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A CRUEL AND SHOCKING MISINTERPRETATION

Phil Shenon and I agree on at least a few things. In any resolution of the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mexico City will undoubtedly be important. The investigation into what happened there in 1963 was, for some reason, seriously curtailed by the U.S. government. The government has, since then, fought tooth and nail to keep the full story about what happened there secret.

While I have never met Mr. Shenon, I have spoken with him several times by telephone. I first heard from him when he called me around 2011. He introduced himself as a reporter for Newsweek Magazine. He said he was working well in advance on an article for that magazine for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder. He wondered whether I would be willing to talk about the HSCA’s investigation in Mexico City. I agreed to speak with him.

Over the course of that first conversation, and several follow-up calls from him over the next couple of years, it became apparent to me that Mr. Shenon was only interested in our work investigating what had happened in Mexico City in 1963 insofar as it might provide some kind of basis for linking Oswald to Castro or the Cubans. I tried to discuss the details of the HSCA investigation into what happened in Mexico City in its anomalous issues, but he was uninterested in those details. While there is an acknowledgment in his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, stating that Ed Lopez and I were “generous with their time and interviews for this book,” precious little, if any, of what we shared with him made it into the book or any of his subsequent writing on the subject of Mexico City. Not only does Mr. Shenon ignore the post-HSCA materials we tried to bring to his attention, he also ignores the primary thrust of our report written for the HSCA.

I would not take issue with Phil Shenon if I thought what he is claiming is, merely, that the possibility of Cuban assistance to Oswald should be investigated. While I think the evidence of that is very weak at best, I will not deny that any avenue of investigation that remains open should be pursued. What I take issue with Mr. Shenon about is his single-minded concentration on that one issue and the resultant misrepresentation of facts and questions related to, and arising from, Lee Oswald’s activities in Mexico City. It appears to me that Shenon may be carrying water for the proponents of the original conspiracy theory – that Castro did it – rather than offering any objective review of the complete evidentiary base of that underlies the Mexico City visit. Shenon deliberately ignores the indicators and evidence that suggest Oswald’s trip to Mexico was either designed in advance, or spun in the aftermath, to give the appearance of Cuban and Soviet collusion in the Kennedy assassination.

Shenon’s thesis, as most recently explicated in his article in Politico, “What Was Lee Harvey Oswald Doing in Mexico?”, is built on suspicions expressed by some government officials after the assassination and Charles Thomas’s reporting of the Duran twist party – a report based on a story first told by Elena Garro de Paz. Many had initial suspicions after the assassination: Lyndon Johnson alleged a communist conspiracy within twenty minutes of JFK’s death; Bobby Kennedy’s first question to CIA Director John McCone that day was, “Did some of your guys do this?” (The Warren Commission, in Executive Session, was very concerned about Oswald’s intelligence connections, but Allen Dulles told them it was something that couldn’t really be proven, as a good intelligence officer would lie under oath to the Commission.) When Shenon and I talked, I tried to get him to consider evidence and facts that have come to light about Mexico City and the CIA’s handling of various investigations since, including the one I worked on in 1978, in his evaluation of the twist party story that lies at the root of his speculations. My efforts had no effect. Any possible explanation other than Cuban complicity has been ignored by Mr. Shenon who seems hell-bent on promoting the idea that Castro was behind the assassination, refusing to address any other possibility.

I tried, in vain as it turns out, to get Mr. Shenon to consider that what we had learned about Oswald’s activities, and the government’s reaction to those activities, could support a different explanation which also pointed to an additional avenue of investigation that needed to be publicized and followed. In my view, Oswald’s activities are more consistent with his being involved in an intelligence operation being run by U.S. intelligence than with him trying to make contact with Cubans to garner support for an assassination attempt on the sitting leader of this country.

To fully appreciate why I say that, a little background from Washington in 1978, is necessary. In 1978 the CIA resisted the HSCA’s inquiry into Mexico City more than any other area of inquiry. The chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, told the Committee on August 15, 1978, “[T]he deeper we have gotten into the Agency’s performance in Mexico City, the more difficult they have gotten in dealing with us, the more they have insisted on relevance, the more they have gone back in effect on their agreement to give us access to unsanitized files. For a while we had general and free access to unsanitized files. That is increasingly not true in the Mexico City area….” And we have since learned that they used George Joannides to shut down the investigation into Oswald and Mexico City. In doing so, they lied to us about who he was. He ran propaganda operations in

George Joannides

Miami in 1963-64 and was the case officer for DRE, the anti-Castro group that scored the anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee coup using Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963. As G. Robert Blakey has since acknowledged, “The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.” I think the CIA expected we would take the superficial approach of considering the “Castro did it” theory, but when we went beyond the initial appearances and began pushing our investigation into the propaganda sources, seeking interviews with the actual penetration and surveillance agents, seeking to find others in Mexico City who may have seen Oswald, then the Agency resistance to our investigation turned to a stonewall. Shouldn’t it be enough to raise serious questions that when a Congressional Committee investigating specific disinformation operations ran by the CIA, the CIA brings one of those involved in the operation being investigated and uses him in an undercover capacity to forestall and subvert the investigation? But that’s not all.

