Did the CIA obstruct the Release of Documents?

[Fred Litwin]

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/robert-reynolds-on-accusations-the-cia-tried-to-obstruct-the-release-of-records

Robert Reynolds on Accusations the CIA Tried to Obstruct the Release of Records 

Robert Reynolds is perhaps the best expert on the JFK assassination documents. Here is an excerpt, and links to his excellent article rebutting allegations from Mark Adamc

[Michael T. Griffith]

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/robert-reynolds-on-accusations-the-cia-tried-to-obstruct-the-release-of-records

Robert Reynolds on Accusations the CIA Tried to Obstruct the Release of Records

Robert Reynolds is perhaps the best expert on the JFK assassination documents. Here is an excerpt, and links to his excellent article rebutting allegations from Mark Adamc

Fred, this is perhaps the most discrediting post you've ever posted. Reynolds is totally out to lunch, and you are making a big mistake by relying on his claims. There is a mountain of indisputable evidence, acknowledged even by a number of WC defenders, that the CIA withheld important documents, unjustifiably redacted numerous document, and misled the WC and the HSCA. Even John Tunheim, the super-cautious and see-no-evil former ARRB chairman, has said the CIA tried to keep the ARRB from releasing documents. The CIA refused to release documents on William King Harvey until earlier this year when Trump's executive order gave them no choice.

And I say these things as someone who supports the CIA's mission and who believes the CIA has done enormous good on behalf of freedom since its founding. There were some very bad apples in the CIA in the 1960s through the 1990s, but even then the CIA did a great deal of good. I applied for a linguist job with the CIA in the early 1990s and was slated for hiring but was not hired due to a hiring freeze.

Some sources for further reading on this issue:

Congress Must Hold the CIA Accountable in the Wake of Recent JFK Assassination Revelations
https://burlison.house.gov/media/in-the-news/congress-must-hold-cia-accountable-wake-recent-jfk-assassination-revelations

What the New JFK Files Reveal About the CIA’s Secrets
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jfk-files-cia-secrets?srsltid=AfmBOor2tojzRrB86STSbIcgSBBQ2MQVhCoxDmrx9mjFnB3RCOH2ah05

The CIA and the JFK Assassination, Parts 1 and 2
https://share.google/xzvAv7uqkqUk53vVV
https://share.google/c127ITaEn5wwJg0TE

[Tom Graves]

Fred, this is perhaps the most discrediting post you've ever posted. Reynolds is totally out to lunch, and you are making a big mistake by relying on his claims. There is a mountain of indisputable evidence, acknowledged even by a number of WC defenders, that the CIA withheld important documents, unjustifiably redacted numerous document, and misled the WC and the HSCA. Even John Tunheim, the super-cautious and see-no-evil former ARRB chairman, has said the CIA tried to keep the ARRB from releasing documents. The CIA refused to release documents on William King Harvey until earlier this year when Trump's executive order gave them no choice.

And I say these things as someone who supports the CIA's mission and who believes the CIA has done enormous good on behalf of freedom since its founding. There were some very bad apples in the CIA in the 1960s through the 1990s, but even then the CIA did a great deal of good. I applied for a linguist job with the CIA in the early 1990s and was slated for hiring but was not hired due to a hiring freeze.

Some sources for further reading on this issue:

Congress Must Hold the CIA Accountable in the Wake of Recent JFK Assassination Revelations
https://burlison.house.gov/media/in-the-news/congress-must-hold-cia-accountable-wake-recent-jfk-assassination-revelations

What the New JFK Files Reveal About the CIA’s Secrets
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jfk-files-cia-secrets?srsltid=AfmBOor2tojzRrB86STSbIcgSBBQ2MQVhCoxDmrx9mjFnB3RCOH2ah05

The CIA and the JFK Assassination, Parts 1 and 2
https://share.google/xzvAv7uqkqUk53vVV
https://share.google/c127ITaEn5wwJg0TE

Dear Comrade Griffith,

We know that probable KGB "mole" Bruce Leonard Solie (look him up if you haven't already done so) in the mole-hunting Office of Security hid OS documents from the Church Committee and the HSCA. How do we know that? Because he wrote his methodology down each time..

Here's one I chose at random which happens to be about Richard Case Nagell. See page 1 for Solie's methodology.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10305-10005.pdf

One wonders if Solie also caused Volume 5 of the Office of Security's files on Oswald's to go permanently missing when the HSCA was kinda finished with it?

