A few weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his presidential campaign to endorse former President Trump. As Kennedy joined Trump on stage, Trump announced that, if he is elected, he will immediately declassify all records related to the JFK Assassination that continue to be held by the National Archives – something Trump failed to do during his last term. Trump also announced that he would form a commission on assassinations, which would include looking at his own assassination attempt, and the murders of Robert Kennedy, Sr. and President John F. Kennedy.
Whether it is former President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, America desperately needs leadership that will provide transparency into these historical events. While the declassification of remaining JFK assassination records would be a wonderful development, the most important thing that could be done to regain the trust of Americans in their intelligence agencies is to reopen the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Most Americans know that the Warren Commission determined in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to kill President Kennedy. Fewer Americans are aware of the conclusion of a congressional committee – the House Select Committee on Assassinations – in 1978 that President Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” Yes, you read that correctly. The recent government investigation into the JFK Assassination determined that there was a conspiracy.
After Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, was released in 1991, the public outcry to remove the shroud of secrecy around this historical event resulted in the JFK Records Act, which was passed unanimously and signed into law by George H. W. Bush. The JFK Records Act required the declassification of records and created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which forced the respective agencies to turn over records and sit for depositions.
The work of the ARRB and subsequent declassified documents led to a mountain of new information about the assassination that has now had sufficient time to be absorbed by JFK Assassination scholars. The weight of that evidence now establishes by a standard of clear and convincing evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone to kill President Kennedy.
So, what evidence has been unearthed that would justify the time and resources of reopening the JFK Assassination? There are at least ten indisputable facts that establish that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, all of which are explored in depth in a book that I co-authored with James DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Andrew Iler and Mark Adamczyk called The JFK Assassination Chokeholds:
- Interviews with numerous insiders who worked on previous investigations, from the Warren Commission to the HSCA to the ARRB, confirm that the Warren Commission got it wrong.
- Oswald had indisputable connections to intelligence agencies.
- Oswald was impersonated by others on numerous documented occasions.
- Oswald could not have been on the sixth floor when the shots were fired.
- Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald was not in the heat of passion. It was premeditated.
- There were at least two other prior plots to kill President Kennedy before Dallas.
- Best practices for conducting autopsies were not followed for President Kennedy, resulting in an evidentiary mess.
- The single bullet theory cannot be true.
- There is overwhelming evidence of shots fired in front of President Kennedy.
- There has been sixty years of obstruction of justice, which was apparent in each investigation, and continues to exist today.
When we put these bodies of evidence together, it is clear that President Kennedy was not killed by a lone assassin. Researchers and authors have speculated as to who was behind the conspiracy and whether Oswald was involved at all over the years. Still, we do not know exactly who killed President Kennedy.
The implications of this unanswered question are enormous. If a foreign adversary was behind the assassination (as President Lyndon Johnson told Chief Justice Earl Warren), then the assassination was an attack on America. If it was the mafia, the bad guys got away with it. If it was the CIA or the military generals, then there was effectively a coup in America in 1963, which was never resolved.
A majority of the American people believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. But, because there is not widespread agreement about what exactly happened, Americans are stuck in a strange place of distrusting the government, but not knowing for sure what happened.
Warren Report defenders and critics alike should be able to agree that transparency and a public airing of the current body of evidence is the only way for the country to move on from the assassination of its 35th President. If elected, Trump or Harris should take the opportunity to do what Trump said he would do – reopen the JFK Assassination.
Matt Crumpton is the host of Solving JFK, podcast that compares arguments about the JFK Assassination. He appears in JFK: What the Doctors Saw on Paramount Plus. Matt is a co-author of The JFK Assassination Chokeholds, along with James DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Andrew Iler, and Mark Adamczyk.
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