The JFK File Revelations: Part Two
What Files Remain Unreleased and What Are They Hiding?
On January 24, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a significant Executive Order titled “Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” He made this announcement in front of a room full of reporters while seated at his desk in the Oval Office. For those of us who have long researched, studied, and written about these pivotal events of the 20th century, this is a moment we have eagerly anticipated.
Trump's order requires all federal agencies and sectors to disclose everything they know about the assassinations. It mandates that the Directors of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, in coordination with Trump’s National Security Advisor, provide him with a plan for declassifying and sharing all records related to these events.
The JFK Act of 1992, which was spurred into law by the public outcry following Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, aimed to resolve the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Under this act, all records related to the assassination were to be made public by the year 2017, unless the President deemed that the disclosure of such records would pose an “identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest of disclosure.”
In 2017, the National Archives released many records. However, at the last moment, the directors of the FBI and CIA approached President Trump. They persuaded him to withhold approximately 3,500 additional records, which amounted to tens of thousands of pages. Trump agreed to their requests and later told his friend, talk show host Judge Napolitano, “Judge, if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have released them either.”
The election of Joseph Biden in 2020 marked a significant setback for transparency regarding the assassination of JFK in particular. Biden, whom the establishment and national security agencies have long favored, effectively removed the presidency from the decision-making process concerning this issue. He urged the CIA, FBI, and other agencies to create a "transparency plan," which ultimately proved anything but transparent. This plan included withholding numerous documents under the guise of "national security" and other self-serving justifications.
Hopefully, this time the plan presented to Trump will be a genuine transparency initiative rather than a façade created by intelligence agencies to conceal their past wrongdoings and maintain secrecy for many more decades.
One reason to be hopeful that Trump 2.0 is now serious about disclosure was the announcement weeks ago by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla) and House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-Ky) of a Congressional committee tasked with investigating and presenting all the government’s knowledge concerning the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations; the Jeffrey Epstein client list; the origins of Covid-19; the secret 9/11 files; and the truth about UFOs/Extraterrestrials. “We will work alongside President Trump and his Cabinet members to deliver truth to the American people,” Luna said. “From this moment forward, we will restore trust through transparency.”
The first hearing is set for March 26 and will concern the JFK assassination.
What Files Are Outstanding?
According to credible sources like JFK Facts and the Mary Ferrell Foundation, among the 3,500 files that the CIA and National Archive have not released are:
1. The George Joannides File (CIA FOIA office, EOM-2020-00359): This is the personnel file of CIA Case Officer George Joannides, who oversaw the Cuban exile Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) in New Orleans in 1963. During that summer, members of the DRE had an encounter with Lee Harvey Oswald. Following this incident, it was rumored that Joannides and the DRE began an intelligence operation related to Oswald. Joannides was later called out of retirement to serve as the official liaison between Congress’s final JFK investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1979, and the CIA. In this role, Joannides compromised the integrity of the HSCA investigation by withholding crucial records and misdirecting investigators along incorrect paths.
2. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s Memo to JFK About Reorganizing the CIA (NARA Record Number: 157-10002-10056): In the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, a furious John F. Kennedy tasked his close aide, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., with drafting recommendations for reorganizing the CIA, which Kennedy blamed for misleading him into that disastrous operation. One entire page that discusses the CIA’s interference with presidential policy has been redacted.
3. James Angleton’s Testimony Before the HSCA (NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10005): The testimony of James Jesus Angleton, the Chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA, before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, is still heavily redacted today. Angleton personally managed the CIA's extensive file on Lee Harvey Oswald and closely monitored Oswald for the four years leading up to the assassination of JFK.
4. A top-secret internal CIA investigation into the Kennedy assassination examined the potential involvement of individuals within the Cuban exile community. The Miami station, JMWAVE, led the investigation, but the findings were suppressed and never disclosed outside the CIA.
5. The Secret Service files contain information about the threats faced by President Kennedy in 1963. These files include details on the known assassination attempts in Chicago and Tampa, Florida, during the fall of that year, prior to the successful attempt in Dallas. When the Assassination Records Review Board requested these files from the Secret Service in the 1990s, the agency destroyed them instead of providing them, an act that was blatantly illegal. However, there is a possibility that these records were copied and may still exist somewhere.
6. Internal CIA documents concerning a potential covert operation aimed at Lee Harvey Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in 1963 may be found within George Joannides' personnel files. Joannides was the CIA officer responsible for overseeing the New Orleans Cuban exiles who interacted with Oswald.
7. 1963 travel records for key suspects in the Kennedy assassination, including CIA officers William Harvey, David Atlee Phillips, Cord Meyer, Howard Hunt, David Morales, Allen Dulles, and others.
8. The sealed files from the FBI's CAMTEX sting operation targeting New Orleans Mafia godfather Carlos Marcello include rumored details about secretly recorded conversations. In these tapes, Marcello allegedly confesses to an FBI informant that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were "his" operatives who carried out the assassination of President Kennedy on his behalf.
9. 1963 FBI surveillance files on Carlos Marcello and Tampa Mafia godfather Santos Trafficante Jr.
10. CIA 201 File on Johnny Roselli, who acted as the official go-between with the CIA and Mafia bosses Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello
These files are only the tip of the iceberg. Many more relevant records remain hidden.
What Are They Hiding?
The FBI recently disclosed that they have "found" 2,400 records related to the JFK assassination that were never shared with any congressional investigations. This includes the Warren Commission in 1964, the Church Committee in 1975, the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, and the JFK Records Review Board in 1992. This fact alone serves as proof of the extent to which federal intelligence agencies have been concealing information from the American public regarding Kennedy's death.
This level of obstruction of justice, although not new when it comes to the JFK assassination, ought to result in officials going to jail. American democracy cannot tolerate "Deep State" officials who hide or destroy evidence in a criminal homicide investigation, especially when the victim was the President of the United States. It doesn't matter if the murder occurred in 1963 or recently; there is no statute of limitations on homicide.
What are federal intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and CIA, ultimately hiding from the American people regarding the murder of John F. Kennedy? Their actions since 1963 suggest they are concealing a significant and troubling secret—one so serious that individuals connected to the case have been threatened or even killed. Documents related to the case have been deliberately hidden or buried, and official government investigations have been infiltrated, misdirected, stonewalled, and sabotaged by the agencies that have the most to conceal.
We are now in a waiting game with the Trump administration. Will the American people finally be allowed to see the truth? Will the released files actually contain the truth?
Stay tuned for future editions of this series, where we will examine the details of any released files and analyze the hearings conducted by Representative Luna’s task force.