Consider the scenario of U.S. intelligence involvement in Oswald’s activities in Mexico City that we were not able to fully investigate in 1978. Let’s start with some background on David Phillips. David Phillips was one of, if not the, most experienced, ingenious, respected, and qualified disinformation officers in the CIA. In 1963 he was stationed in Mexico City, but, in early October, he was temporarily assigned to duty at Headquarters because he was being promoted from running anti-Castro propaganda operations to overseeing all anti-Castro operations in the

David Atlee Phillips

Western Hemisphere. He was an experienced hand. In the late 1950’s he had been under non-diplomatic cover in Havana, where he worked with student leaders who would eventually form the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (“DRE”). During the Bay of Pigs, Phillips was stationed at CIA Headquarters where he had responsibility for the propaganda and psychological warfare aspects of the antiCastro operations. In running those operations he not only oversaw the operations he ran personally from Headquarters, he was also the supervisor of the propaganda operations flowing out of the JMWAVE station in Miami by William Kent (aka Doug Gupton, William Trouchard). When the students who had been recruited by Phillips fled Cuba, they were reorganized under Kent’s tutelage into the DRE based in Miami.

Phillips was transferred to Mexico City later in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs. Kent was promoted to Headquarters, and George Joannides took over Kent’s position in Miami, including supervision of DRE. While still stationed in Headquarters in the early 60’s, David Phillips had worked with Cord Meyer to develop the first disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting and disrupting a group of Castro sympathizers who had organized themselves into the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald formed a chapter of the FPCC in New Orleans. In August of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, still in New Orleans, had an encounter with DRE which led to a lot of publicity linking Oswald to communists, labeling him as pro-Castro, and discrediting the FPCC. In July and August of that year there is strong evidence that Oswald was used to identify and contact pro-Castro students at Tulane University. In early September, Oswald was seen with David Philips in Dallas.

On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the FPCC in foreign countries. To my knowledge, the operational files on this new anti-FPCC operation have never been released by the CIA. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa immediately after William Gaudet, a known CIA agent, had applied for one. On September 27 Oswald arrived in Mexico City. This activity did not occur suddenly or in a vacuum. Oswald had started establishing his pro-Castro bona fides earlier that summer in New Orleans, including establishing an FPCC chapter there.

There are too many similarities between Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City to simply dismiss, without investigation or discussion, the possibility that he was being used in an intelligence operation, either wittingly or unwittingly, in both cities. In addition to his contacts with the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic facilities in Mexico City, which could have been part of an intelligence dangle, an attempt to discredit the FPCC, or both, there is now also evidence of Oswald’s contacts with students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his presence at social events with Cuban Consulate

Secret Wars Diary by David Atlee Phillips

employees. David Phillips frequently lied about Oswald and Mexico City, but in a footnote in a little known book he self-published, Secret Wars Diary, he wrote: “I was an observer of Cuban and Soviet reaction when Lee Harvey Oswald contacted their embassies.” [Emphasis added.] One purpose served by an intelligence dangle is to enable the dangling agency to observe the reaction and, from that observation, identify roles of employees, procedures and processes of the enemy.

There can be little doubt that Oswald’s activities, especially the more flagrant, blatant and egregious ones such as those alleged by Shenon to have occurred at the Cuban Consulate, could only have scandalized the Cuban diplomats who heard the threats and bluster – all to the discrediting of the FPCC, just as the publicity about the New Orleans encounter between Oswald and the DRE formed one of the propaganda nails in that organization’s coffin. It is much more likely, in my opinion, that the seasoned Cuban diplomats would be offended than it is that they would support someone exhibiting Oswald’s alleged behavior to attempt an assassination. It is much more likely that the Cuban diplomats would have, as the evidence shows they did, consider Oswald as a U.S. intelligence provocation. The Cubans knew of the surveillance on their facilities. Why would they use someone to do such a job who showed up under surveillance and announced his plans? On the other hand, someone as provocative as Oswald should have generated a cascade of response that, when observed by the watchers, would have revealed an abundance of information. It could also serve to discredit the FPCC with the Cubans. The CIA prevented us, in 1978, from interviewing then surviving penetration and surveillance agents who would have known more about such an operation.

In 1978, we knew not only about the allegations of the twist party, but also about the stories of Oswald’s contact with students. The CIA prevented us from interviewing Oscar Contreras, a student Oswald contacted. But Anthony Summers, and others, have interviewed him since. Contreras acknowledges that Oswald, in late September, 1963, approached him and three other students who were members of a pro-Castro student organization. He asked them for help getting a visa to Cuba from the Consulate. Contreras did have contacts at the Consulate and spoke to the Consul and an intelligence officer. Both warned him to have nothing to do with Oswald as they suspected he was trying to infiltrate proCastro groups. Contreras still wonders how Oswald identified him and his friends as the students, out of the thousands attending the University, as the ones with contacts in the Consulate. Shenon, some way or another, sees this incident as supporting possible Cuban involvement in the assassination. No mention is made to the similarity to what Oswald was doing with Tulane students in New Orleans.

While in New Orleans, Ruth Paine had asked fellow Quaker, Ruth Kloepfer, to check on the Oswalds while they were in New Orleans. Mrs. Kloepfer’s husband was a professor at Tulane University. There is information in the extensive records in this case that Oswald passed out FPCC leaflets near Tulane University and the homes of some of the professors there who were members of a local leftist group. The

Lee Oswald in New Orleans leafleting for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 9 August, 1963

individuals who helped pass out pamphlets on the last occasion when Oswald passed out his FPCC literature in downtown New Orleans, were introduced by Oswald as students from Tulane. There are, keeping things in parallel, indications in the documentation about the case that Oswald, while in Mexico City, made contact with Quakers studying at the Autonomous University. There are indications that one Quaker student at the University at that time was an active agent of the CIA, although that person has never been identified and it has not been determined that he had any contact with Oswald in Mexico City. The reason that it has not been determined is that it has not been investigated.

