"JFK" director Oliver Stone to testify to Congress about newly released assassination files
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, whose 1991 film "JFK" portrayed President John F. Kennedy's assassination as the work of a shadowy government conspiracy, is set to testify to Congress on Tuesday about thousands of
newly released government documents
surrounding the killing.
Scholars say the files that President Donald Trump ordered to be released showed nothing undercutting the conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy, and the declassified versions did not appear to contain significant new revelations about the assassination, based on a review by CBS News. 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.
Shortly after taking office in January, Mr. Trump
took executive action
to establish a process to declassify and release any remaining documents related to Kennedy's killing, as well as the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The recently released documents about JFK's assassination have been uploaded to a portal maintained by the National Archives, which can be found
here
.
Stefan Becket
contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Trump says he has no plans to speak to Musk as feud persists
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has no plans to speak with Elon Musk, signaling the president and his former ally might not resolve their feud over a sweeping tax-cut bill any time soon. Addressing reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he wasn't "thinking about" the Tesla CEO. "I hope he does well with Tesla," Trump said. However, Trump said a review of Musk's extensive contracts with the federal government was in order. "We'll take look at everything," the president said. "It's a lot of money." Trump may get rid of the red Tesla Model S that he bought in March after showcasing Musk's electric cars on the White House lawn, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Musk, for his part, did not directly address Trump but kept up his criticism of the massive Republican tax and spending bill that contains much of Trump's domestic agenda. On his social-media platform X, Musk amplified remarks made by others that Trump's "big beautiful bill" would hurt Republicans politically and add to the nation's $36.2 trillion debt. He replied "exactly" to a post by another X user that said Musk had criticized Congress and Trump had responded by criticizing Musk personally. Musk also declared it was time for a new political party in the United States "to represent the 80% in the middle!" People who have spoken to Musk said his anger has begun to recede and they think he will want to repair his relationship with Trump, according to one person who has spoken to Musk's entourage. The White House statements came one day after the two men battled openly in an extraordinary display of hostilities that marked a stark end to a close alliance. Tesla stock rose on Friday, clawing back some losses from Thursday's session, when it dropped 14% and lost $150 billion in value, the largest single-day decline in the company's history. Musk's high-profile allies have largely stayed silent during the feud. But one, investor James Fishback, called on Musk to apologize. "President Trump has shown grace and patience at a time when Elon's behavior is disappointing and frankly downright disturbing," Fishback said in a statement. Musk, the world's richest man, bankrolled a large part of Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Trump named Musk to head a controversial effort to downsize the federal workforce and slash spending. Trump feted Musk at the White House a week ago as he wrapped up his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk cut only about half of 1% of total spending, far short of his brash plans to axe $2 trillion from the federal budget. Since then, Musk has denounced Trump's tax-cut and spending bill as a "disgusting abomination." His opposition is complicating efforts to pass the bill in Congress where Republicans hold a slim majority. Trump's bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives last month and is now before the Senate, where Republicans say they will make further changes. Nonpartisan analysts say the measure would add $2.4 trillion in debt over 10 years. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he has been texting with Musk and hopes the dispute is resolved quickly. "I don't argue with him about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn't argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it," Johnson said on CNBC. Trump had initially stayed quiet while Musk campaigned to torpedo the bill, but broke his silence on Thursday, telling reporters he was "very disappointed" in Musk. Musk, who spent nearly $300 million in last year's elections, said Trump would have lost without his support and suggested he should be impeached. Trump suggested he would terminate government contracts with Musk's businesses, which include rocket company SpaceX and its satellite unit Starlink. The billionaire then threatened to decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, the only U.S. spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the International Space Station. Musk later backed off that threat. Musk had been angered when Trump over the weekend revoked his nomination of Musk ally Jared Isaacman to head the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Two sources with direct knowledge of the dispute said White House personnel director Sergio Gor had helped turn Trump against Isaacman by highlighting his past donations to Democrats. Musk and Gor had been at odds since the billionaire criticized Gor's pace of hiring at a March cabinet meeting, the two sources said. A White House spokesperson, Steven Cheung, praised Gor's efforts to staff the administration but did not address his relationship with Musk. A prolonged feud could make it harder for Republicans to keep control of Congress in next year's midterm elections if Musk withholds financial support or other major Silicon Valley business leaders distance themselves from Trump. Musk had already said he planned to curtail his political spending, and on Tuesday he called for "all politicians who betrayed the American people" to be fired next year. His involvement with the Trump administration has provoked widespread protests at Tesla sites, driving down sales while investors fretted that Musk's attention was too divided.