JFK Week in Review: Video, Audio, and 201 Files
New releases this week include FBI surveillance recordings of Marina Oswald and files related to RFK's assassination
The RFK Files
In response to the mandate codified by in January President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14176, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on June 12 released a total of 1,982 records comprising 9,653 pages on its “Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy” web page.
Attorney and researcher Lawrence Schnapf explored the collection, and found that many of them had been previously released, but the new documents include some surprises.
The CIA opened 54 previously classified documents consisting of 1,450 pages, which also can be viewed in the agency’s Freedom of Information Electronic Reading Room. These include the agency’s 201 personality file for Sen. Kennedy, as well as the 201 file for his assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.
Marina Oswald Under Surveillance
JFK assassination researcher Mark Bujdos shared nine audio files with JFK Facts containing recordings that the FBI made of Marina Oswald on the phone with friends and acquaintances between her first and second sessions of testimony to the Warren Commission investigating President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. On Feb. 28, 1964, at Marina’s home at 629 Beltline Road in Richardson, Texas, the FBI installed surveillance equipment and microphones in the telephones and light fixtures of her kitchen, living room, bedroom, and attic.
You can listen to an excerpt from the conversation on Tape 9 about the assassination between Marina and her Russian-born friend in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but you need to understand Russian. Chad Nagle of JFK Facts does understand the language, and he took us through the tape in this article:
Travolta, D’Onofrio and Costner in the 1980s
Part Three of Nagle’s series “Echoes of Dallas: Six Decades of JFK on the Silver Screen” reviews the Eighties, when a Hollywood actor was also President of the United States. Among the films he discusses, my favorite is “Blow Out,” the 1981 movie exploring acoustic evidence of a political murder, with John Travolta as a sound effects professional.
Tweet of the Week
Current coverage of conflict in the Middle East has reignited an unproven theory that Israel, Mossad, or Jews in general were responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. On X (formerly Twitter), the AI-powered assistant Grok has repeatedly countered this antisemitic conjecture.
Another AI platform, ChatGPT, returned the following answer to the question: Was the Israeli government involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?
Your thoughts on these AI-assisted conclusions?
Funny ChatGPT states that none of the conspiracy theories have been substantiated by conclusive evidence. Did I miss the conclusive evidence in the Warren Report?