'JFK' director Oliver Stone to testify to Congress about the newly released assassination files
Scholars say the files that President Donald Trump ordered to be released showed nothing undercutting the conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. Many documents were previously released but contained newly removed redactions, including Social Security numbers, angering people whose personal information was disclosed.
The first hearing of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets comes five decades after the Warren Commission investigation concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine, acted alone in fatally shooting Kennedy as his motorcade finished a parade route in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who chairs the task force, said last month that she wants to work with writers and researchers to help solve 'one of the biggest cold case files in U.S. history.' Scholars and historians haven't viewed the assassination as a cold case, viewing the evidence for Oswald as a lone gunman as strong.
Stone's 'JFK' was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won two. It grossed more than $200 million but was also dogged by questions about its factuality.
The last formal congressional investigation of Kennedy's assassination ended in 1978, when a House committee issued a report concluding that the Soviet Union, Cuba, organized crime, the CIA and the FBI weren't involved, but Kennedy 'probably was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.' In 1976, a Senate committee said it had not uncovered enough evidence 'to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy.'
The Warren Commission, appointed by Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded that Oswald fired on Kennedy's motorcade from a sniper's perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked. Police arrested Oswald within 90 minutes, and two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast on live television.
For Tuesday's hearing, the task force also invited Jefferson Morley and James DiEugenio, who both have written books arguing for conspiracies behind the assassination. Morley is editor of the JFK Facts blog and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination. He has praised Luna as being open to new information surrounding the killing.
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The Independent
38 minutes ago
- The Independent
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The Independent
38 minutes ago
- The Independent
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
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Lobbies like Aipac and crypto's strategy is to put fear in the hearts of every candidate and member of Congress. Too often, we hear from candidates and members who claim they are with us on the policy, but can't speak out on it because Aipac or crypto will spend against them. Silence is cowardice and cowardice inspires no one. The path to more Democratic victories is not around, behind, and under these lobbies but it's right through them, taking them head-on and ridding them from our politics once and for all. The solution to their fearmongering is not acquiescence, it's solidarity. If we all hold the line together, they cannot divide and conquer. They cannot defeat us all. That courage and solidarity is what can unite a fractured nation of voters who distrust the entire institution of electoral politics and its ability to transform their lives for the better. Democrats can win in 2026 and subsequently in 2028 by showing voters that there is a different way to do electoral politics. The leaders of the future of the Democratic party will be defined by those willing to take on the biggest fights. Leaders who are authentically themselves, courageous and morally consistent. Leaders who have the courage to stand up for all people even in the face of massive opposition. People like Summer Lee, who won her primary and general elections in 2022 despite being one of Aipac's first-ever Super Pac targets and has since introduced legislation to ban all Super Pacs from federal elections. In 2028, Democrats will no longer be running against Donald Trump, and so they will have to be running for something. Piecemeal, technocratic, corporate-staged solutions are not a vision for the future of this country. They are a Substack post that has been written 1,000 times by the same pundits, donors, advisers and politicians that brought us a Republican trifecta in Washington and an unchanged, uninspiring, and ill-equipped Democratic party to fight them. Democratic voters are looking to 2026 to see a new generation of working class leaders that understand their struggles and will not be too scared to fight to deliver massive, generational solutions to them. They do not want to simply vote blue no matter who, they want someone and something to vote for. And with a healthy Democratic primary process led by everyday people – and not corporate Super Pacs – willing to challenge their own party's establishment, they will be able to organize and unite behind a Democratic party that can actually win by winning a better life for the people in this country. Alexandra Rojas is the executive director of Justice Democrats