It has to be pointed out that June Cobb, a known CIA agent, was very involved in Agency actions aimed at the FPCC in the early 1960’s. She appears again as the first person to report Elena Garro de Paz’s story about the Duran/Oswald twist party. At the time she made that report to the Mexico City CIA station, Cobb, a CIA asset, was renting a room from Elena Garro de Paz, Sylvia Duran’s cousin. And Shenon bases most of

Elena Garro De Paz

what he writes on a supposition that, based on this twist-party story, Duran was at the center of the Cuban recruitment of Oswald. But the fact is that it is still very much in question whether Duran had been recruited as an asset by the CIA. David Phillips, as well as other CIA employees, in 1978, were of the opinion that she may have been targeted for recruitment by the CIA. The CIA, then and since, has gone out of its way to keep details about Duran buried, claiming, among other things, to have destroyed her Mexico City P file.

But the point is, the activities in Mexico City in September and October, 1963, are a capsule version of Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in June, July and August of 1963. In the context of the other information we’ve learned about the CIA’s FPCC black propaganda operation, the people involved in those operations and the role of at least one of those people, George Joannides, in subverting the HSCA investigation, how can anyone not seriously consider whether Oswald’s Mexico City activities were part of a CIA anti-FPCC operation? The very first conspiracy theory, that Castro and the communists killed JFK – the one expressed by President Johnson 20 minutes after the assassination, and first seeing print in the DRE’s CIA funded newspaper, Trinchera, on November 23, 1963 – still has followers and proponents, the latest being Phil Shenon. None of the proponents, it seems, have ever really considered whether they may be the victims – or a part – of a very good, deliberate disinformation operation – possibly the best Phillips and Joannides ever ran.

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Dan Hardway, J.D. Attorney in private practice; former investigator, House Select Committee on Assassinations.

RFK Jr. asked Obama to probe ‘two gunmen’ theory, called for reexamination of his father’s assassination: new files

Story by Victor Nava

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had asked the Obama administration to examine an audio clip that purportedly captured his father’s 1968 assassination and seemingly recorded the pops of more gunshots than the convicted assassin’s weapon had the capacity for.

The current Trump administration official’s September 2012 letter to former Attorney General Eric Holder was part of thousands of documents released by the National Archives Wednesday related to the federal investigation into Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Robert Kennedy Jr. penned a letter to the Obama administration in 2012 to reexamine his father’s assassination. Getty Images

Kennedy Jr.’s request for “a new investigation” of the killing included a letter for Paul Schrade, the former vice president of the United Auto Workers, who was injured during the June 6, 1968, shooting.

“He was standing beside my father when Daddy was killed and Paul was himself wounded by a bullet,” the son of the late New York senator and US attorney general wrote in his letter to Holder.

Senator Robert Kennedy during a visit to London, May 1967. Getty Images

“Paul and his team of nationally prominent attorneys including former U.S. Attorney Rob Bonner strongly believe this new evidence is conclusive and requires a new investigation. I agree and support his request for a new investigation,” RFK Jr., continued.

Additional records released Wednesday show that RFK Jr.’s request was passed along to the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, which initiated an investigation of the audio tape, recorded by a journalist at the site of the assassination.

Schrade argued that tape shows “two gunmen fired at least 13 shots from two different .22 caliber revolvers and from opposing directions.”

Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin, used an eight-shot .22 caliber Ivar Johnson revolver to carry out the deed and was unable to reload during the incident, according to Schrade.

Kennedy penned the letter to former President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder. UPI

The FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory in Quantico, Va., eventually got ahold of the tape for analysis, but could not determine the number of gunshots on the recording.

“The designated area recorded on specimen Q1 was of insufficient quality to definitively classify the impulse events as gunshots,” read the May 13, 2013, FBI analysis report.

The report added that investigators could not “confirm the number of gunshots or determine the identification of specific weapon(s)” based on what they heard on the tape.

The trove of files were released as part of Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order pertaining to the declassification of files related to Kennedy’s murder, as well as documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King Jr.

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

AARC PRESIDENT DAN ALCORN: ARTICLES, POSTS, LECTURES

Dan Alcorn: Formerly a law partner of AARC co-founder, the late Bud Fensterwald, has served on the AARC board since 1991, and was a founding director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) and served on COPA’s board until the end of the Assassination Records Review Board process in 1998. Dan has represented requesters in precedent setting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases in the trial and appellate courts in Washington, D.C., including cases related to the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, allegations of misconduct in the FBI crime laboratory, death squad activity in Central America, and intelligence abuses, among other issues.

Partner 1985-1999, Fensterwald & Alcorn, A Professional Corporation specializing in Litigation, Constitutional Law/Freedom of Information, International Law, Labor & Employment/Security Clearances.

Admitted to the bar, 1980, Virginia. 1984, District of Columbia.

Director: Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, 1990-1996.

Vice-Chairman, 1994-1996 . Member: District of Columbia Bar, Virginia State Bar.