Heck, even JFKA CT Bill Kelly made note of it on his website.


Bill Kelly:

"I began the list [of missing JFKA files] with the CIA OS Volume Five file on Lee Harvey Oswald, as it was found missing by Malcolm Blunt and given some publicity.

I added a list of my own and after posting them received a response from a number of other prominent researchers with lists of their own.

1. Oswald CIA Office of Security File Volume 5, last seen by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

2. Files of the first chief council to HSCA Richard Sprague, who took his files home with him when he was fired for conducting a real investigation. The Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), responsible for identifying and obtaining records, missed them because they confused the attorney Richard Sprague with the computer programmer of the same name whose extensive files on the assassination are part of the JFK Collection. Sprague's HSCA files, paid for by taxpayers that rightfully belong at the Archives, are currently in Sprague's Philadelphia law office.

3. Soviet KGB records of Oswald's time in Moscow and Minsk that were obtained by Norman Mailer are now in the possession of Mailer's former associate Lawrence Schiller, who refused to turn them over to the ARRB.

4. Unedited AF1 Radio Transmission tapes from November 22, 1963. Two different edited versions of these tapes are available, one on cassette tapes released by the LBJ Library and a reel to reel version discovered among the personal effects of General Clifton. The White House Communications Agency (WHCA) is responsible for these tapes. As Vince Salandria has pointed out there was a transcript of the complete AF1 radio transmissions in the LBJ White House, where two reporters - T. H. White and William Manchester were permitted to read it and quote from it. They recount conversations not on either of the extant tapes. Possible sources - LBJ Library, Collins Radio, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, WHCA - Dallas Sheraton, Dallas Civil Defense bunker, SAC Bases, Amateur HAM radio club, governments of Cuba, Canada or Australia.

5. Dan Alcorn notes: Joan Mellen found that the Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA covert operations, that Arthur Schlesinger mentions, is now missing from RFK's files at the JFK Library. David Bruce was the OSS colonel who accompanied Hemingway to liberate Paris, later JFK’s ambassador to Court of St. James, while Lovett was on board of Moa Bay Mining Company in Cuba and the person who recommended Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy to JFK. It’s inconceivable their report on CIA operations is missing, but it is. Even the CIA now wants a copy, if you can find one,

6. The Zapruder film briefing boards made at NPIC on the day after the assassination.

7.  Peter Dale Scott wants the minutes of the Honolulu Conference of Nov. 20, 1963. “I consider this omission (even the fact of it) extremely important, not just for understanding the JFK assassination, but for understanding U.S. history. For example: The documents about the Honolulu Conference in the FRUS 1961-1963 Volume make no reference to North Vietnam. The first FRUS record to do so is FRUS Doc. 327 [SECRET]. Memo of Conversation Between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM. [1] U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo of Conversation Between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24.  A SECRET/EYES ONLY second version follows as Doc. 328. There was also a third version, as we learn from this footnote 2 to Doc. 327: “2. Because of different distribution limitations, Hilsman made three separate memoranda of this conversation. The second is infra; the third was not declassified.”[2] U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo of Conversation between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM, fn. 2

8. Church Committee interviews with Gerry Patrick Hemming, Orest Pena, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs officials, and other Church Committee testimony are missing.

9.  U.S. Customs records on Cubans, especially by Cesar Diosadado, requested by the HSCA were so voluminous they couldn't be given to the HSCA, but now consist of only a few records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

10. The audio tape recording of Gaeton Fonzi's interview with Mitch Werbell was erased and the transcript is missing, only Fonzi's notes remain.

11. John Newman says that Eisenhower era reports on assassinations of foreign leaders that he copied years ago are now missing from the NARA, and he believes such records are being deliberately stolen.

12.  Bill Simpich says that CIA Mexico City Station (MCS) cable to Headquarters from September 26-30, 1963 are missing as well as cables from CIA HQ to MCS, JMWAVE to HQ and HQ to JMWAVE cable traffic on the same dates, and all cable traffic between MCS and JMWAVE between September 26 and October 20 and November 22 to December 30, 1963 are missing.

13. The CIA's study of the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, as mentioned by Desmond FitzGerald in his September 23, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the subject of a FOIA lawsuit by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).

