craig Watkins to consider the large number of cold case homicides
in that city, including that of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, whose murder is considered connected to the assassination of the president at Dealey Plaza. “The government
in Washington is afraid that there will be a runaway grand jury in Dallas, and
they want to control the new investigation if there is going to be one,” said a
Dallas court clerk who refused to be identified because they were not supposed
to talk to the press.
Since grand jury proceedings in the United States
are secret, and are convened for eighteen months, the identities of those who
testify before them and what they say will not be made public, but the
Presidential Executive Order releasing the remaining records will provide a
treasure trove of new and previously secret records that will keep researchers,
journalists and historians busy for years to come.
“I have followed the JFK case closely over the years
since seeing Oliver Stone’s film,” President Obama said in signing the order, “and
having been more recently inspired by James Douglas book, “Who Killed JFK and Why It Matters,” and I now realized that I can’t promote an open and transparent administration while keeping these important assassination records secret. So I have
ordered them all released to the public so the citizens can read them and make up their
own minds.”
In signing the order, President Obama also called on Congress to hold oversight hearings of the JFK Act
of 1992 to review the work of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), determine what records were illegally destroyed and are missing, and to ensure the departments and agencies turn over all of their records on the assassination to the NARA for inclusion in the JFK Records Collection, and open to the public without restrictions.
“At the time of the assassination, it was in the
nation’s interest to seal these records to maintain our national security,” the
President said in a short announcement to the media at the White House Press Room, “but today, it
is in our national interest to release them to the public so the citizens can know what
their government did both before and in the wake of the assassination of
President Kennedy.” The President did not take any questions after making his
remarks, saying that he will wait on a report from Congress and the Department
of Justice after the grand juries complete their work.
The Washington D.C. Special Federal Grand Jury has
already met and ordered the remains of the victims – John F. Kennedy, John B.
Connally, J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald exhumed and subjected to forensic
autopsies using the latest technical equipment, but the results of those tests
will not be revealed for the life of the grand jury.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, the Pittsburgh, Pa. coroner said, “I’m
surprised by the government’s actions and don’t understand why they didn’t do
this fifty years ago, but I’m glad they’re doing it my lifetime.”
The Wecht Symposium, “Passing the Torch,” sponsored
by the Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law at Duquesne University,
October 17-19, 2013, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination
of President Kennedy, included presentations by doctors, historians, professors,
journalists, investigators and researchers who unanimously concluded that
President Kennedy was not killed by one man alone and that justice must be
served before the crime is relegated an historical event.
Wouldn't this about-face in government response be something to behold? I'm afraid that will never happen.
ReplyDeleteAlas, it will take only unrelenting commitment to root out the real truth behind this tragic event. I hope we are able to uncover it in our lifetime. The fact is, when finally revealed, this truth will be more stunning than President Kennedy's assassination, not because of who did it, but what it means or has meant by failing to find out sooner.
We have all recognized at some point over the last 50 years that this was conspiracy. The who's and what's of it have been endlessly debated and written about. And that its most lasting testament and element is the adherence to the cover-up, whatever that entails involving obfuscation of evolving perspective and factual clarity. Can generations of Americans unravel all the fact from fiction, the Cold War mentality which incubated the plot.
This was a constitutional coup de tat and a political murder. And it was carried out through compartmentalization of planning at the highest levels. Every presidential officeholder since has been kept in place by the events of that day either by compromise, threat of their own assassination, impeachment or acknowledgment of what the FBI still insists is a closed case. The fact that not one major media outlet in the US has ever taken a serious look at the record is the proof of something more deeply worrisome and sinister.
By now, the Dealey Plaza story as determined by the Warren Report is mostly myth. LBJ appointed more Republicans than Democrats to the seven-member commission, most of whom were never present for most their meetings. He twisted Earl Warren's arm to chair the commission, and then lied to him about the potential consequences if a certain verdict wasn't rendered. He got a second-pick government prosecutor to lead it. Lee J. Rankin and staff rewrote the findings to deny and hide commission dissent about the single-bullet theory conclusion, opposed by up to three members, making the case for the president's killing by Lee Harvey Oswald, practically a tie vote.
Whether anyone believes Oswald acted alone, the evidence that he shot anyone from his Book Depository perch is highly in doubt. He probably never would have been convicted, which meant that he had to be killed to keep him quiet.
So, that even if you don't believe the weirdest getaway story in the history of political assassination, that a crazed gunman would shoot the president, and then take a bus and taxi to his rooming house, get a jacket and then take a long walk to a movie theater where he'd confront the only police officer in the city not assigned to downtown security after the shooting, and kill him, because he fit a rather general description of the alleged gunman seen briefly by one bystander. And so, within two hours of the murder, police had their man. Later that night, police officials determined Oswald was their man. They had him cold. They had his guns and a work-up of his background that made him the perfect trigger man or "patsy" as he told the press in a brief news conference.
The real patsies over time are us. President Kennedy was no saint. And his election involved a rigged vote. But allowing his public death to be secured by a fictional story as part of this nation's legacy and history is outrageous.
And so, it is up to us to do what Kennedy urged in his inaugural speech, to take action against government when it fails to serve our interests and constitutional obligations. We are all called upon in this regard to re-examine what we are and what this meant, and whether we have the will to transform this country, by asking not what it can do for us, but we can do to make it right again.