Founder, Dulles Corridor Rail Association, 1998.

Director, Assassination Archives and Research Center, 1992- 2023.

President, Assassination Archives and Research Center, 2023.

DANIEL ALCORN has been listed as an AV lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Executive Director Stuart Statler called Mr. Alcorn, “a lawyer’s lawyer” after his work on the FBI Crime Lab FOIA case.

On the C-SPAN Networks:

Daniel S. Alcorn, as a Board Member for the Assassination Archives and Research Center is featured on three videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 1997 House Committee as a Counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

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AARC President Dan Alcorn: JFK’s PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) and the CIA

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AARC President Dan Alcorn: New Findings About Texas School Book Depository Building Owner David Harold Byrd

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Spies in the Congo by author Dr. Susan Williams Reviewed by AARC President Dan Alcorn

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Raven Rock by author Garrett Graff Reviewed by AARC President Dan Alcorn

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AARC LECTURES: DAN ALCORN: BYRD, von ALVENSLEBEN and the DOOLITTLE REPORT

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DANIEL S. ALCORN: MULTIPLE APPREARANCES, C-SPAN

Planned Attack on Lady Gaga Concert in Brazil Is Foiled, Police Say

Her free concert on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach was not disrupted. The police said a group had planned to attack it with improvised explosives.

A crowd of people, many with their hands raised.

Crowds at a Lady Gaga concert on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. Credit…Daniel Ramalho/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Mike Ives

May 5, 2025, 12:23 a.m. ET

The police in Brazil said on Sunday that they had foiled a plot to detonate explosives at a Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro, an event that, by some estimates, drew more than two million people.

Rio de Janeiro’s civil police made the announcement a day after Lady Gaga’s free concert on Copacabana Beach. The show proceeded without disruption, and a representative for the pop star later told The Associated Press that she had learned about the threat from news media reports.

The police said the group behind the foiled plot had been recruiting would-be participants, including teenagers, to carry out attacks with improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails. It said the group’s targets included children, adolescents and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

The group’s leader was arrested in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm, and a teenager was arrested for storing child pornography, the police said in the announcement. It was not immediately clear if either person had been charged

Representatives for Lady Gaga, a vocal supporter of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, did not respond to an inquiry on Sunday night.

Her show over the weekend was part of Rio de Janeiro’s strategy of attracting major acts to play enormous free concerts on Copacabana Beach. Madonna played one last year.

Jack Nicas contributed reporting.

READ MORE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

JOHN SIMKIN ARCHIVE

John Simkin (BA, MA, MPhil)

HERE you will find collected articles and presentations by one of our most knowledgeable and respected JFK researchers: educator, essayist, and historian John Simkin. Please Bookmark this page for updates.

While studying at the Open University John Simkin became convinced by the ideas of Jerome Bruner on active learning. Since he began teaching history in 1978 he has attempted to produce materials that enable active learning to take place. This has included educational computer programs such as Attack on the Somme, Wall Street and The Russian Revolution. The internet provides the best opportunity so far to make active learning a reality.

Over the last twenty years he has written several history books including Gandhi (1987), The Vietnam War (1988), Race Relations in the United States (1988), Slavery: An Illustrated History of Black Resistance (1988), Hitler (1988), Stalin (1987), The Roman Empire (1991), Making of the United Kingdom (1992), Expansion, Trade and Industry (1992), The Medieval Village (1996), The Norman Invasion (1996), etc.

In September, 1997, along with Judith Harris Simkin, Mr. Simkin established the Spartacus Educational website and over the next six years produced online material for the Daily Telegraph, the European Virtual School and The Guardian and its educational website, Learn. He was also a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), a project to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent. He currently teaches several courses at the University of the Third Age, including Understanding the Modern World: The Romans to the Information Society and History of Ideas.

Mr. Simkin has published ten e-books, Charles Dickens: A Biography (October, 2012), First World War Encyclopedia (October, 2012), Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia (November, 2012), Gandhi: A Biography (December, 2012), The Spanish Civil War (December, 2012), The American Civil War (December, 2012), Henry VII (September, 2015), Henry VIII (September, 2015), Anne Boleyn (September, 2015) and Mary Tudor (September, 2015). He is the author of, Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History (December, 2012), and in September 2015 was one of the historians interviewed for the BBC documentary, The Hollywood Spy.

As of October, 2019, the Spartacus Educational website contained 21,036,905 words and 33,196 sources. Spartacus Educational is committed to producing free content, especially to those countries that find it difficult to purchase books.

You can find a more detailed autobiography here: John Simkin

This what ChatGPT AI said on 26th May 2023:

Spartacus Educational is an educational website that provides a wide range of resources and materials related to history, politics, and social issues. It was created by John Simkin, a former history teacher, and is named after the famous Roman gladiator and rebel leader, Spartacus.

The website offers articles, biographies, and primary source documents on various historical topics, covering a wide range of periods and subjects. It aims to promote critical thinking and provide in-depth information to educators, students, and the general public.

Spartacus Educational covers a diverse range of topics, including world history, wars, revolutions, famous individuals, social movements, and more. The content includes well-researched articles, images, and interactive resources to engage and educate visitors.

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Simkin’s work on Spartacus Educational has garnered recognition and acclaim. His dedication to research and education has made him a respected figure within the history community. While specific personal details about John Simkin may be limited, his contributions to history education through the Spartacus Educational platform have left a lasting impact.

