The federal judge who oversaw declassification of millions of pages of JFK assassination records, has urged President Biden to release all the rest the files next week. The CIA and FBI have long insisted on redactions from thousands of files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 59 years ago.

Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the Assassination Records Review Board, called on the president to “bring transparency and finality to this ordeal and release all of the remaining redacted information in the assassination records.”

Tunheim said in an email that that he believed Senator Amy Klobuchar had delivered the letter to Biden at a meeting yesterday.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation has posted Judge Tunheim’s historic letter.

Tunheim singled out the CIA for its handling of the records of George Joannides, a deceased undercover officer who figures in my Nov. 22 post on JFK Facts, “Yes, There Is a Smoking Gun.” The available evidence shows that Joannides and his superiors used Oswald for intelligence purposes three months before JFK was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This “jarring revelation” attracted coverage from publications as diverse as NBC News, Daily Beast, Raw Story, NewsMax, and American Conservative.

In his letter, Judge Tunheim said the CIA “deliberately misled us in a very material way” about Joannides’ work with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami in 1963. “The Board would have released the file in full had it not been misled. … The Joannides file absolutely needs to be released in full.”

The Agency retains 44 documents about Joannides/ secret operations in 1963 and his work as CIA liaison to JFK investigators in 1978 that have never been made public.

Tunheim closed his letter with a personal reminder to Biden: he voted for the JFK Assassination Records Act in 1992, the law that he is now responsible for enforcing.

“These are records that Congress determined carried ‘a presumption of immediate disclosure’” over 30 year ago, Tunheim wrote. “You voted for that law. In my view, although I do not believe the documents will disclose any bombshell information, the immediate release of all remaining protect information is critical to help restore faith in our government and to end the constant refrain that the government is hiding information from the American people. Mr. President, it is time for a complete release.”

JFK Facts

Judge to Biden: Release All Secret JFK Files…