Episode 1 of my new podcast series.
This first episode is an interview with Robert Reynolds, who is an expert on the JFK assassination files.
Fred
Thanks for this. This is getting into the real tall manila folders, er, grass but it has some interesting insight into what is happening with the release of these last documents. It is remarkable how much paper the government generated; the memos and reports and cables and then the memos about those cables and reports ad infinitum. And this
before the assassination not after it.
I've always been puzzled as to who exactly in these agencies/departments is making the decisions - or advising - on what documents can be released and in what form. I assume it's been different people all of these decades? Not the same group since 1998 or so. Mr. Reynolds mentions what is called the "Former Redacted Document Group" or FRD as making the judgment as to what can and cannot be shown. He specifically mentioned a 1963 document that contained the nuclear yield of the nuclear weapons that US bombers could deliver. Again the yield in 1963. The number is still being withheld. As Moynihan said there's simply an incentive to do this, to overclassify, one that is difficult to overcome.
So who are they? Or were? I assume career civil servants/personnel and not political types.
On the Mexico City/President redaction: I had assumed that we have known about the telephone listening programs, LIENVOY et cetera, for decades? The Lopez report, et cetera. And that the program involved the cooperation of the Mexican government. So a revelation that their president - Lopez Mateos - agreed to it shouldn't be a surprise. What's the cause for the withholding of this information? State worried about political consequences?
