JFK Files: What Have We Learned So Far?

AP Photo, File

It's a darn sight more than I expected. 

I thought the files would be a complete dud, but it turns out that there is ample information in just the first few things that people have discovered to fuel the fever dreams of every conspiracy theorist in the world three times over and to give the most Establishment-minded normie reason to feel disgust at his government. 

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CIA cable reveals a call on November 23, 1963, from a man claiming to be a Polish driver for a Russian vehicle.He warned of Soviet plans to pay someone in the U.S. to assassinate the president.C/S Comment:"Touched on several areas including possible Soviet connection supplying money to individual in U.S. to assassinate President; possible Soviet implication in U.S.S. Trucker incident, etc."The cable flagged the matter as top priority with immediate security concern.Source: JFK Files,104-10068-10142

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that the CIA was involved, although it comes only in the form of third parties who could be in the know asserting it, but there is absolute evidence that the CIA and other US government agencies suspected that Oswald was a Russian assassin, were tracking him, had been warned Kennedy was a target of Russian assassins, and they failed to stop Oswald. 

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Most of the really damning information is more in the "Oswald was a known wolf" and worse. Not only was the CIA warned that Oswald was a Soviet assassin--the CIA was tracking him throughout his trips--but that the Soviets had a plan to kill Kennedy. 

They apparently knew a lot of things that were tied to horrific events here at home, although the documents suggest that they had foreknowledge of things that others said would happen, not absolute knowledge that they would. And so far, nothing says that the CIA planned the assassination. 

I never believed that the CIA DID plan the assassination or that if they did, there would be a paper trail. They aren't THAT stupid, I don't think. I would think that anybody clever enough to plot such an assassination would have been clever enough not to draw up a memo laying the plot out. 

It's early days--there are tens of thousands of documents--but a few things jumped out at me from the crowdsourced information. The first is that the CIA coverup wasn't of their own plot to kill Kennedy, but of their ignoring lots of warnings that there was a plot to kill Kennedy, that the Soviets were likely involved, and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the chosen assassin. 

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That's a really, really big oops in the first place, justifying the biggest CYA coverup in world history before the COVID fiasco. Fauci and company CYA'd because they killed tens of millions of people by accident; the CIA covered up the fact that they had plenty of indication that a man they were watching was planning to kill the POTUS at the direction of the Soviet Union, and failed to do anything to stop it. 

An FBI report states that a source claimed Lee Harvey Oswald hinted at “something big” happening weeks before JFK was killed.

The document also reveals that Oswald attempted to contact a Soviet official named Pavel Yatskov, believed to be working in intelligence. 

It’s unclear if he ever reached him, but U.S. officials saw this as highly suspicious.

The source also described Oswald as “nervous” and “agitated” in the days leading up to the assassination, adding that he seemed desperate to send a message before November 22.

Despite these red flags, officials took no further action before the assassination.

Source: JFK File 180-10143-10227

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The Soviet connection was a mild surprise. I thought that Castro had Kennedy killed, and the Soviets would never get near killing a US president due to the nuclear war possibilities. We know that the Warren Commission was deeply interested in squelching any speculation that the USSR was involved, for obvious reasons--nobody wanted a nuclear war--but I believed that the instinct that the Soviets wouldn't dare go there was correct. To call killing a US President risky is an understatement. 

None of the documents is a smoking gun that they DID commission Oswald to kill the president, but there are documents showing that Soviet-bloc informants told the CIA that he would and that there was a Soviet plan to assassinate Kennedy. That is powerful circumstantial evidence. So powerful that I have shifted my view that Cuba commissioned the hit to the Soviet Union itself. 

Whatever we learn once all the data is sorted out, one thing stands out: trusting the government to be competent, do the right thing, tell us the truth, or act with integrity is a fool's errand. You are literally a fool if you have a lot of trust in big government. 

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That's not because the government is inherently evil or even because the people who work for the government are stupid or immoral. It is the nature of all institutions with nearly unlimited resources and the power to get away with things. Even people with the best intentions, when given lots of power and having no accountability, will slip inexorably toward evil. It would take an extraordinary person not to be drawn into, by slipping down a slippery slope, a web of deceit and evil. 

We see a lot of evidence of both in these documents. About which I will discuss in my next post today. 

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | March 18, 2025
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