Jefferson Morley warns Trump’s 2023 JFK file declassification order faces CIA resistance, citing 60-year-old obstruction—like withholding Oswald’s 1963 surveillance records and a redacted Schlesinger memo. Over 3,600 files remain hidden despite the 1992 JFK Records Act, with the CIA’s override loophole risking delays. Morley links the assassination to RFK and MLK murders, implicating CIA ties to crime and mind-control programs, while criticizing media for ignoring key evidence like Angleton’s Dimona cover-up. Full transparency hinges on political will, not just legal orders. [Automatically generated summary]
You first wrote about the JFK assassination for the Washington Post in the spring of 1995. So that's 30 years of serious reporting on one topic, which is admittedly a vast topic, but still one topic.
I mean, those of us who've been calling for the release of these records for more than a decade, this is a great and promising moment.
But there's still pitfalls ahead, and I want to emphasize that.
You know, this is not something that can be done with the stroke of a pen.
The powers of these secret agencies are strong, and we actually kind of see their influence even on Trump's statement.
So it's important to know, you know, what we've learned in the recent past, kind of the context of these latest developments, and, you know, what is possible under this order.
So the president's order, you know, orders a plan within 15 days from four top officials, two of whom are acting and two of whom are Trump appointees, to come up with a plan for declassification.
In the president's order, Section 3 of the president's order contains a loophole, which to me could be interpreted as saying...
The CIA director could overrule any decision that comes out of this declassification effort.
That's a pretty big loophole that needs to be plugged or, you know, disavowed because the agencies cannot have final control over the release of this material, right?
They've been resisting full disclosure since the day President Kennedy died.
That's the day that the CIA's lies began.
CIA officials began lying about what they knew about Lee Harvey Oswald within hours of President Kennedy's murder.
And they've been obfuscating, lying, deceiving, covering up, evading ever since.
So that kind of bureaucratic behavior, it's not going to stop just because President Trump said something on a piece of paper.
They are going to continue to fight a rearguard effort to prevent full disclosure of CIA records related to President Kennedy's assassination.
We need to be vigilant.
We need to identify the documents that are important and set some benchmarks to show, is this effort really obtaining the results?
Is it really going to be successful at obtaining full JFK disclosure?
There's 3,600-plus documents that are held by the National Archives that contain redactions.
Those are in the possession.
Those documents should be very easy to review and release quickly if they're serious about declassification and full disclosure.
So then those records were identified by the JFK Assassination Review Board in the 1990s, which did a great job of obtaining and declassifying a million pages of JFK records.
So we've had a huge advance in historical knowledge since the 1990s.
And what that showed us was the existence of other JFK records that the Review Board never knew about, often because the CIA deceived them.
We need a capacity to get those records that are in the National Archives right now, but we also need to go out and get the records that are known to exist that are not yet in that collection.
So there's two big bodies of records that are out there, and a serious declassification effort will get both of them.
unidentified
And I'm assuming the second set that you refer to are at the CIA? CIA and FBI, yes, and other agencies, too.
You know, when we start seeing documents, it's pretty easy to establish some benchmarks about, you know, what are the most important records.
And, you know, we will see in both categories have those documents come into the record.
So if we monitor the process, we should be able to say, is this serious or not?
You know, the president has ordered a plan in 15 days.
I don't think that means we're going to get documents in 15 days.
And so, you know, but if we don't get documents within 30 days of the plan, then you got to start saying this thing has been taken, has gone off the rails.
What's your guess as to why they're holding so tightly?
And I can just say, I'm sure you know this, but as of last month, there was pressure in Washington to appoint or not appoint certain people based on the likelihood they would push for declassification of these documents.
In other words, there are federal bureaucrats right now for whom withholding these documents is a high priority.
Millions of Americans are still clinging to their New Year's resolutions, but some goals transcend the flipping of the calendar.
Being prepared should always be a goal.
When a crisis hits, the last thing you want is to be scrambling for something basic, like medication.
And that's why the Jace case changes the game.
The Jace case is your personal emergency supply of life-saving medications, antibiotics, critical prescriptions, things you're actually going to need when pharmacies are not available.
The Jace Case's protection is totally necessary.
So as you're planning for the rest of this year, make emergency preparedness a top priority.
We don't know what's coming next.
We do know preparation beats panic every single time.
So with the Jace Case, you'll have peace of mind knowing that you are ready for whatever happens.
Go to jacecase.com, enter the code TUCKER to make sure you have the right meds on hand when you need them.
Which is usually the moment when you can't get them.
Jace.
I mean...
Not knowing much about the process, but just employing common sense, you'd think, well, you know, 62 years, you've had time to scrub the stuff that's incriminating.
Are we confident that these documents still exist?
And, you know, it was interesting to me that in Ratcliffe's confirmation hearings, he was not asked about JFK files.
Which makes me think that it's not a priority of Tom Cotton and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
It seemed like they were staying away from the subject, you know, which, like you noted, had been central to the idea that Amaryllis Fox might take a job at the CIA to oversee this, you know.
You know, there's got to be a commitment from Radcliffe to make sure that this happens.
And I don't think that he's ever said anything by JFK files.
