State of the JFK Case in 2026
To understand what we have learned from the new JFK files in the past year, start with the CIA's bible for fooling the American people
The “C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception” is not, technically speaking, a JFK assassination record. You won’t find it in the National Archives’ JFK assassination collection. You won’t find it on the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the largest online collection of JFK assassination records. ABC News made no mention of it in its outdated and inaccurate JFK special last year. The influencers don’t know about it. Nobody tweets about it.
Yet, I have come to believe, this unusual document is critical to piercing the intermittment fog of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that surround the JFK story and seeing more clearly what actually happened on November 22, 1963.
Compiled a decade before the Dallas crime, the “Manual of Trickery” tells us absolutely nothing about the events of November 1963. At the same time, this this long-suppressed document tells us much about how we understand (and misunderstand) the story of JFK’s assassination.
In coming weeks, I’ll review the key revelations of the past year, what the CIA’s defenders say, and what more we may learn. But the continuing debate over the JFK files can only be understood by those who understand the Agency’s methods of deception.
The “Manual of Trickery and Deception” offers a master class in the epistemology of JFK’s assassination. If you don’t know exactly what that means, read on.
