Opinion - Reps. Luna and Garcia should make their next JFK hearing a fair fight
Recently the House Oversight and Government Reform committee's task force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held a hearing on the JFK files. It included the deeply weird claim by one member of the panel, testifying that the man arrested for the murder of President John F. Kennedy 'might have fired a gun' that day in Dallas, but was absolutely 'not the intellectual author' of the murder.
After plenty of thinking, I must admit: I have no idea what that means either.
I am not alone. JFK anti-conspiracy nation was appalled.
'My expectations were low going in and it was still worse than I expected,' said Gerald Posner in an interview. Posner is the author of 'Case Closed,' the bestselling book on the assassination. The one that lays out the-beyond-convincing case that Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested 80 minutes after the assassination — after murdering a Dallas police officer — is irrefutably much more than just 'the intellectual author' of the assassination.
He is the lone shooter of the president, proven by the evidence, melded with a solid understanding of his biography, confirmed by multiple investigations as well as by decades of hard work by individual researchers unimpressed by tales of invisible additional shooters; or of somehow popular explanations such as that either of two Secret Service agents in the motorcade shot JFK. (Really. This scenario is huge on social media.)
The reason the Oswald-is-guilty case was not made at the hearing is because no one present was interested in making it. Nobody at the witness table and nobody among their questioners, members of the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who announced before the hearing that she had decided that multiple shooters were involved, and that a news film taken moments after the shooting had been hidden from the country by NBC.
It had not, and was barely referenced in the hearing. Several leading anti-conspiracy critics said they approached the subcommittee in advance of the hearing seeking a seat at that table of testifiers, but were ignored.
'We are not angry, but we are disappointed,' said Fred Litwin, author, podcaster and constant updater of his essential website, which debunks claim after ridiculous claim from JFK conspiracists. 'Congresswoman Luna does not seem to have a firm grasp of the case, and I worry that she could end up being fooled by theories which are ridiculous.'
One solution: Invite to testify next time experts with a broader range of views. And not just on who the killer is, but on what arcane documents mean and do not mean. Luna announced late last week she would in fact host another hearing on JFK issues.
Posner, Litwin, W. Tracey Parnell and other leading anti-JFK-conspiracy critics were left to provide fast and informative reactions after the made-for-TV event. The non-revelations piled up: The CIA reading Oswald's mail — actually only one letter, from Oswald's mother, asking him to write to her more — was likely because Oswald lived in the Soviet Union. The covert mail surveillance program itself has long been public, revealed in the 1970s.
Oliver Stone said 'more than 40 witnesses' have claimed they saw a large hole in the back of JFK's head, potentially indicating a shot from the front. Litwin and other researchers patiently point out that in fact such a claim is assembled from recollections that are nowhere near consistent — or from witnesses who would not have had an extended view of Kennedy's wounds.
Conspiracy dissenters also note the vast evidence-faking operation necessary to sustain such a scenario, involving, to begin with, the entire autopsy team — doctors, photographers, x-ray technicians, medical staff, military brass — as well as many others operating within an enormous criminal conspiracy that has somehow sustained for 62 years. (The most prominent film of the assassination would have had to be somehow secretly altered, as well, since it shows the back of the president's head intact.)
The JFK files release in the days preceding the hearing was also a dud, say the conspiracy dissenters, as nearly all of these documents were previously released and whatever redactions were uncovered addressed zilch about who shot the president. But additional truth may in fact be out there: JFK assassination-related files Litwin says he wants to read may be found in Cuba, Mexico City, Russia and in the city of Minsk in Belarus, the Soviet city where Oswald lived as a defector.
Litwin wants to know: Were further KGB operations in place to influence American public opinion — aimed at selling the narrative that the CIA was behind the assassination — than those already known?
One useful voice for future hearings is the king of the skeptics. 'Will the final release of all the JFK files at long last put an end to conspiracism surrounding the murder of the 35th president?' asked Michael Shermer, author, publisher, podcaster and executive director of the Skeptic Society. 'Of course not!
'If it were the assassination of Texas Gov. [John] Connally instead of JFK, or the mayor of Dallas, or anyone besides JFK, would we still be talking about it? No. Oswald would have been charged, tried and convicted in a short trial, and that would have been case closed. But because it was the POTUS, the proportionality bias dictates that large effects must have large causes.'
And if Luna keeps to her word to look into the murder of Robert Kennedy as well, she or ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) could invite RFK case authority and author Mel Ayton or bulldog author-reporter Dan Moldea to that hearing. Both are respected anti-conspiracy authorities in the RFK case. Let's at least make it a fair fight.
Craig Colgan is a Washington, D.C.-based writer.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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