You may know differently, but I've never seen anything.
Well, it's just, you know, I know from the news reports that RFK Jr. floated the idea of having her go to CIA and kind of oversee the process to get to the bottom of the JFK assassination was the quote that I saw.
You know, you need to have a bureaucratic point person to ride herd on this because the agencies are going to be very reluctant.
So that's a good idea.
You know, whether it's her, I mean, a former CIA officer, that's somebody who would be qualified, who knows that building and would be able to do that.
Somebody else could do it as well.
But you are going to need a point person.
The way it's set up now, it looks like...
NSC advisor Mike Walls will probably be the point person along with the attorney general.
So as that takes shape, you know, that's a key thing is what's the real commitment to ride herd on this as opposed to just issue a piece of paper and then let the bureaucracy do what it does?
I'm a little less confident on the Martin Luther King assassination files.
And I think of all of these crimes, there are three.
There's the murder of Bobby Kennedy, the murder of JFK, the murder of MLK. I think that story is, the official story, is the least plausible.
I mean, it's actually ridiculous that he was murdered by a prison inmate acting alone without a job, but somehow that prison inmate winds up going to Canada, then the UK, then is heading to South Africa with two forged foreign passports, and he did that all by himself?
Like, that's just, I mean, come on.
And so clearly there was a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King.
I mean, I don't think any normal person thinks otherwise who knows the details.
What are the chances that We get full disclosure in the next month or two, or what seems like full disclosure, and every media story says, see, there's nothing there.
Well, that's what this document raises the question, right?
If somebody knows the contents of that censored page...
And came to me and said, Jeff, I'll tell you what's in there.
You know, under the law right now, they would be taking a certain legal risk.
You know, that's a fact.
And, you know, when a JFK whistleblower approached me a couple of years ago, and I wrote about this on JFK Facts last year, you know, he described to me a secret CIA facility in Northern Virginia where he had worked as a contractor.
And he said, there's a JFK archive in there.
He had seen it.
He had talked to the people, to the woman who ran it, who controlled access to it.
He saw what was on the shelves there.
So, you know, that guy, it was risky for him to talk to me.
And it took a long time for me to convince him to come forward.
And he only came forward after a couple of years when he realized...
Nothing was happening.
You know, there was no prospect of the CIA coming clean.
So that's important.
I'll tell you something else that's good about President Trump's order.
I think it makes it easier for any whistleblowers to come forward.
And I'd like to say if there are people out there who have access to classified information, you know, consult your lawyer.
But I think President Trump's order effectively...
Well, it reduces their risk about talking about things that are classified.
Because the president's saying, we want all of this out.
Yeah, I mean, when I reported something about the contents of the JFK files two years ago, and Mike Pompeo's lawyer called me the next day to threaten me.
And it goes to show you that, you know, talking about this stuff, You can be threatened with legal action.
That's still possible, you know.
So that threat needs to be removed.
And I hope the president's order has done that, you know, and that people can feel that this is perfectly legitimate to talk about.
There are no real national security concerns in this material, except for the fact that the assassination of a president is a national security concern, right?
The public's trust in the CIA is a national security imperative.
In other words, if people doubt us, Americans will die.
I mean, I think that's what they tell themselves, you know, that preserving myths about their agency are like, you know, like a legitimate goal of government.
President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. The CIA had Lee Harvey Oswald under surveillance for four years.
By November 21, 1963, they had compiled 180 pages of material on Oswald.
His personal life, his political beliefs, his contact with a KGB officer, his arrest.
They had all of that at the time Kennedy was leaving for Dallas.
Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton knew that Oswald was in the Dallas area in the first week of November of 1963. That pre-assassination Oswald file was not completely declassified until April 2023. That's how sensitive this is.
And they're very good at keeping this stuff off the public record.
And now, when you go to people in the mainstream media, They won't report on Oswald's pre-assassination file.
They'll say, oh, they were just covering their asses.
They make excuses for the CIA instead of saying, hey, you had 180 pages on the guy?
You know, was that extreme negligence, intentional negligence, or actual complicity?
And we don't know, but that file is, the pre-assassination Oswald file is one of the most significant things to come out in recent years, for sure.
When the Warren Commission interviewed CIA Director John McCone and Deputy Director Richard Helms behind closed doors, only Warren Commission members there were Alan Dulles and Gerald Ford, and John Sherman Cooper was there for a little bit.
They lied.
I mean, they...
They committed perjury, especially Helms, and said, we didn't have any information about Oswald before the assassination.
Minimal information, that was the line.
So in their mind, a 180-page file on Oswald, that was minimal information.
Pay no attention and don't hold us accountable for missing the fact that this guy killed the president.
We're sorry, Mrs. Kennedy, but that's just the way life is.
I want to tell you about an amazing documentary series from our friend Sean Stone called All the President's Men, the Conspiracy Against Trump.
It is a series of interviews with people at the very heart of the first Trump term, many of whom are close to the heart of the second Trump term.
This is their stories about what permanent Washington tried to do to them, in many cases send them to prison, for the crime of supporting Donald Trump.
Their words have never been more relevant than they are now.