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The AM/WORLD PROJECT

10 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

The declassification of the CIA memorandum discussing the activities of Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings dated 19th July 1967 has allowed researchers to place both men within the highly secret AM/WORLD project in 1963. (1)

The first AM/WORLD document released (27th January 1999) was a five-page memo prepared on 28th June 1963. It was sent by Joseph Caldwell King, Chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. “This will serve to alert you to the inception of AM/WORLD, a new CIA program targeted against Cuba. Some manifestations of activity resulting from this program may come to your notice before long… The Kennedy Administration, it should be emphasized, is willing to accept the risks involved in utilizing autonomous Cuban exile groups and individuals who are not necessarily responsive to CIA guidance and to face up to the consequences which are unavoidable in lowering professional standards adhered to by autonomous groups (as compared with fully controlled and disciplined agent assets) is bound to entail.” (2)

In his autobiography, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005), Ted Shackley explained that Manuel Ray had been used in several unsuccessful operations against Fidel Castro. He had him checked out by David Sanchez Morales and Thomas Clines. After he read their reports, he “concluded by describing Ray as a far-left ideologue and as much a political and economic threat to American interests in the Caribbean as was Castro.” Instead, he chose Manuel Artime to run AM/WORLD. “Artime was different. He had solid anti-Batista credentials stemming from his early days as a captain in the Rebel Army. He was an early participant in the Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MRR) and had helped to build the party, although his ambition had then made him a divisive force in the movement.” (3)

The document goes on to point out that the “CIA will confine itself to supporting the efforts” of Manuel Artime and his exile group. “Artime will be in touch with a senior CIA officer, operating under a fully documented alias, who is to serve as his adviser and hopefully as his sole direct link with the Kennedy Administration.” In fact, it was not Artime but Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams who would be in direct contact with Robert F. Kennedy about AM/WORLD. Lamar Waldron has pointed out that the CIA was being somewhat disingenuous as Artime had been working with the CIA since 1959, when he attempted his first CIA-backed coup against Castro. “But what was different about AM/WORLD was that Artime – and the others – were now taking orders not from the CIA, but from Bobby Kennedy.” (4)

The decision to appoint Manuel Artime was confirmed in a memorandum sent by M. K. Holbik to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security on 16th October 1964: “AM/WORLD was an autonomous operation. In theory, as I understand it, the Agency would furnish funds and materials, but the actual handling, direction, or control of the Project would be by the Project head, Manuel Artime; cryptonym, AMBIDDY-1. AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry. (5)

The AM/WORLD memo (104-10315-10004) was declassified on 27th January 1999, and discovered by Stuart Wexler in 2004 who showed it to Larry Hancock. With the help of researchers such as Malcolm Blunt, Hancock obtained the names of other CIA officers involved in AM/WORLD. Hancock points out that AM/WORLD had its own separate operations staff based in Miami and Mexico City. The head of AM/WORLD and Artime’s case officer was Henry Hecksher. The ranking exile under Artime was Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero who worked closely with CIA paramilitary officer, Carl E. Jenkins, the was military advisor to the AM/WORLD project. David Atlee Phillips was designated to organize safe houses and related activities for AM/WORLD. Other CIA officers who attended AM/WORLD and AM/TRUCK (an effort to produce an internal revolution against Castro in Cuba) meetings, included Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales. (6)

In another memorandum dated 14th November 1963, Desmond FitzGerald explained to Ted Shackley why he had chosen Manuel Artime (AMBIDDY-1) to head the AM/WORLD project: “AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry.” (7)

David Sanchez Morales with his key role heading CIA Operations in Miami, had a hand in all the CIA actions against Fidel Castro in 1963. Bradley Ayers, a US Army Ranger (Special Forces) Captain who was assigned to the CIA JMWAVE station to train Cuban commandos and who worked for the Special Group Augmented (SGA), later claimed that “Morales held sway with Ted Shackley and dominated the entire operational agenda at the CIA Station…. Morales was often demonstrably irritated with changes to planned covert/paramilitary operations that were handed down by CIA headquarters at Langley or by orders from Bobby Kennedy’s Special Group that seemed to be micro-managing the secret war against Castro.” (8)

Larry Hancock has argued that “This CIA autonomous group project was part of a larger Kennedy administration multi-agency effort to produce a coup within Cuba which would internally remove Fidel and Raul Castro, allowing their replacement with a new provisional government in which exile leaders would play a key role. The CIA was not in charge of this effort but was limited to supporting Artime’s military build-up off shore and other related political actions including helping him establish contacts and infrastructure in a number of Latin America countries.” (9)

However, it is not clear that the Kennedy administration was aware of the AM/WORLD project. Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978 why the CIA did not want President Kennedy to negotiate with Fidel Castro during the summer of 1963. He pointed out that the head of the CIA’s Cuba unit, Desmond FitzGerald, masquerading as an American Senator, had told Rolando Cubela that a coup against Castro would have the full backing of the United States Government: “The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba – an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence – which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded – it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy.” (10)

In 1963 Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings, became involved in the AM/WORLD project. (11) By the late 1950s Cummings, a former CIA officer, had become the owner of Interarmco, one of the world’s largest military and civilian arms trading companies. He travelled the world buying foreign weapons with which to supply resistance groups behind the Iron Curtain. (12)

Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler pointed out in Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) that over $326,000 from the AM/WORLD project was spent with Cummings’ company Interarmco. “That was for everything from rifles to cannons. AM/WORLD personnel actually travelled to Europe to facilitate issues and make changes in orders for weapons not in stock with Interarmco. Cut out firms were established in Panama and Costa Rica. In Costa Rica the project used an airfield which was already being used for smuggling.” (13)

The day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the homes of friends in New Jersey, Robert and Charlene Fitzsimmons. He told Charlene: “I couldn’t believe they’d got away with it, but they did. They tried it in Cuba, but they couldn’t get away with it. After the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn’t let them get away with it. He was about to blow the whistle on them…The country is too dangerous for me now. They’ve gone mad. They’re drug runners and gun runners. They get the intelligence and come back and tell the government how to run the country. And they’re lying. And those idiots are listening to it. Kennedy gave them some time after the Bay of Pigs. ‘We’ll give them a chance to save face,’ he said. The CIA is under enough pressure already.” (14)

Gary Underhill told his friends that he had become aware of this “clique” was involved in selling weapons: “This country is too dangerous for me. I’ve got to get on a boat. Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It’s too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They’ve killed the president! I’ve been listening and hearing things. I couldn’t believe they’d get away with it, but they did. They’ve gone mad! They’re a bunch of drug runners and gun runners – a real violence group. I know who they are. That’s the problem. They know I know. That’s why I’m here.” (15)

The journalist, Asher Brynes visited Gary Underhill on 8th May 1964. His apartment door was unlocked, he was found in bed dead from a single shot behind his left ear. The weapon used was one of his own pistols. (16) In addition to the wound behind the left-ear, the pistol was found under the left side of his body. Brynes felt this to be suspicious as Underhill was right-handed. The police investigation was minimal, and the coroner reported the death as a suicide. (17)

If Underhill was working on the AM/WORLD project was he right when he claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy and that he was murdered by members of the CIA. If so, he was suggesting that people like Henry Hecksher, Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero, Carl E. Jenkins, David Atlee Phillips Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales were involved in the assassination. (18)

Robert F. Kennedy also suspected that members of the AM/WORLD project might be involved in the killing of his brother. On the evening of the assassination, Kennedy spoke to Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his closest associate in the Cuban exile community. Kennedy shocked his friend by telling him, “One of your guys did it.” The journalist, Haynes Johnson, was with Ruiz-Williams at the time later recalled: “Harry stood there with the phone in his hand and then he told me what Bobby said… It was a shocking thing. I’ll never forget, Harry got this look on his face. After he hung up, Harry told me what Bobby had said.” (19)

As David Talbot pointed out: “When Bobby Kennedy told his comrade-in-arms Harry Ruiz-Williams, ‘One of your guys did it,’ he might as well have been saying, ‘One of our guys did it’ or even ‘One of my guys did it’. Bobby was saying that his brother had been killed by someone in his own anti-Castro operation… He was supposed to know where the darkness fell, and how to keep his brother safe from it. His brother’s death was his fault – this is certainly another wound that his brother’s killers aimed to inflict. For they knew it would not be enough to assassinate the president – they would have to find a way to stop his avenging brother from coming after them as well, to hobble him with guilt and doubt.” (20)

Gene Wheaton gave an interview in 2005 about the AM/WORLD project. The interview was eventually posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017. Wheaton provided very important information on two important members of the AM/WORLD project, Carl E. Jenkins and Chi Chi Rafael Quintero. “I first met Carl Jenkins in Iran in 1976… In 1985 he became my Washington representative when I became Vice President of the cargo airlines National Air, this was during the Iran-Contra thing and they wanted my airplanes for the Contras… We became like brothers… Chi Chi Quintero would come up to Carl’s place in Fairfax, Virginia… from his home in Miami… We were just like a family, they would talk directly to me and to each other in my presence, as if I was one of the spook crowd, the covert crowd.”

“There was a CIA funded program to assassinate Castro and Carl was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro. They would go to Texas and Mexico and take old convertibles, stick old watermelons on the back seat, in something they called triangulation shooting teams… According to them, they were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy… They were CIA people who were training people to assassinate Castro, but if you are training people to assassinate one man, you can use that training to assassinate anybody… They were furious with JFK because he backed off at the last moment at the Bay of Pigs… There was another clique above them who were worried about Kennedy not increasing the program to escalate hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Carl was training Chi Chi and several other shooters, about five of them.”

Wheaton also spoke about the connection between Carl E. Jenkins, Lee Harvey Oswald and Carlos Marcello: “Carl Jenkins formed the first Marine Corps Reserve Unit in New Orleans in Louisiana and was the CIA liaison officer between CIA headquarters and Carlos Marcello and organized crime in the area. Carl helped recruit Lee Harvey Oswald into the CIA while he was a marine… Lee was just a stooge they set up as part of a Operation Security Plan for deniability when they put a real dirty operation into place.” (21)

References

(1) CIA Memorandum (19th July 1967)

(2) Joseph Caldwell King, memorandum (28th June 1963)

(3) Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005) page 71

(4) Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (2005) pages 56-57

(5) M. K. Holbik, memorandum to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security (16th October 1964)

(6) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(7) Desmond FitzGerald, memorandum to Ted Shackley (14th November 1963)

(8) Bradley Ayers, sworn statement (3rd November 1989)

(9) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 507

(10) Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy: The Truth? (1992) pages 400-401

(11) Larry Hancock, Underhill and a Clique within the CIA (22nd March 2025)

(12) New York Times (July 21, 1967)

(13) Larry Hancock & Stuart Wexler, Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) pages 212-213

(14) Robert Fitzsimmons, letter sent to Jim Garrison on the comments Garry Underhill made to Charlene Fitzsimmons (3rd May 1967)

(15) Paul Golais, The Citizen’s Voice (8th April 2001)

(16) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 495

(17) Jim Garrison, interview in Playboy Magazine (October 1967) page 67

(18) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(19) Haynes Johnson, Washington Post (17th April, 1981)

(20) David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) page 12

(21) Gene Wheaton, interviewed by William Matson Law and Mark Sobel and posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017.

