Thursday, October 21, 2021

Biden's decision on secret JFK docs


President Biden will soon decide an obscure but potent question: Which secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should be made fully public?

When President Donald Trump faced the same decision four years ago, he delayed in the name of national security. While releasing thousands of files about the 1963 Kennedy assassination, Trump acquiesced to the demand of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to keep portions of thousands more secret until October 2021, 58 years after Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the gunman. 

For all his “deep state” rhetoric, Trump issued a memo giving the executive branch agencies four more years of secrecy.

Will Biden follow the law? The JFK Records Act, passed unanimously by Congress in 1992, called for “expeditious public transmission” of all JFK files into the public record. 

Twenty-nine years later, the intent of Congress has been effectively nullified by the demands of federal agencies, particularly the CIA, which is responsible for 70 percent of the withheld records. 

The National Archives website says 15,834 JFK files that have been released remain redacted, though some redactions involve only a single word....


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