Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the Editor:

On January 23, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to declassify the assassination files of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Specifically, the order directed the Director of National Intelligence to declassify the aforesaid files and present a plan as to how the declassification would occur.

Many people welcomed the news after decades of speculation about whether the deaths of JFK, RFK, and MLK were part of a governmental conspiracy. In terms of JFK, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy to be publicly disclosed in full by October 26, 2017 unless such release would cause harm to intelligence operations, the military defense, or conduct of foreign relations.

According to various polls, most Americans believe that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Kennedy had lost confidence in the CIA that he, reportedly, threatened to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

Interestingly, when the CIA was formed as part of the National Security Act of 1947, its key function was to gather and coordinate national intelligence. To JFK’s dismay, the agency went beyond its organizational scope and became involved in covert operations, including assassination plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro and others.

Nonetheless, countless Americans have repudiated the Warren Commission’s claim that JFK’s murder was masterminded and carried out by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. Strangely, many so-called witnesses of the assassination died mysteriously within a relatively short period of time. Therefore, many questions linger today.

For example, why was President Kennedy’s route in Dallas changed at the last minute? If the official account of JFK’s murder is believed – that Oswald was the lone gunman and that he shot the President (from behind JFK) from a window in the Texas School Book Depository – then what would account for the bullet hole in Kennedy’s throat? A replay of the film of that fateful day clearly showed the President grabbing his throat.

On the day before JFK’s assassination, then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, wealthy businessman Clinton Murchison, Jr. (founder of the Dallas Cowboys), and others were at a party at Murchison’s Dallas home. The aforementioned players did not like the Kennedys. Though LBJ was Kennedy’s vice-president, they somewhat detested each other, but put their differences aside for political reasons. Did the party-goers know what was about to take place the next day?

Innumerable people do not believe that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968. The fatal shot came from the back side of Senator Kennedy. His security guard was standing there. Sirhan shot from the front at the Ambassador Hotel. His gun held eight rounds, and he did not reload. At least twelve bullet holes were found in the room.

Keith W. Cooper

Greenville