JFK, RFK, MLK: what we can expect

+ Completing the mandate of the Church Committee

Today I am providing my English translation of 2 short articles, both originally in Italian.

The first one is a short article by Massimo Mazzucco published on his LuogoComune.net website on Monday 27th January 2025. (All emphasis original).

JFK, RFK, MLK: what we can expect

Left to right: John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK), Martin Luther King (MLK), Robert Francis Kennedy (RFK).

The news that Donald Trump has asked to declassify all remaining documents on three of the most important assassinations of the last century: that of John Kennedy, that of his brother Robert, and that of Martin Luther King.

All assassinations, curiously enough, took place in the space of just five years - from '63 to '68 - at the very time when John Kennedy's “new frontier” dream was crumbling and the dark years of Richard Nixon were coming to the fore.

But what exactly is this all about? How many documents are still missing, and what secrets are they hiding? Let us look at the three cases, one by one.

JFK - About 3-4000 documents remain to be declassified, many of which have already been published in “redacted” form (with black marker covers over the most sensitive parts, or even completely black pages). Theoretically, they should now be made public without the covers, all in plain text. They are internal documents of the various agencies (CIA and FBI) that mainly concern the assassination investigation. Of course, since it is - in all probability - the CIA and FBI themselves were involved in the assassination, it is naïve to think that any direct admission of guilt on their part can be found among those documents.

There is, however, one group of documents that, according to the researchers, might hold some surprises: it is about fifty documents concerning CIA agent George Joannides. A CIA man in Miami, Joannides is suspected of being the one who fabricated the false relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the pro-Castro committee in Florida. In other words, Joannides would be the man who artificially constructed the image of the “communist” Oswald, which would then serve to justify the alleged killer's actions in the official version.

Already in 2022, the Mary Ferrel Foundation, which has dealt extensively with the Kennedy assassination, had demanded the complete declassification of all documents concerning Joannides. Oliver Stone has also repeatedly asked for the same thing.

Perhaps the missing link that clearly connects Oswald to the CIA could emerge from these documents, thus destroying the official version (according to which Oswald and the CIA are totally unrelated). Other researchers claim that the Joannides documents could even prove CIA pre-knowledge of the bombing.

RFK - Over the years, the CIA has always been very resistant to requests to declassify the documents relating to the June '68 assassination of Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. This is understandable, since it is precisely the CIA that is the main suspect in organising the assassination. To date, it is unclear how many documents are still sealed in the case of Robert Kennedy, but one certainly expects to find something that confirms the presence of some CIA men at the scene of the murder. For some time now, in fact, Shane O'Sullivan, an independent researcher, has been analysing the footage and claims to have identified some CIA men among the public present in the lounge of the Ambassador Hotel, including David Morales (who was also present in Dallas, five years earlier), Gordon Campbell and George Joannides himself. We really hope that the release of the documents on Robert Kennedy's murder will be “total and complete”, as Trump demanded in his executive order.

MLK - In the case of Martin Luther King, however, the CIA had nothing to do with it. All suspicions fall on the FBI. Indeed, it is well known that Edgar J. Hoover (the head of the FBI at the time) was obsessed with Martin Luther King, whom Hoover considered “a dirty communist” who had to be removed. The documents to be released will therefore mainly concern the secret files of the FBI's surveillance of MLK, which were part of the COINTELPRO project. Thus, no documents revealing the identity of the shooter should emerge (the murder was attributed to James Earl Ray, but there are many doubts about that), but surely something explosive must be there, since in 1977 a US judge had ordered that all FBI documentation on MLK's murder remain classified for at least fifty years, i.e. until 2027.

In conclusion, I suggest that we should have no illusions about possible revelations about the real killers of JFK, RFK and MLK, nor about the direct principals, while it is possible that something surprising and explosive - about the CIA and the FBI - may suddenly emerge from a process of declassification as extensive and generalised as Donald Trump has demanded. What will be in the Easter egg?