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What is History?

16 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

In his book, What is History? (1961), the historian E. H. Carr wrote: “The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.”

Carr points out that the historian starts out with a theory of the past and then looks for the facts to support this theory. What is more, the historian is only willing to spend a lot of time on a subject that he feels strongly about. As William H. B. Court has argued: “History free of all values cannot be written. Indeed, it is a concept almost impossible to understand, for men will scarcely take the trouble to inquire laboriously into something which they set no value upon”.

The problem is that historians tend to develop their theories too early when researching the subject. Once they have their theory about who was responsible for the assassination (Mafia/CIA/LBJ/Soviets, etc.) they look for the evidence to support this view and tend to ignore the evidence that suggests it was one of the alternative theories.

The reason that E.H. Carr was aware of this problem was that he was guilty of this in the 1930s. He was a supporter of Stalin and believed the evidence of the Moscow Show Trails that Trotsky and his followers were really fascists. After all, Gregory Zinoviev said in court: “My defective Bolshevism became transformed into anti-Bolshevism, and through Trotskyism I arrived at fascism. Trotskyism is a variety of fascism, and Zinovievism is a variety of Trotskyism.”

It was not only Carr who believed this. The mainstream press in the West also believed it. Stalin argued for “socialism in one country” whereas Trotsky supported “world revolution”. It was Trotsky rather than Stalin that posed the biggest danger to capitalist democracy.

No one believes this now. We now know that Zinoviev and other Trotsky followers made these false confessions to save the lives of their wives and children.

Maybe, in the future, probably after most of us have died, history books will say that JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy that was covered up by the state. They will also say, why did our historians and journalists let us down by promoting these false narratives?

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LBJ

LBJ and Bobby Baker

17 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

The problem for LBJ was that Bobby Baker, had been getting bad headlines for a couple of years and leaking stories about JFK would not have saved him. In 1961 Baker established the Quorum Club. This was a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill. “Its membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connected who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations.” (1)

Rumors began circulating that Baker was involved in corrupt activities. Although officially his only income was that of Secretary to the Majority in the Senate, he was clearly a very rich man. The journalist, G. R. Schreiber, asked: “How do you build a two-million-dollar fortune in eight years on a salary of less than $20,000? The answer is that Bobby found it easy because so many people were ready to help him.” (2)

Baker was investigated by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He later recalled: The newspapers had a number of articles, The Washington Post particularly. I had always heard stories about Bobby Baker, about all his money and free use of money…. Our first involvement in it came, I suppose, in a conversation I had with Ben Bradlee… who had some information. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but they printed it in Newsweek. He asked me if we would look into it, and I said we would look into it.” (3)

Robert Kennedy discovered Baker had links to Clint Murchison and several Mafia bosses. Evidence also emerged that Lyndon B. Johnson was also involved in political corruption. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the F-111, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. On 7th October 1963, Bobby Baker was forced to resign his post. Soon afterwards, Fred Korth, the Navy Secretary, was also forced to resign because of the F-111 contract. (4)

8 November, 1963 LIFE Magazine cover story

Reports circulated in Washington that the White House was pushing the Baker investigation to embarrass Lyndon Johnson: “Kennedy wants to use the Baker affair to dump Lyndon from the ticket next year.” (5) Robert Kennedy later denied this: There were a lot of stories that my brother and I were interested in dumping Lyndon Johnson and that I’d started the Bobby Baker case in order to give us a handle to dump Lyndon Johnson. Well, number one, there was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. That didn’t make any sense. Number two, I hadn’t gotten really involved in the Bobby Baker case until after a good number of newspaper stories had appeared about it…. There were a lot of stories then, after November 22, that the Bobby Baker case was really stimulated by me and that this was part of my plan to get something on Johnson. That wasn’t correct.” (6)

On 22nd November 1963, a friend of Baker’s, Don B. Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his Senate Rules Committee that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for this business. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds also had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson’s television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson. Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Baker described as a “$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract.” (7)

Reynolds’ testimony came to an end when news arrived that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. “Reynolds was stunned. If President Kennedy was dead, then Lyndon Johnson, the man about whom he had been talking, was President of the United States.” Reynolds told his lawyer: “Giving testimony involving the Vice President is one thing, but when it involves the President himself, that is something else. You can just forget that I ever said if you want to.” (8)

As soon as Lyndon B. Johnson became president, he contacted Jordan to see if there was any chance of stopping this information being published. Jordan replied that he would do what he could but warned Johnson that some members of the committee wanted Reynold’s testimony to be released to the public. On 6th December 1963, Jordan spoke to Johnson on the telephone and said he was doing what he could to suppress the story because “it might spread (to) a place where we don’t want it spread.” (9)

