Biden's Excuse for Delaying the Release of JFK Assassination Records Stopped Playing Decades Ago

Charles Pierce / Esquire
Biden's Excuse for Delaying the Release of JFK Assassination Records Stopped Playing Decades Ago John F. Kennedy just prior to his assassination in Dallas. (photo: Getty Images)

It was 58 goddamn years back.

It has been almost 60 years now—sixty years and 10 presidential administrations—since John F. Kennedy was murdered in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. In all that time, certain things have hardened into concrete certainty. First, opinion polls have shown that a majority of the American people do not believe important elements of the official story arising from the Warren Commission’s investigation. In other words, a majority of the American people believe that the President of the United States got iced in the middle of the day, and that at least some people other than those currently in the record were involved in the crime. And we’ve all learned to live with that belief. If people are angry at Condoleezza Rice for talking about “moving on” from the events of January 6—and we shall deal with that later in the blogging day—then what do we make of how we steadily “moved on” despite the commonly held belief that some people got away with killing the president?

The other consistent phenomenon in the long aftermath of this crime is that, given a chance to dispel some of the suspicion and doubt attending the assassination, the United States government will dance enthusiastically on its own dick. The more conspiratorially minded of our fellow citizens conclude from this that the government is clumsily trying to dodge its own complicity. This has remained true even as the fight to release government records has ground out significant victories over the past two decades. Nevertheless, every bungle from every administration, Republican or Democratic, only deepens the suspicions. And now, the Biden Administration has joined its predecessors in adding to all that. From the New York Times:

The White House statement, signed by President Biden, did not make clear exactly how the coronavirus had delayed the release of the records, which must be released to comply with a 1992 congressional act, but said that the national archivist reported that the pandemic had a “significant impact on the agencies” that need to be consulted on redactions…The White House statement said that the National Archives required additional time to conduct research and work with the agencies, which include the Defense, Justice and State departments.

OK, so the pandemic is an all-purpose alibi for everything, but the official White House statement has a passage containing a dog that hasn’t hunted at least since the House Select Committee on Assassinations wrapped things up in 1978.

In the White House statement on Friday, President Biden said he agreed with the archivist’s recommendation that records be withheld from public disclosure until December 2022. “Temporary continued postponement,” he said, “is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”

It was 58 goddamn years ago. Most of the principals, known and unknown, are likely really, most sincerely, dead. Many of the countries with which we had “foreign relations” in 1963, and many of the countries against which we were defending ourselves, don’t even exist anymore. I suspect the vole in the turnips here lies somewhere between “intelligence operations” and “law enforcement.” Still, anyone who might be made uncomfortable even in that regard likely has gone off to the great stakeout in the sky.

My guess? The “intelligence community” is still covering up what it covered up in 1963. That would include what they knew about Oswald prior to the assassination and, probably, a helluva lot more about what was going on with the plot against Castro. Were there any documentary evidence concerning American involvement with the crime itself, I’m assuming that went into the shredder—or up James Jesus Angleton’s chimney—decades ago. But the Biden administration’s pale excuse for delaying the release of the records has been so thinned through the years that you can see right through it.

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