The 5 Biggest Revelations from the Declassified Kennedy Assassination Documents
Earlier this week, the Trump administration released thousands of files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy.
JFK's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, criticized the decision. 'The truth is a lot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn't need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme,' he wrote. 'Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he's not here to punch back. There's nothing heroic about it.'
While not much new information was expected in the files—many were previously released—there are still a few major revelations. (To read the files yourself, they are accessible on the National Archives website, here.)
The biggest headline related to JFK's assassination was about shooter Lee Harvey Oswald. A document dated November 20, 1991 is a report from Russia on Oswald in which KGB official Nikonov confirmed that 'Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.' According to document, 'Nikonov doubted that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KBG [sic] watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.' Nikonov also added that Oswald had 'a stormy relationship with his Soviet wife' and the KGB files noted that 'Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the USSR.'
The majority of a 15 page memo included in the files, titled 'C.I.A. Reorganization' and written in the wake of the Bay of Pigs plan, was already public, minus one redacted section. That now public section includes a plan to break up the CIA, giving control of covert activities to the State Department. (That never happened.)
The biggest revelation of Schlesinger's memo, however, is how many State Department employees were covert CIA operatives. Per the New York Times, 'Mr. Schlesinger describes how roughly 1,500 supposed State Department employees were actually undercover C.I.A. officers who sometimes operated at odds with U.S. ambassadors. He wrote that nearly half of the political officers at U.S. embassies, who were responsible for understanding and advising on their host countries' politics, were working for the C.I.A.'
Throughout the files, previously redacted information on CIA operations was declassified, including details about the agents involved in the 1961 assassination of Rafael Trujillo. Another memo released lists the various ways the CIA 'exceeded' its charter, including, per the New York Times 'break-ins at the French Consulate in Washington, planned paramilitary attacks on Chinese nuclear facilities and injections of a 'contaminating agent' in Cuban sugar bound for the Soviet Union.'
CIA methods are also detailed throughout. 'One document details the use of fluoroscopic scanning - using X-rays to show images of the inside of an object,' per the BBC. 'The technique was developed to detect hidden microphones possibly used to bug CIA offices. In another document, the CIA describes a system to secretly tag and identify public phone boxes that are tapped, using a paint only visible under ultraviolet light.'
One offhand mention of CIA director John A. McCone's 'dealings with the Vatican, including Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI' which 'would and could raise eyebrows in certain quarters,' per a 1973 memo from a CIA employee released in the files, has sparked interest, though no further details have been revealed on what those 'dealings' could be.
Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said, 'This opens a door on a whole history of collaboration between the Vatican and the C.I.A., which, boy, would be explosive if we could get documents about it… Which of course, we will now try to do.'
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