14. Office of Naval Intelligence - ONI Defector File, as identified as an assassination record by Navy Lt. Com. T. Pike, but never turned over to the Archives.

15. ONI 119 investigation reports on Oswald's defection and the assassination, as referred to by the Navy investigators who wrote them and the officers who read them.

16. The assassination files of the Director of the ONI Rufus Taylor, whose office had undercover agents working in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, installing and maintain the sound system, who reported, in the only surviving document, that Oswald was seen in the club.

17.  James Mastrovito - the Secret Service Agent responsible for the SS records on the assassination acknowledged to the ARRB that he "culled" - destroyed many records and flushed into a food processor a vile of material labeled "JFK brain - Armed Forces Institute of Pathology," with no repercussions.

18. The Secret Service destroyed many records, including the Advance Reports for the Tampa trip after the JFK Act was passed by Congress, although copies of some of these records were found among the personal effects of Agent Gerald Blaine, who wrote the Tampa Advance report. Do other agents also have copies y of official records among their personal effects? Is anyone looking?

19. The "Homme Report" from a Congressional subcommittee reportedly contains information on Robert F. Kennedy's knowledge and approval of CIA plans to kill Fidel Castro.

20. RFK's date book for 1963 is missing from the Kennedy Library.

21. Four boxes of witness testimony turned over to NARA in April 1965 by US Attorney now missing.

22. OSI - Office of Special Investigation military intelligence review of Oswald's State Department file is missing.

23. When former US Marine officer Oliver Revill joined the FBI he reported on an investigation of Oswald and files on him at a US Marine base in North Carolina, records not in the public record.

24. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel had documents excluded from the Warren Commission, according to a memo sent to ARRB and NARA archivist Steve Tilly, "more stuff lost in the shuffle," says Malcolm Blunt.

25. The ARRB tried to obtain Oswald's New Orleans court records but were told they were accidently destroyed when sent for microfilming.

26.  Army Intelligence files on Oswald were kept from the Warren Commission and then "routinely" destroyed.

27. In 1976 when the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) staff were reviewing JFK assassination files the Security Office did not hand over their "secondary files" on Oswald, aka "research files," that were not seen by HSCA or any other component of the CIA, as Malcolm Blunt says "they are like a whole separate agency."

28. Larry Haapanen notes, White House Situation Room Incoming-Outgoing Message Log for 11/22/63-11/30/63 (the extant log for November 1963 ends abruptly on the morning of 11/2263).

29. Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military (Strategic) Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) unit histories and rosters 1962-1963.

30. Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald while in police custody as well as post assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald phones, as reported by Irving police Chief Paul Barger.

31. White House Communications Agency (WHCA) records for 11/22/63 including tape of Secret Service motorcade security radio channel that included Roy Kellerman talking as the third shot was fired, and radios in LBJ's car, the AF1 cockpit and the WHCA base station at the Dallas Sheraton hotel.

32. Missing Mexico City records include LILYRIC (Soviet embassy photo records, Sept. '63); LIFEAT (wiretap records, for all of 1963), daily resumen wiretap summaries for 1963, and records withheld by ARRB at request of CIA and FBI that may be released in the October 26, 2017 data dump.

33. Many relevant FBI 134 Informant records are missing or being withheld.

34. FBI dispatch tape of Dallas calls for 11/22/63 is missing.

35. The National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) report on their study of the Zapruder film and Art Lundal's briefing of CIA Director John McCone is missing, though McCone told RFK that the CIA said there were two gunmen.

36. The JMWAVE NPIC records and other NPIC assassination records were, according to a NPIC secretary, boxed and at the orders of Robert Kennedy sent to the Smithsonian Institute instead of the NARA.

37. FBI’s Mexico City file MX 105-2137. Let me begin with the Board’s explanation of why this file, brought to their attention by me, was not seen by them.

38. Malcolm Blunt: FBI espionage "65" File on Oswald, Correspondence between Office of Security (Bruce Solie and David Slawson during WC investigation....second part of Bruce Solie HSCA Security Classified Testimony, full debriefs of INS and Customs officers at the Department of Justice following their testimony to the Church committee (all missing).

39. Mexico City Station to Headquarters (September 26–30, 1963); Headquarters to Mexico City Station (September 26–30, 1963); JMWAVE to Headquarters (September 26–November 21,1963); Headquarters to JMWAVE (September 26–November 21, 1963); and all traffic between the Mexico City Station and JMWAVE for the periods September 26–October 20, 1963 and November 22–December 30, 1963.

40. Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military Intelligence Detachment (Strategic) and 349th Military Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) -- for example unit histories and unit rosters from 1962-63.

John Armstrong: Bill, You might also want to include the following:

41) Employment records of LHO collected by the FBI from the Pfisterer Dental Lab have disappeared
42) Stripling Junior High (Ft. Worth) records of LHO's attendance in 1954, collected by the FBI, have disappeared
43) The "original" US postal money order, allegedly used to pay for the MC rifle, has disappeared
44) Documents relating to LHO's discharge from the Marine Corp in March, 1959, reviewed by asst Provost Marshall William Gorsky at El Toro, CA., disappeared.
45) LHO's Texas driver’s license (and file), seen and handled by numerous employees at the TDPS, disappeared
46) The Oswald wallet, produced by Capt. Westbrook at 19th & Patton and shown to officers and FBI agent Barrett, was last seen in the hands of Capt. Westbrook.
47) Film taken of anti-Castro Cubans training in Louisiana, which also showed Oswald, has disappeared
48) All original NYC school records disappeared while in FBI custody. Only photographs remain in the National Archives.
49) FBI files on LHO in NYC from Sept, 1961- March, 1962
50) Interviews by Edward J. Epstein of US Marines, who knew LHO in Japan, kept for years at Georgetown University, are now missing
51) Complete files of LHO's attendance at radar school in Keesler (2 files with two different numbers; two different graduation dates; two different class numbers, etc.)
52) Marine Corps unit diaries for LHO at El Toro, CA from December, 1958 thru March, 1959
53) Interviews by John Hart Ely of Marines who knew LHO at El Toro, CA are missing
54) All employment records of MO from 1955 thru 1963
55) SS records for Marina and LHO.

. . . . . . .


-- Tom

PS One wonders if probable KGB "mole" Leonard V. McCoy -- in the Soviet Russia Division's Reports & Requirements section until 1975, at which time he became Deputy Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff and threw away all of the stuff he could find on Nosenko -- had anything to do with the other missing files?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/robert-reynolds-on-accusations-the-cia-tried-to-obstruct-the-release-of-records

Robert Reynolds on Accusations the CIA Tried to Obstruct the Release of Records 

Robert Reynolds is perhaps the best expert on the JFK assassination documents. Here is an excerpt, and links to his excellent article rebutting allegations from Mark Adamc

Mr. Reynolds zeroes in on it here: "Clairvoyance is a common feature of conspiracy theories, with the conspirators KNOWING how events will take place long before they happen."

The conspirators in 1963 knew that in 1993 and beyond that future generations of Americans in government, in the CIA, in Administrations run by Democrats and Republicans, would cover up for their murder of the president, for their treason. These future generations, some of who weren't alive at the time of the assassination, wouldn't expose it, reveal it. No they too would cover for them. Hide files so that investigators wouldn't find them.

Why would they do this? It doesn't make sense. But in conspiracy world there are no independent people, people acting on his or her own. No there's just a "blob", a "thing," something called "the government" or "the Deep State" or "the CIA" that acts in concert. Multiple generations of Americans covering up for events 60 years earlier.

Are they insane, stupid, or blinded by their own ideology?

[Tom Graves]

Mr. Reynolds zeroes in on it here: "Clairvoyance is a common feature of conspiracy theories, with the conspirators KNOWING how events will take place long before they happen."

The conspirators in 1963 knew that in 1993 and beyond that future generations of Americans in government, in the CIA, in Administrations run by Democrats and Republicans, would cover up for their murder of the president, for their treason. These future generations, some of who weren't alive at the time of the assassination, wouldn't expose it, reveal it. No they too would cover for them. Hide files so that investigators wouldn't find them.

Why would they do this? It doesn't make sense. But in conspiracy world there are no independent people, people acting on his or her own. No there's just a "blob", a "thing," something called "the government" or "the Deep State" or "the CIA" that acts in concert. Multiple generations of Americans covering up for events 60 years earlier.

Are they insane, stupid, or blinded by their own ideology?

Dear Steve M.,

If there were moles (I'm thinking of Bruce Leonard Solie and Leonard V. McCoy, here) in the CIA, wouldn't they want to hide or destroy certain documents in order to prevent their being uncovered?

-- Tom