Will Trump Keep or Break His Vow to Release the Secret JFK Records?
In October 2022, the Mary Ferrell Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking the release of the JFK-assassination-related records that the CIA and other federal agencies have succeeded in keeping for more than 60 years. The foundation’s suit was based on the notion that the JFK Records Act of 1992 mandated the release of those records.
Not surprisingly, the CIA, operating through the Justice Department, fiercely opposed the lawsuit. It argued that “national security” required the continued secrecy of those 60-year-old records, even into perpetuity.
Recently, the Ninth Circuit federal Court of Appeals made it clear that it was siding with the government and keeping these records secret. See “Court Ruling Begs the Question, Is the JFK Records Act Dead?” by Chad Nagle, which is posted on the website of JFK Facts.
That certainly doesn’t surprise me. While I greatly admire the people and attorneys who brought the lawsuit, I never had much hope that any federal judge, including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, would dare to buck the national-security establishment, especially on something like this.
Meanwhile, a member of Congress is proposing to bring into existence a new version of the Assassination Records Review Board, the independent agency that was charged with enforcing the JFK Records Act back in the 1990s. The ARRB did a fantastic job in securing the release, oftentimes over the fierce objections of the Deep State, of thousands of assassination-related records that the CIA, Pentagon, Secret Service, and other Deep State agencies had succeeded in keeping secret for more than 30 years.
Unfortunately, however, the JFK Records Act gave those federal agencies an additional 25 years of secrecy on thousands records, on grounds of “national security,” while letting the ARRB go out of existence. That meant that when those 25 years were up, there was no federal agency in existence to enforce the l
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