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Supreme Court rules DOGE can access Social Security information
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled the Department of Government Efficiency could access Social Security systems with sensitive information. The ruling blocked a lower Maryland court order that kept Doge from seeking certain Social Security information due to federal privacy laws. The data from the U.S. Social Security Administration includes Social Security numbers, medical information, citizenship records, school records, and tax returns for millions of Americans. Exclusive: Legal Institute Celebrates Scotus Decision, Declares 'Religious Liberty Is Alive And Well' "We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work," the court said in an unsigned order. The six conservative justices voted for the ruling and the three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Read On The Fox News App Doge Will Go On: Hill Pork Hawk Says Rooting Out Government Waste Will Continue After Elon Jackson said the ruling created "grave privacy risks" for millions of Americans by giving "unfettered data access to DOGE regardless — despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards, and all before we know for sure whether federal law countenances such access." The ruling came soon after DOGE's former head, Elon Musk, left the government and a day after he and President Donald Trump traded personal attacks that were sparked by a disagreement over the president's "Big, Beautiful" bill. DOGE's path forward after Musk's exit isn't clear, but Trump and Musk have both previously said the newly-created agency's work would continue. The Trump administration has said DOGE needs access to Social Security information to continue its core task of rooting out government waste. Musk has previously called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," and insisted on eliminating waste in the program. Maryland U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander previously ruled that DOGE's efforts with Social Security were a "fishing expedition" based on "little more than suspicion" of fraud. She did allow some access, however, to anonymous data for DOGE workers who had gone through background checks. An appeals court didn't immediately lift the block, with dissenting conservative judges saying there's no evidence that DOGE has done any "targeted snooping" or exposed personal information. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Original article source: Supreme Court rules DOGE can access Social Security information
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How RFK Jr. is quickly changing U.S. health agencies
WASHINGTON — In just a few short months, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has begun to transform U.S. health policy: shrinking staff at health agencies, restructuring the focus of some regulators and researchers, changing Covid vaccine regulations and reshaping the mission of his department to focus more on alternative medicine. The directives are all part of the same issue set that drove a slice of health-conscious, left-leaning Americans to eventually vote for a Republican president whose favorite meal is from McDonald's, Trump and Kennedy catered to a type of voter who has grown distrustful of America's health care establishment — but possibly fomented a new type of distrust in federal health policy along the way. Bernadine Francis, a lifelong Democrat who backed Joe Biden for president in 2020 before supporting Donald Trump in 2024, told NBC News in an interview that she approves of Kennedy's efforts so far, despite his 'hands being tied' by entrenched forces in the administration and in Congress. 'From what I have seen so far with what RFK has been trying to do,' she said, 'I am really, really proud of what he's doing.' Francis is among the voters who left the Democratic Party and voted for Trump because 'nothing else mattered' apart from public health, which they — like Kennedy — felt was going in the wrong direction. Concerns about chemicals in food and toxins in the environment, long championed by Democrats, has become a galvanizing issue to a key portion of Trump's Republican Party, complete with an oversaturation of information that in some cases hasn't been proven. It's wrapped up, as well, in concerns about the Covid vaccine, which was accelerated under Trump, administered under Biden and weaponized by anti-vaccine activists like Kennedy amid lockdowns and firings in the wake of the devastating pandemic. 'We knew in order to get RFK in there so he can help with the situation that we have in the health industry, we knew we had to do this,' said Francis, a retired Washington, D.C., public school administrator, who said she left her 'beloved' career because she had refused the vaccine. 