JFK Files: 'Keep Their Feet to the Fire"
A timely warning from a member of the Assassination Records Review Board
I recently ran across this on CSPAN: video of the press conference held by the Assassination Records Review Board in September 1998 when board members presented their final report on the declassification of JFK files to President Clinton.
Kermit Hall, a legal scholar and a member of the board, looked forward to the time we are now in, the time when the last of withheld JFK files would come due for release.
“It depends on all of us to keep the people in the agencies feet to the fire,” he said, referring to the CIA and FBI. They had, he insisted, a “legal, constitutional and moral obligation” to comply with the JFK Records Act.
Twenty four years later, it is a timely message for President Biden who has set December 15 as the deadline for full JFK disclosure.
Watch here.
As poignant now as it was then. I’m trying to imagine the national security repercussions with the revelation of these documents. What, the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians could somehow leverage the implication that the US government once lied to its public and had a hand in assassinating it own President? That’s fairly standard practice in many governments (friendly to the US or not)around the world.