Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assassination Files

[Charles Collins]

The Warren Commission didn't make a good faith effort to investigate conspiratorial evidence in the Kennedy assassination.

Facts are facts and none of the quotes you've posted changes that view which is shared by most people.

The Warren Commission didn't make a good faith effort to investigate conspiratorial evidence in the Kennedy assassination


Nothing could be further from the truth.


Facts are facts and none of the quotes you've posted changes that view which is shared by most people.


You haven’t provided any of those “facts”. Opinions are opinions and most people don’t know the details of the assassination or the investigations.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The Warren Commission didn't make a good faith effort to investigate conspiratorial evidence in the Kennedy assassination


Nothing could be further from the truth.


Facts are facts and none of the quotes you've posted changes that view which is shared by most people.


You haven’t provided any of those “facts”. Opinions are opinions and most people don’t know the details of the assassination or the investigations.

If someone wants to say they were misled or not given complete information - about the Castro plots and/or Mob role (David Slawson complains about this; Shenon's book promotes this idea too) - then fine. But to argue they deliberately didn't make a "good faith" effort to look into the assassination is for me not supported by the evidence. One thing to say they were used; it's another to say they were enablers or participants in a coverup.

Who exactly didn't do this? Why?

[Jon Banks]

The Warren Commission didn't make a good faith effort to investigate conspiratorial evidence in the Kennedy assassination


Nothing could be further from the truth.


Facts are facts and none of the quotes you've posted changes that view which is shared by most people.


You haven’t provided any of those “facts”. Opinions are opinions and most people don’t know the details of the assassination or the investigations.

We know enough to conclude that the Warren Commission was a "shoddy investigation" as Attorney General Robert Kennedy called it.


"Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a close friend of the Kennedy family, would disclose years later that he was told by Robert Kennedy in December 1963, a month after the president’s murder, that the former attorney general worried that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was “part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters.” Schlesinger said that in 1966, two years after the Warren Commission report, Kennedy was still so suspicious about a conspiracy that he wondered aloud “how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report—it is evident that he believes it is was poor job.”

Newly disclosed documents from the commission, made public on the 50th anniversary of its final report, suggest that the panel missed a chance to get Robert Kennedy to acknowledge publicly what he would later confess to his closest family and friends: that he believed the commission had overlooked evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/was-bobby-kennedy-a-jfk-conspiracy-theorist-111729/

[Richard Smith]

We know enough to conclude that the Warren Commission was a "shoddy investigation" as Attorney General Robert Kennedy called it.


"Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a close friend of the Kennedy family, would disclose years later that he was told by Robert Kennedy in December 1963, a month after the president’s murder, that the former attorney general worried that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was “part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters.” Schlesinger said that in 1966, two years after the Warren Commission report, Kennedy was still so suspicious about a conspiracy that he wondered aloud “how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report—it is evident that he believes it is was poor job.”

Newly disclosed documents from the commission, made public on the 50th anniversary of its final report, suggest that the panel missed a chance to get Robert Kennedy to acknowledge publicly what he would later confess to his closest family and friends: that he believed the commission had overlooked evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/was-bobby-kennedy-a-jfk-conspiracy-theorist-111729/

What difference does it make what RFK believed unless it was based upon some evidence that the rest of us are unaware of?  That's even assuming this is an accurate characterization of his viewpoint for which there is cause to doubt.  It's pretty damning of RFK's reputation to suggest that he kept silent about unknown conspirators getting away with murdering his brother.  He was certainly in a position to raise awareness of his position if that is what he thought happened. 

[Jon Banks]

What difference does it make what RFK believed unless it was based upon some evidence that the rest of us are unaware of?  That's even assuming this is an accurate characterization of his viewpoint for which there is cause to doubt. It's pretty damning of RFK's reputation to suggest that he kept silent about unknown conspirators getting away with murdering his brother.  He was certainly in a position to raise awareness of his position if that is what he thought happened.

If RFK publicly criticized the Warren Report, it would've pretty much ended his political career.

It made no sense for him to do that unless he had a smoking gun or hard evidence of a conspiracy.

My broader point is that its telling that so many people who were close to the Warren Commission or knowledgeable of the intimate details were also not convinced that they were right that Oswald acted alone. That includes Lyndon Johnson, Hale Boggs, Richard Russell, RFK, John Connally, and possibly Gerald Ford (if some quotes attributed to him are true).

[Charles Collins]

If RFK publicly criticized the Warren Report, it would've pretty much ended his political career.

It made no sense for him to do that unless he had a smoking gun or hard evidence of a conspiracy.

My broader point is that its telling that so many people who were close to the Warren Commission or knowledgeable of the intimate details were also not convinced that they were right that Oswald acted alone. That includes Lyndon Johnson, Hale Boggs, Richard Russell, RFK, John Connally, and possibly Gerald Ford (if some quotes attributed to him are true).

It’s telling…. 


It’s telling…. 



The sky is falling…. 


The sky is falling…. 



Suspicions are not evidence, never were, and never will be… 

[Jon Banks]

Suspicions are not evidence, never were, and never will be… 

The JFK case is not "closed". Maybe it never will be due to the confirmed evidence of coverups.

Even the freaking CIA admits that they did a coverup yet some of you are still defending the government's investigations. It's mind-boggling how anyone can be confident that we know what happened despite all the evidence that efforts were made to obscure the truth...

[Charles Collins]

We know enough to conclude that the Warren Commission was a "shoddy investigation" as Attorney General Robert Kennedy called it.


"Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a close friend of the Kennedy family, would disclose years later that he was told by Robert Kennedy in December 1963, a month after the president’s murder, that the former attorney general worried that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was “part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters.” Schlesinger said that in 1966, two years after the Warren Commission report, Kennedy was still so suspicious about a conspiracy that he wondered aloud “how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report—it is evident that he believes it is was poor job.”

Newly disclosed documents from the commission, made public on the 50th anniversary of its final report, suggest that the panel missed a chance to get Robert Kennedy to acknowledge publicly what he would later confess to his closest family and friends: that he believed the commission had overlooked evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/was-bobby-kennedy-a-jfk-conspiracy-theorist-111729/

FYI, RFK was not that close to the WC investigation or the FBI investigation. Here’s another quote from “History Will Prove Us Right” by Howard Willens:


The attorney general told us that he was “willing to do anything necessary for the country and thought that he making a statement about the non-existence of a conspiracy would be desirable.” Although he did not say so, I got the clear impression that he would prefer not being a witness before the commission and hoped that the exchange of letters would be an acceptable alternative. He commented that the draft letter prepared for his signature was inaccurate in that he had never received any reports from the FBI regarding the assassination. He said that his only sources of information about the assassination were Warren, Katzenbach, and me. Based on these reports, he was “perfectly willing to make a broad and definite statement regarding his confidence in the commission and the adequacy of the investigation.” The meeting ended with the understanding that the exchange of letters was the preferred course of action and I was asked to prepare them for signature.12

I was pleased to hear Robert Kennedy express confidence in the commission’s work. We certainly hoped that he would publicly approve our final conclusions. But—as he said on so many occasions—nothing was going to bring his brother back to life. He had very little interest in the scope of the commission’s investigation (except any possible Teamsters aspect). Because the FBI reports on the investigation to the Justice Department were routinely addressed to the attorney general, I was initially surprised that Kennedy had decided that all such reports should go directly to Katzenbach and Miller. But I recognized soon after November 22 that Kennedy did not wish to be personally involved in the government’s response to the assassination, leaving that role to Katzenbach.