ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES

AND RESEARCH CENTER

  • About the AARC
  • AARC 2014 Conference Videos
  • Analysis and Opinion
  • COLD WAR CONTEXT
  • The Malcolm Blunt Archives
  • CURRENT FOIA LITIGATION
  • Dan Hardway Blog: Sapere Aude
  • Destroyed Files
  • DOCUMENTS AND DOSSIERS
  • FBI Cuba 109 Files
  • Joe Backes: ARRB Document Release Summaries, July 1995-April 1996
  • MISSING RECORDS
  • News and Views
  • Publication Spotlight
  • Public Library
  • SELECT CIA PSEUDONYMS
  • SELECT FBI CRYPTONYMS
  • CIA Records Search Tool (CREST)
  • AARC Catalog
  • President’s Page
  • AARC Board of Directors
  • AARC Membership

Copyright AARC

Professor Gerald D. McKnight, author of Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why has died

31 January, 2021|Alan Dale

Professor Gerald D. McKnight, author of Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, has died at a Health Center/Retirement Home in Lawrence, Kansas. Professor McKnight was a Korean War veteran serving in Graves Registration, a career educator, a distinguished researcher and author, and a close associate of the prolific litigator and JFK assassination scholar, the late Harold Weisberg. Professor McKnight was an influential teacher and historian, an exceptional person whose friendship, generosity, and depth of understanding was a gift to all who knew him.

Gerald D. McKnight was emeritus professor of history at Hood College, where he had served as chair of the History and Political Science Department.

Professor McKnight quoted for an interview in September, 2005:

I think there are several telltale evasions: 1) The WC’s failure to launch a real investigation into Oswald’s Mexico City trip. This, I believe, is a key to what forces or interests were behind the murder of JFK. 2) The destruction of JFK autopsy materials and the writing of a second autopsy protocol after it was learned that Oswald was murdered—in short, the fabrication of the JFK autopsy protocol. 3) Lastly, the fact that the FBI and the WC had the Atomic Energy Committee (AEC) run sophisticated Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) on Oswald’s paraffin casts and other forensic materials and then failed to include those results in the final Commission Report. The fact that some of the best evidence in the case was never disclosed in the Warren Report leads to one inexorable conclusion: that results exonerated Oswald.

Some people, especially those born after the assassination, seem to think this is “old news.” How do you explain to them that the unanswered questions surrounding that event are still incredibly relevant more than 40 years later?

A president is assassinated—there can be no more de-stabilizing crime in our system of government—and there is no good-faith effort to uncover the facts. What does this say about the legitimacy of our government? Moreover, once JFK was removed, there followed possibly history-altering changes in our foreign policy. Had Kennedy lived, would he have liquidated our involvement in Vietnam? Many credible historians speculate that he would have ended our involvement by the end of 1964. Kennedy’s tentative steps toward a rapprochement with Castro’s Cuba ended with Dallas. Once LBJ heated up our Vietnam involvement, the Soviet-American detente growing out of the peacefully resolved 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was terminated. This raises the foreboding question: Was JFK’s assassination a coup d’etat?

Professor McKnight is the author of the books, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI and the Poor People’s Campaign (1998) and Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (2005, republished for a 2013 edition).

My JFK Conversations interview with Professor McKnight may be found here:

LISTEN to Alan Dale’s 2014 conversation with Professor McKnight HERE. Duration: 01:09:17

READ a transcript of the above conversation may be read HERE.

WATCH C-Span: Professor McKnight speaking at the 2012 Mid-America Conference on History in Springfield, Missouri.

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: Assassination records, CIA, FBI, Gerald D. McKnight, JFK, Kennedy assassination, Warren Commission, Warren Report

2017 & 2018 JFK Releases: Progress, Issues, Recommendations

Rex Bradford, President, Mary Ferrell Foundation June 18, 2018

SUMMARY

Under the President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992 (“JFK Records Act”), the Assassination Records Review Board (“ARRB”) oversaw the declassification of millions of pages of formerly classified records. But a significant number of documents were withheld in full, and many more were withheld with “redactions” (portions withheld from view).

As noted in the ARRB’s Final Report, the JFK Records Act included a provision for full release 25 years after its passage. Specifically, it “mandated that all postponed assassination records be opened to the public no later than the year 2017” unless the President certifies that (1) “continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” and (2) “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=3611#relPageId=33).

