I testified at a congressional hearing on the JFK files — that was a mistake

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3 days ago

'Dear Ms. Alexis Coe: The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets requests your testimony ...'
It was such a dignified pseudo-summons. I might have framed it, had the actual hearing — unsubtly and inaccurately titled 'The JFK Files: Assessing Over 60 Years of the Federal Government's Obstruction, Obfuscation, and Deception' — not devolved into a bleak farce.
Of course, I was honored to be invited by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. But I knew the odds weren't in my favor: I was the lone witness called by the minority party, the only historian, the only woman cast in this made-for-YouTube morality play — pitted against Fox News regulars and their pick-me understudies: Reps. Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace — primed to attack, regardless of the subject matter.
The five witnesses invited by the majority were all alive in 1963, decades before I was born. Over time, their theories appear to have hardened like volcanic glass and, for apparent true believers, were just as impervious to fact. Our written statements diverged starkly — though mine was conspicuously absent from the hearing's website for 36 hours, posted only after a special request.
Still, hope — or perhaps hubris — lingered in my historian's heart. I truly didn't realize I was more decoy than foil until I took the oath.
After that, it was undeniable: Congress is dominated by deeply unserious people wielding serious power.
Most members didn't even bother to show up. Rep. Robert Garcia of California was the lone Democrat on the dais; a handful of Republicans sat spaced out in the raised committee seats, dwarfed by the empty expanse around them.
The few questions posed were lazy and largely rhetorical. Rep. Mace, of South Carolina, breezed in long enough to barrel through a brief tirade about government secrecy before demanding 'Was this a cover-up, yes or no?' — of everyone but me.
Between the members and the witnesses loomed a screen with a remote witness; he struggled to stay upright and awake. But he wasn't the main image. That distinction belonged to a grinning Tucker Carlson — patron saint of Republican grievance — front and center in a bizarre group photo that lingered for half the hearing. It wasn't an official slide; it was just a juvenile, irrelevant flex from a staffer.
I wished I'd been allowed to make corrections throughout the hearing. The first witness — a long-retired dentist who had been a young resident in the Dallas emergency room where President John F. Kennedy died — set the tone. His testimony blended medical minutiae with conspiracy: Then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, he claimed, was too calm to be innocent.
They understood archives the way toddlers understand taxes: not at all, and mostly through tantrum. They dismissed Ambassador Caroline Kennedy's actual record of transparency and early release — she's shared documents related to her assassinated father, said yes to countless research requests and generally bent over backward for historians. The majority's witnesses never used her honorific. Never mind that nothing substantial had surfaced since the last release of archival material related to the JFK assassination. They felt entitled to more, more, more.
The committee's chairwoman, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, reveled in it. She waxed rhapsodic about how Donald Trump was the most transparent president ever, threatened to shake down Russia for documents and cast American archivists as CIA co-conspirators.
None of that is true, but I take particular umbrage at the many attacks government-employed librarians faced during the hearing. Of course, none were present to explain how they are overworked, underfunded and operating within a gutted system increasingly strained by political interference. Yet they embody everything government should be: ethical, methodical, devoted to public service. I know this because their work enables my own.
Rep. Luna didn't want to hear that. No Republican did. To serve their points, they'd cherry-pick my quotes to weaponize and flatten — sometimes referring to me as 'the historian' or 'Coo,' a new-to-me mispronunciation of my last name.
Garcia asked me one question. I used the time I had to fact-check and, since I clearly couldn't beat 'em, tried to join them: If we all agreed that the CIA behaved badly in the 1960s — like J. Edgar Hoover's obsessive surveillance and sabotage of Martin Luther King Jr. — why not give the upcoming MLK release the same scrutiny?
That's when Rep. Garcia — the lone Democrat on the dais — claimed to agree but cut me off and promptly left the hearing to his conservative colleagues.
Fortunately, I'd pregamed with a thorough statement they absolutely hated. I reminded them of the exquisite irony — they mark their own papers private — and that history has consistently taken a dim view of enablers who shield demagogues from accountability, excuse their abuses and help consolidate their power. I did mean to inspire: The last time a demagogue held this much sway in Congress, it ended in censure. At the time, a young senator saw the way the wind was blowing — and stepped out in front of it. His name was John F. Kennedy. The other guy? Joseph McCarthy.
After the hearing, a few staffers apologized. Mostly, though, I faced a lot of people's backs. When an actual archivist appeared, Luna introduced him to every witness except me.
By that time, the feeling was mutual. I preferred the conspiracy theorists, too. At least they believed in something.
So do I. Everything I do, including testifying, is an expression of my patriotism. I'm still down for the American Experiment — but I'm convinced the 119th Congress will do nothing to protect it. Its performance will end soon enough, but the damage won't.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com