Abe Fortas, a lawyer who represented both Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Baker, worked behind the scenes in an effort to keep this information from the public. Johnson also arranged for a smear campaign to be organized against Don B. Reynolds. To help him do this J. Edgar Hoover passed to Johnson the FBI file on Reynolds. On 5th February 1964, the Washington Post reported that Reynolds had lied about his academic success at West Point. The article also claimed that Reynolds had been a supporter of Joseph McCarthy and had accused business rivals of being secret members of the American Communist Party. It was also revealed that Reynolds had made anti-Semitic remarks while in Berlin in 1953. (10)

Joachim Joesten, an investigative journalist, wrote that there was a connection between the investigation into Bobby Baker and the assassination of John F. Kennedy: “The Baker scandal then is truly the hidden key to the assassination, or more exact, the timing of the Baker affair crystallized the more or less vague plans to eliminate Kennedy which had already been in existence the threat of complete exposure which faced Johnson in the Baker scandal provided that final impulse he was forced to give the go-ahead signal to the plotters who had long been waiting for the right opportunity.” (11)

(1) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator (1978) page 79

(2) G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair (1964) page 23

(3) Robert Kennedy was interviewed by John Bartlow Martin in April 1964. The interview appeared in Robert Kennedy: His Own Words (1988) page 389

(4) Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (1999) page 277

(5) G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair (1964) page 32

(6) Robert Kennedy was interviewed by John Bartlow Martin in April 1964. The interview appeared in Robert Kennedy: His Own Words (1988) page 389

(7) Clark Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy (1965) pages 294-296

(8) Phillip F. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (2011) page 262

(9) B. Everett Jordan, telephone conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson (6th December 1963)

(40) The Washington Post (5th February 1964)

(41) Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968)

ADDENDUM:

While on the subject of LBJ, throughout his presidency, he surreptitiously recorded his telephone conversations. All told he recorded over 800 hours of discussions on the telephone. He told close aides that he did this for two main reasons. (i) It would help him write his memoirs; (ii) He could use this information to apply pressure (blackmail) on politicians and businessmen.

Johnson informed his longtime personal assistant Mildred Stegall that if he died unexpectedly, she must destroy the tapes and their transcripts). However, when died of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, on 22nd January, 1973, Stegall did not carry out his instructions. Instead, she placed them in sealed boxes and sent them to the LBJ Presidential Library with the instructions that they must not be opened until at least January 2023.

However, in 1992 Congress passed legislation requiring release of most available information on President Kennedy’s assassination. In response, the LBJ Library released President Johnson’s phone conversations on this topic in 1993. However, at the time it was said that some were withheld for national security reasons.

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Robert F. Kennedy was America’s First Assassination Conspiracy Theorist

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JFK Assassination: What Happened in the Trauma Room

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The Lyndon B. Johnson Tapes and the JFK Assassination

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The Death of Bernardo De Torres

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Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

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The Secret Files of James Jesus Angleton

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Ben Bradlee and the death of Mary Pinchot Meyer

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Yuri Nosenko and the Warren Report

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The KGB and the JFK Assassination

NEW: Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy

President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14176, Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 23, 2025. Records relating to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy that have been released will be available on this webpage and will be added on a rolling basis.

The National Archives’ Role in Fulfilling Executive Order 14176

In accordance with United States law, it is the responsibility of the National Archives to serve as the final repository of the records of the United States federal government, and make those records available to the American people. Many of the records related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy were previously transferred to the National Archives from federal agencies but were not available to the public. The National Archives is working closely with other federal agencies across the Executive Branch to ensure that any remaining records are identified and transferred to the National Archives as soon as possible.

2025 Release

The table below (follow link) displays the file names and links to all of the documents released related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

For records released on April 18, 2025, researchers may encounter a combination of black and white and colored scans. Here’s why: black and white scans were used in order to more efficiently facilitate the prioritized interagency review process. However, some pages were not legible in black and white. When the National Archives encountered unreadable pages, they were replaced with legible color scans.

April 18, 2025 – 7:30 AM EDT Release: 10,185 pages (229 PDF files)
May 7, 2025 – 7:00 PM EDT Release: 64,686 pages (1,499 PDF files and 17 MP3 audio files)

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More than 10,000 pages of previously classified documents related to the assassinated of Robert F. Kennedy have been released.

The trove of files about the 1968 assassination, published at President Trump’s directive, were previously sitting in storage at the National Archives, according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” said the late senator’s son, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency. I’m grateful also to Tulsi Gabbard for her dogged efforts to root out and declassify these documents.”

The files, unlike the assassination files of RFK’s brother President John F. Kennedy, had not been previously digitized and had “sat collecting dust” in government offices for decades, according to the DNI’s office. Another 50,000 pages of files related to RFK’s assassination have also been uncovered, which will soon be made available.

The mass of files was published in accordance with President Trump’s executive order, which called for the federal files related to the assassinations of RFK, JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. be released to the public.

“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation,” Gabbard said.

The New York senator was shot dead by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after he claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary in 1968.

Five others were wounded in the shooting, which sparked decades of conspiracy theories.

Sirhan originally was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972. California Gov. Gavin Newsom denied his parole in 2022 despite RFK Jr. submitting a letter on Sirhan’s behalf for his release, saying he believed his father would’ve shown Sirhan mercy.