Instead of full disclosure, what occurred was a rolling set of partial releases, 7 so far, along with continued withholding. On the positive side, for the first time the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) published the newly released documents online in PDF format, a huge boon to researchers. But this process has been marred by errors and confusion, as documented herein.

Currently according to NARA, 15,834 documents remain withheld in part, along with a smaller set still withheld in full. Both the current state of affairs, and the process by which releases have occurred, are less than satisfactory.

This paper documents the recent history of releases and the numerous problems with the process and the current state of affairs. It does not discuss the question of “what’s in the new records?” – suffice to say that there are important documents being uncovered, related to the assassination investigations and also the context of Kennedy Cold War policies, and that the full “digestion” process will take time.

RELEASE HISTORY

After an early release of records in July of 2017, the 25-year anniversary arrived on October 26. Against a backdrop of lobbying by federal agencies, President Trump
signed an authorization for continued withholding of most of the remaining records, release of some, and an accompanying review process with a 6-month deadline.

In November and December of 2017, 4 additional releases happened. When the 6month review deadline came on April 26, 2018, a seventh release occurred, along with continued withholding and a new review deadline set for 2020.

In all, tens of thousands of documents were released or re-released, though over 15,000 documents remain withheld at least in part.

Continue reading: DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: CIA, FBI, JFK records, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy assassination, NARA, President Trump

Judge rules FBI unlawfully refused to comply with information act requests

Court finds FBI policy is ‘at odds’ with the Foia statute in ruling in favor of plaintiffs who contend government was trying to shield itself from scrutiny

RThe FBI unlawfully and systematically obscured and refused to answer legitimate requests for information about how well it was complying with the Freedom of Information Act (Foia), a Washington DC court found last week.

US district judge Randolph D Moss ruled in favor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD student Ryan Shapiro, finding that the government was flouting Foia, a law intended to guarantee the public access to government records unless they fall into a protected category. Moss found that the FBI’s present policy is “fundamentally at odds with the statute”.

Shapiro has, with his attorney Jeffrey Light, provided documents obtained using Foia requests in the past.

The bureau shot down requests for information so regularly and thoroughly – sometimes saying that records were unavailable, sometimes that they didn’t exist, sometimes that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of records – that Shapiro and his co-plaintiffs asked for more information about the process by which they had been so often refused.

And those requests for clarifying information were categorically denied on the grounds that any information about the FBI’s reasons for denying previous Foia requests were by their very nature secret.

Shapiro and his fellow plaintiffs contended that the government often acts in bad faith and was trying to shield itself from scrutiny as broadly as possible. In doing so, they said, it had stretched the law to breaking point by including harmless documents in the broad categories of material it refuses to hand over or discuss.

“As the plaintiffs correctly observe, dissatisfied Foia requesters are often required to take the government at its word in Foia litigation, where the government has access to the disputed records and knowledge of how a search and response was conducted,” wrote Moss in a 63-page opinion.

There are at least three categories of records the FBI simply refuses to part with:

  • “Search slips,” which document the efforts of analysts to find files requested.
  • Case evaluations of the analysts supposedly looking for the records in question, which could detail whether an individual analyst has a history of errors or overapplication of the nine Foia exemptions.
  • Case processing notes, which provide further detail of individual searches.

“The FBI does nearly everything within its power to avoid compliance with the Freedom of Information Act,” Shapiro said. “This results in the outrageous state of affairs in which the leading federal law enforcement agency in the country is in routine and often flagrant violation of federal law.”

The main argument the FBI made was that the documents detail law enforcement techniques and procedures that are not generally known to the public – an established exemption from Foia. The plaintiffs provided examples of each kind of document obtained by Foia before the FBI adopted its policy of nondisclosure.

Moss agreed that even if individual documents were protected by that Foia exemption, the entire categories of document the FBI withholds were emphatically not. “[The FBI] concedes that the vast majority of [the records in question] are not protected at all,” he wrote. “It is only arguing that by withholding all search slips, even those not protected by Foia, it can amass a haystack in which to hide the search slips that are protected (emphasis his).”

“The FBI’s exercise of its statutory authority to exclude documents from Foia’s reach is not the kind of ‘technique’ or ‘procedure’” to which the necessary exemption refers, wrote Moss.

Shapiro and Light sued alongside Jeffrey Stein and nonprofit group Truthout, who were represented by Kel McClanahan of co-litigant group National Security Counselors.

There is little love lost between Shapiro and the government. Shapiro boasts the unusual distinction among graduate students of having his dissertation work challenged in court on the creative grounds that it constitutes a dangerous “mosaic” of individually legal parts that, were it released, could “significantly and irreparably damage national security”, in the words of the FBI.