'It seemed to me, as soon as [Biden] became president, the vaccine was mandated, and that was when I lost all hope in the Democrats,' Francis told NBC News, referring to vaccination mandates put in place by the Biden administration for a large portion of the federal workforce during the height of the pandemic. There are not currently any federal Covid vaccine mandates. There have been 1,228,393 confirmed Covid deaths in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Marty Makary, Kennedy's hand-picked commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and a John Hopkins scientist and researcher, told NBC News in an interview that he wants to transform the agency, which he said faced 'corruption' over influence from the pharmaceutical and food industries. 'I mean, you look at the food pyramid, it was not based on what's best for you, it was based on what companies wanted you to buy,' he said, referring to the 1992 and later iterations of official government nutritional guidance. He said there would be 'entirely new nutrition guidance' released later this year, as soon as this summer. He praised the FDA's mission of research and regulation, saying the agency is 'incredibly well-oiled, and we've got the trains running on time.' He also highlighted the 75-page 'Make America Healthy Again' commission report — which focused on ultraprocessed foods and toxins in the environment — as having set 'the agenda for research' at the FDA, HHS and agencies overseeing social safety net programs such as Medicare and food stamps moving forward. (The MAHA report initially cited some studies that didn't exist, a mistake that Kennedy adviser Calley Means said was a 'great disservice' to their mission.) 'I think there's a lot we're going to learn. For example, the microbiome, which gets attention in the MAHA report, needs to be on the map. We don't even talk about it in our medical circles,' Makary said. 'The microbiome, food is medicine, the immune response that happens when chemicals that don't appear in nature go down our GI tract.' Pressed on other areas of the administration, like the Environmental Protection Agency, making decisions that run counter to the pro-regulatory ideas presented in the MAHA report, Makary said he can 'only comment on the FDA' where they are 'committed to Secretary Kennedy's vision.' But Kennedy's public health agenda goes beyond looking at the food supply and chemicals. Recently, Kennedy said in a video posted on X last month that the Covid vaccine is no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a change in CDC guidance that skipped the normal public review period. Days later, after critics questioned the decision and raised concerns over a lack of public data behind the move, the administration updated its guidance again, urging parents to consult with their doctors instead. Pressed about the confusion and whether Americans are now trading one side of public distrust in the health system for another, Makary defended Kennedy, who has been criticized for spreading misinformation. 'My experience with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy is that he listens. He listens to myself, he listens to Jay Bhattacharya, listens to Dr. Mehmet Oz, he listens to a host of scientists that are giving him guidance,' Makary argued, referring to the director of the National Institutes of Health and the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, respectively. 'So he may have big questions, but the questions he's asking are the questions most Americans are asking.' Dr. Dawn Mussallem, a breast cancer oncologist and integrative medicine doctor — a physician who combines conventional treatments with research-based alternative therapies — has tried to help her patients wade through medical misinformation they encounter online and in their social circles. Mussallem has an incredible story of personal survival: While in medical school, she was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and, after conventional therapies like chemo saved her life, was diagnosed with heart failure. After undergoing a heart transplant, Mussallem ran a 26-mile marathon just one year later. 'I learned a lot in medical school, but nothing compared to what I learned being a patient,' said Mussallem, who dedicates, on average, 90 minutes each in one-on-one sessions with her patients. 'This is not about any one political choice. But we know lifestyle matters.' For example, a new study from the American Society of Clinical Oncology that finds eating food that lowers inflammation in the body may help people with advanced colon cancer survive longer. Mussallem's mission, along with her colleagues, is to elevate the modern medicine that saved her life, as well as encouraging her patients to live healthy lifestyles, including regular exercise, minimally processed foods, less screen time, more social connection and better sleep. But politics do get in the way for millions of Americans who are inundated daily with social media influencers and 'nonmedical experts,' as Mussallem puts it, who stoke fear in her patients. 'Patients come in with all these questions, fears,' she said. 'I've heard this many times from patients, that their nervous system is affected by what they're seeing happening in government.' Mussallem acknowledges that 'a lot of individuals out there' have questioned traditional medicine. For her, it isn't one or the other — it's both. 'We have to trust the conventional medicine,' she said. 'With the conventional care that marches right alongside more of an integrative modality to look at the root causes of disease, as well as to help to optimize with lifestyle, is where we need to be.' This article was originally published on