---

---

The second article was published on Movisol.org earlier today, Thursday 30th January 2025. (All emphasis mine).

Completing the mandate of the Church Committee

Kash Patel, candidate to FBI Director.

Fifty years ago, on 27 January 1975, the US Senate established what became known as the Church Committee named after the Democrat Frank Church who chaired it. Its task was to investigate abuses committed by the security and intelligence agencies of the US government. The investigation produced abundant evidence of corruption and violation of constitutional rights by federal agencies. Documents published by the National Security Archives show that there was a determined effort to sabotage the Committee by those unmasked by the investigation, who lied, cheated, and stole (former CIA chief Pompeo's words), just as defenders of the United States as the “only superpower” do today to bludgeon opponents and protect their own declining empire.

In an appeal drafted to mobilise support for the confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Kash Patel (photo) as Director of the FBI, Diane Sare, president of The LaRouche Organisation (TLO), refers to the precedent of the Church Committee to show that the commitment of Democrats and Republicans in 1975 to fight the shadow government met with determined opposition, just as today there is a desperate attempt to prevent a more thorough examination of the crimes of this network.

“Opposition to the investigation, as revealed in [a 2015 report] (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB522-Church-Committee-Faced-White-House-Attempts-to-Curb-CIA-Probe/) published at George Washington University's National Security Archive, was led by none other than Dick Cheney (Liz Cheney's father), who at the time was an adviser to President Gerald Ford. He, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and then-CIA director William Colby did everything they could to ‘blunt’ the investigation, believing it would hamper the agencies' ability to continue clandestine operations (i.e., crimes).

“Despite Cheney's efforts, the Church Committee uncovered appalling abuses by federal agencies, including participation in assassinations abroad and unspeakable crimes against Americans at home, such as the administration of narcotics and the use of torture against unwitting university students in alleged ‘mind control’ experiments under Operation MKULTRA, and the collection of massive amounts of data on individuals active in civil rights, anti-war, or union campaigns in order to destroy their organisations and personal lives”.

Sare writes that since such “nefarious clandestine activities (...) have not come to an end, but have become standard operating procedure”, TLO has decided to defend Gabbard and Patel from the “Liars’ Bureau” that is desperately trying to prevent their confirmation.

Sare considers the order by which Trump ordered the release of the remaining secret files on the assassinations of President [John F.] Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. a big step forward. “If Gabbard is confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, she will preside over the review of the files. The fact that since her appointment, she has been constantly attacked with slander by some of Dick Cheney's biggest supporters in the Democratic Party, such as Hillary Clinton, speaks volumes about her integrity”.

Similarly, Sare writes that “Trump's choice for FBI director Kash Patel has been attacked by those who simply cannot admit that Hillary Clinton was a lousy presidential candidate whose corruption was revealed by leaked emails showing that she was stealing the Democratic Party nomination from Bernie Sanders”. Clinton, and today Patel's opponents, would rather blame Russia for hacking the DNC server to publish the emails - a claim that has been repeatedly denied - to distract from the real evidence of Democratic Party corruption.

“Exposing crimes committed by federal agencies and prosecuting the people who committed them is not what makes people lose faith in government,’ the author continues. “It is the crimes themselves that have led to the immense distrust”.

Sare went on to address the corruption of elected officials working to prevent the confirmation of Gabbard and Patel. She called on the senators to “earn our trust by acting to clean up the criminal enterprise that has become our government. We know you are enriching yourselves by funding wars abroad, killing people over there, while people are dying here because we cannot even afford to build modern infrastructure”.

“Stop being unworthy and confirm Gabbard and Patel, who have shown in numerous instances a willingness to look behind the official narrative and tell the truth, even when those in power do not want it known. Senators, earn our trust”, she concluded.

TLO activists have distributed Sare's appeal, along with the “Liars’ Bureau” dossier, to most congressional offices and will be in Washington this week to promote support for confirmation.

---