It’s an argument that Shapiro finds interesting and would very much like to hear in detail, but he can’t. “We can’t even read most of the FBI’s argument to support this contention, because the FBI submitted it in the form of an ex parte, in camera declaration,” Shapiro said. “This is essentially a secret letter to the judge from the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division.”

Shapiro may be the single most prolific Foia requester in the history of that law, so when he says the FBI is particularly difficult to work with, it’s because he has worked with many government agencies. “While Foia with some agencies can be akin to a protracted business meeting or an attempt to get telephone customer support from a telecom over a holiday weekend,” he said. “Foia with the FBI is a street fight.”

“The US attorney’s office is reviewing the ruling and has no further comment on this matter,” Justice Department spokesman Bill Miller said. Miller did not say whether the DoJ would appeal the ruling.

READ MORE AT THE GUARDIAN

 

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: DoJ, FBI, FOIA, Full-disclosure, Secret files

Justice department ‘uses aged computer system to frustrate Foia requests’

  • Lawsuit accuses DoJ of ‘failure by design’ through use of decades-old system
  • DoJ refuses to use new $425m software on freedom of information requests
A judge ruled in January that the FBI had acted in a manner ‘fundamentally at odds with’ the Freedom of Information Act. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images

A judge ruled in January that the FBI had acted in a manner ‘fundamentally at odds with’ the Freedom of Information Act. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images

A new lawsuit alleges that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) intentionally conducts inadequate searches of its records using a decades-old computer system when queried by citizens looking for records that should be available to the public.

Freedom of Information Act (Foia) researcher Ryan Shapiro alleges “failure by design” in the DoJ’s protocols for responding to public requests. The Foia law states that agencies must “make reasonable efforts to search for the records in electronic form or format”.

In an effort to demonstrate that the DoJ does not comply with this provision, Shapiro requested records of his own requests and ran up against the same roadblocks that stymied his progress in previous inquiries. A judge ruled in January that the FBI had acted in a manner “fundamentally at odds with the statute”.

Now, armed with that ruling, Shapiro hopes to change policy across the entire department. Shapiro filed his suit on the 50th anniversary of Foia’s passage this month.

Foia requests to the FBI are processed by searching the Automated Case Support system (ACS), a software program that celebrates its 21st birthday this year.

Not only are the records indexed by ACS allegedly inadequate, Shapiro told the Guardian, but the FBI refuses to search the full text of those records as a matter of policy. When few or no records are returned, Shapiro said, the FBI effectively responds “sorry, we tried” without making use of the much more sophisticated search tools at the disposal of internal requestors.

“The FBI’s assertion is akin to suggesting that a search of a limited and arbitrarily produced card catalogue at a vast library is as likely to locate book pages containing a specified search term as a full text search of database containing digitized versions of all the books in that library,” Shapiro said.

The DoJ has contended to Shapiro and others that only one of ACS’s three search functions, the Universal Name Index (Uni), is necessary to fulfill the law. The Uni search does not include the text of the files in the ACS, merely search terms entered – or not – by the FBI agent handling the case in question.

Shapiro told the Guardian that the reason the DoJ gave for refusing to use its $425m Sentinel software to process Foia requests after ACS had failed to recover records was that a Sentinel search “would be needlessly duplicative of the FBI’s default ACS UNI index-based searches and wasteful of Bureau resources”.

CONTINUE READING AT THE GUARDIAN

 

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: DoJ, FBI, FOIA, JFK records, RECORDS

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Newsletter Signup

    Your Name (required)

    Your Email (required)

    Send checks to:
    AARC
    930 Wayne Ave.
    Unit 1111
    Silver Spring, MD 20910

    Office: (844) JFK-2017

    Menu

    • Contact Us
    • Warren Commission
    • Garrison Investigation
    • House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)
    • Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)
    • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
    • Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
    • LBJ Library
    • Other Agencies and Commissions
    • Church Committee Reports

    Recent Posts

    • FILED: Notice of Appeal in the FOIA case for records on DH Byrd, Werner von Alvensleben and the Doolittle Report.
    • Last Second in Dallas: A Granular Account of the Final Second of the Assassination
    • Memphis Conference 13 – 15 April
    • A New Essay by Professor David R. Wrone (No. 1)
    • A New Essay by Professor David R. Wrone (No. 2)
    Copyright 2014 AARC
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Tools