It'll takes weeks, if not months, to sort through some 80,000 documents, many of which appear to be recycled with redactions removed. But there's plenty new, as we outline below.
On a day with Trump-Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, NATO freaking, Germany rearming and much more exploding on our watefront, we had to leave it to others for a first swipe at the avalanche of JFK documents released Wednesday.
Here are the leading headlines so far:
“JFK assassination files released, sending history buffs hunting for new clues”Associated Press
“What’s in the New Kennedy Files? Spies. State Secrets. No Second Gunman.”New York Times
“What’s new in the JFK files? 5 things to know about the assassination records.”Washington Post
And so on and so forth from news organizatIons scrambing to digest the monster lode.
But to us, the most complete, useful and quickly digestIble first-out-of the-gate packages you might not have seen came from theNational Security Archive, a private research organizaton at George Washington University that specializes in these kinds of things, which is to say, unearthing long classified Cold War-era documents.
“CIA Covert Ops: Kennedy Assassination Records Lift Veil of Secrecy,”its headline announced.
Its subchapters:
*CIA Clandestine Operations More Extensive than Previously Known
*Unredacted CIA Papers Name Names, Agents, Countries, Expenditures and
Top Secret Clandestine Operations in Latin America and Elsewhere
*After 27 Years, Final Tranches of Declassified JFK Documents Posted by NARA
*National Security Archive Praises JFK Records Act Leading to Today’s Release
Plus, and this is a big plus: The NSA makes significant new documents themselves easily visible and fullu accessible.
Some highlights singled out by the NSA:
Among the revelations are completely unredacted copies of:
A key document from the CIA’s famed “Family Jewels” series describing “examples of activities exceeding the CIA’s charter,” including a CIA counterespionage operation against the French embassy in Washington, D.C., that included “breaking and entering and the removal of documents from the French consulate” and DCI John McCone’s dealings with the Vatican, including Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, which “could and would raise eyebrows in some quarters.”
The CIA Inspector General’s report on the 1961 assassination of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, revealing the names of CIA officers and others who assisted in the plot.
A series of summaries of briefings by DCI John McCone to members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) that provide more details about known CIA political action programs and previously unknown details about “the Agency’s covert financial support to political parties in the fight against communism” around the world.
A CIA inspector general report on the workings of the CIA station in Mexico City providing one of the most detailed views of how the CIA organizes its operations on the ground.
A history of CIA operations in the Western Hemisphere covering 1946-1965, including expenditures by CIA stations in Latin America and details on CIA payments and influence operations in Bolivia to orchestrate the election of their chosen candidate General René Barrientos.
We heartily invite you togo there for a quick presentation of what’s new and important in the documents so far. There’s much, much more coming, of course, and our own experts will be drilling down on particular aspects of them a.s.a.p.
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