Steve Bannon, Kash Patel, I'm in there even.
All the President's Men, the Conspiracy Against Trump, and you will find it only on tcntuckercarlson.com.
Highly recommended.
you you What do you suppose is still being classified from the investigation to Robert F. Kennedy's death?
James Angleton, the counterintelligence chief who held the Oswald file from 1959 to 1963. Angleton told the church committee, kind of off the record, that he believed RFK had been killed by organized crime figures.
So there's the body of records from the LA Police Department.
The CIA had people in the LAPD who helped control the investigation of the assassination and exclude marginalized witnesses who didn't say what the government wanted said.
The RFK documents are a problem because they're not in one place, and it will take a little bit of effort to collect them.
And it's good that the president wrote in 45 days, not 15 days for those documents, because it's going to take a little more work.
That's a reasonable delay in light of finding and getting and releasing those documents.
Yeah, I mean, you have the testimony of the coroner who was hyper-aware that the JFK autopsy was a joke and a fraud.
And Dr. Noguchi said that Kennedy's head wound was a contact wound, that the gun had been close to Kennedy's head when the shot was fired.
Well, Sirhan Sirhan was never that close to RFK. So that alone...
Is kind of indisputable factual evidence of a deficiency at a minimum in the official story.
So, also, I think, you know, in the long, and I'm not an expert on RFK's assassination, but when you see how CIA assassination operations worked and the kind of techniques that they used, you can't rule out that Sirhan was under some kind of, you know, mind control program.
I mean...
They had a mind control program, and it was designed to do things like this.
Commit an act, and you have no memory of it.
So we know they were working on that technology.
Could it have been applied here?
That's why we need the records, so that we can assess, is that a real possibility?
I mean, you maintain the same story for, you know, almost 60 years.
Yeah, I think it has a little bit more credibility.
Final question.
Thank you for taking this time.
Since you've been working on this for so long and you did come out of, you know, the most prominent of the mainstream media, the Washington Post, have you been slandered as a nutcase conspiracy theorist?
I always wondered, like, what do they do with you exactly?
Because you're not coming from the fringes.
You're coming from the right from the middle of the establishment.
Yeah, I mean, the problem that they have is that I don't have a conspiracy theory.
So the label of conspiracy theorist just doesn't apply.
And the other thing is, you know, nobody can deny the stuff that I'm talking about.
Let me mention another JFK document that's very important and I think will interest you.
One of the things that's withheld and is in the JFK collection right now is the testimony of James Angleton in 1975 to the Church Committee about the Israeli nuclear program.
This is a 113-page document, and it's heavily redacted to this day.
And the redactions clearly pertain Now, is this an assassination-related document?
Absolutely.
The Assassination Records Review Board said this is an assassination-related document.
It meets the statutory definition.
If the president and this effort are serious, that testimony will be declassified because Angleton controlled the Oswald file on the one hand and he was in contact with the Israelis on the other.
So let me ask you, why in the world would the Dimona project, the Israeli nuclear program, which has never officially been admitted by anybody but Israel, what would that conceivably have to do with the assassination of JFK? Well, it relates to what Angleton was doing in 1963, okay?
There were profound conflicts between Israel and the Kennedy White House over the nuclear program.
Kennedy was pressing for on-site inspections, which the Israelis resisted because on-site inspections would have realized that they had a bomb-making program.
So this was a real bone of contention between the Israeli government and the Kennedy administration in the summer of 1963 at a time when Angleton controlled the Oswald file.
So just the juxtaposition of those facts means that everything about it should be on the public record.
Well, because in 1975, the CIA had been revealed to be running assassination programs, to be running a mind control program, to be spying on the anti-war movement, spying on Americans.
You know, he was hauled before and Congress, who was completely in the dark, had been duped or wanted to be duped.
You know, suddenly their eyes woke up and they had to explain to their constituents, hey, what have these guys been doing in our name?
And so Angleton was called in and this was all, you know, executive session testimony.
So he was grilled about lots of things, about domestic spying, about the Israeli nuclear program, about the JFK assassination.
Interestingly enough, He was not questioned about Oswald because even the church committee did not know the extent of the pre-assassination surveillance of Oswald.
That's only something we've learned since the 1990s.
I have no idea what the truth is, of course, but it is interesting that one of the only major policy changes that Lyndon Johnson made in the year after the president's murder was Yeah, basically he dropped the demand for on-site inspections.
And, you know, and this is a tough call for the president because he's going to get very strong pushback from his national security apparatus supported by the CIA, supported by Israeli interests to say, no, you can't talk about that.
So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show.
On one level, that's not surprising.
That's what they do.
But on another level, it's shocking.
With everything that's going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics, with the wars on the cusp of fighting right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more.
And that is totally wrong.
It's immoral.
What can you do about it?
Well, we could whine about it.
That's a waste of time.
We're not in charge of Google.
Or we could find a way around it, a way that you could actually get information that is true, not intentionally deceptive.
The way to do that on YouTube, we think, is to subscribe to our channel.
Subscribe.
Hit the little bell icon to be notified when we upload and share this video.
That way you'll have a much higher chance of hearing actual news and information.