Biden discloses most JFK records, but withholds thousands

• President Joe Biden’s administration published more than 13,000 assassination records.
• However, it fell short of 30-year-old legislation demanding transparency.
• 98% of all documents pertaining to the 1963 killing have been published.

President Joe Biden’s administration published more than 13,000 assassination records Thursday, but it fell short of a 30-year-old legislation demanding transparency.

With Thursday’s action, 98% of all documents pertaining to the 1963 killing have been published, according to the National Archives, which administers the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

The records detail Lee Harvey Oswald’s tenure in Mexico City.

About 4,300 records remain partially redacted, but none are totally blacked out, according to the government.

Experts believe there’s no reason to withhold them to preserve national security or intelligence collection.

“We’re 59 years after President John Kennedy’s assassination, and there’s just no justification for this,” said Judge John H. Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994-98. Biden voted for the

President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which passed Congress unanimously.

44 documents related to a shadowy CIA agent, George Joannides, and a Cuba-related program he ran remain largely hidden, according to JFK researchers with the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation’s largest assassination records repository, which sued the administration to make all the documents public. The foundation argues the CIA withholds the most relevant records.

The lion’s share of the suspected Joannides records were not released Thursday, according to the foundation’s lawsuit.

CIA officials disagree on how many Joannides recordings they have, but two will be disclosed Thursday.

“We believe all CIA data substantively connected to Mr. Joannides were previously published,” the agency stated in a statement boasting of “tremendous progress” in disclosing records.

The government says there are about 87,000 JFK Act records. “As of today, the CIA has released 84,000 without redactions. That’s 95% of the docs released in full.

All assassination-related documents were intended to be revealed by 2017. Then-President Donald Trump postponed the full release of all information, leaving it to Biden, who did so again in 2021.

Trump and Biden permitted some material releases, but the classified papers concerning government connections with Oswald are expected to be the most fascinating to scholars.

In a memorandum explaining the release of records and the withholding of others, Biden noted that the records act “permits the continued postponement of disclosure of information… only when postponement remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or foreign relations that outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

Tunheim heard these arguments in the 1990s and doesn’t buy them. Earlier this month, he wrote Biden a letter urging him to honor the spirit of the law and he referenced Joannides, who guided and monitored an anti-Fidel Castro group called Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil in 1963 that came into contact with Oswald in New Orleans months before the assassination, leading some to speculate about CIA complicity in the killing.

As Oswald connected with DRE and became recognized as a Castro supporter, the Pentagon was planning Operation Northwoods to stage a false flag attack in the U.S. to blame on Cuba and justify a military clash to make up for the Bay of Pigs debacle two years earlier.

In its complaint, the foundation demands Operation Northwoods papers, CIA assassination plans, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s June 30, 1961 memo to JFK to reorganize the agency following the Bay of Pigs.

Jefferson Morley, a JFK specialist, and Mary Ferrell Foundation vice president said the letter was “mostly redacted.”

“If the CIA can’t produce a memo prepared two years before the assassination, you have to question their good faith,” he added.

The CIA’s dishonesty concerning Joannides’ ties to Oswald spans decades and came to light when the records act unearthed material about him; Tunheim said the agency misled his board and a previous congressional investigating panel in the 1970s.

The CIA didn’t reveal this information and hired Joannides as an agency contact to investigators, which hampered the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations probe, its general counsel said in 2001. Agreed Tunheim.

His data shouldn’t be shared because he wasn’t involved in the assassination. Tunheim said that wasn’t true. If we had his information, we would have released it. People think they’re hiding something since they haven’t revealed it.

“It implies a secret.”

Tunheim said he doesn’t see a “smoking gun” in the records suggesting Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. Since the shooting, most Americans have concluded Oswald was not a lone-wolf gunman, according to Gallup polling and a poll released last week by Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based JFK history aficionado.

71% of voters said Biden should release all JFK records despite agency objections.

“The CIA is putting President Biden in a poor political situation,” Amandi told NBC News.

“Requesting more delays and redactions for 60-year-old materials on the most critical topic in American history — the assassination of a president inside our borders — raises suspicions and borders on a tacit admission by the CIA that something is amiss in Langley, Virginia.”

Every document release adds a piece to the assassination puzzle, but Rex Bradford doesn’t expect a “Star Chamber report” to explain what happened. It ranges from assassination-related stories to elements that, when combined, advance the plot. Joannides is our favorite.”

Bradford called Thursday’s records release “half a loaf” that lacked openness.

Bradford learned 20 years ago that the first recorded discussion between LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover was inexplicably destroyed. A transcript of the conversation exists, in which Hoover mentions Oswald visiting Mexico City before the assassination, although its reliability is unknown.

The Mexico City narrative is important in the JFK assassination because it scared Washington officials and helped push the Warren Commission response, Bradford said.

The Warren Commission found that Oswald acted alone.

As part of its lawsuit, the foundation wants a document removed from Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt’s security file and the full release of the personnel files of senior CIA operations officer David Atlee Phillips (who told conflicting stories about Oswald’s Mexico City visit) and senior Dallas-based CIA operations officer James Walton Moore (who was informed about Oswald’s return to Texas in 1962 and allegedly told a CIA asset that Oswald was “harried”).

Some records were redacted Thursday.

“We’re 60. The foundation’s counsel stated, “They’re out of excuses.” “Hopefully, the courts will make them divulge everything”

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