Posted on 10/18/2021 10:10:41 AM PDT by bitt
President Biden faces many well-publicized deadlines. But there’s one that has flown under most everyone’s radar. Biden has less than a month to make a decision about still-withheld records on one of the most consequential murders of the 20th century.
Nearly 30 years ago, Congress unanimously passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, a landmark moment in the fight against government secrecy. In the ensuing years, many documents were handed over to the National Archives, surprising and thrilling skeptics of big government.
But the euphoria soon died down. Some of the more sensitive documents were either produced with countless redactions or withheld completely, and in the years following the 1998 disbandment of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) — the entity tasked by Congress to facilitate the collection of the actual records — the flow of assassination material slowed to a trickle.
With Congressional oversight lacking, there was little incentive for any of these agencies, the CIA and FBI in particular, to finish their legally required review, and several thousand files were still classified to some degree as a 2017 deadline approached.
While many of these files were handed over to the National Archives, some of them quite interesting, thousands still contained redactions, or were held back in full. And then they were delayed even further, until a new deadline was set: October 26, 2021.
According to the National Archives website, nearly 16,000 documents remain partially redacted, most created by the CIA and FBI. With nearly six decades having passed since Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, this continued secrecy runs contrary to the expressed intent of the JFK Records Act.
JFK’s murder and the Warren Commission’s tawdry investigation of it are frequently cited as the origin of the downward spiral of Americans’ trust in their institutions, along with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.
If Biden wants to help restore the American people’s faith in government and its institutions in general, it’s hard to imagine a better opportunity than the one he has this October. He can start building a legacy for his administration as one that promotes governmental openness at a time when the very idea of objective truth faces an uncertain future.
In a recent letter to the White House, a number of lawyers pressured him to do the right thing. These attorneys, including noted Washington whistleblower representative Mark Zaid, point out that none other than Biden himself said in an early press release: “My administration has no greater task than restoring faith in American government.”
Below, we are republishing a succinct summary of the JFK Records Act (along with some annotations) and its “deadlines” that have come and gone because of stonewalling by federal agencies that are supposed to be subject to its enforcement. It was written by Mark E. Adamczyk, an attorney who for the past 20 years has been studying the JFK assassination and related history.
Adamczyk highlights the looming deadline for the release of the JFK records by the National Archives, outlines Biden’s responsibilities as defined by the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and urges readers to join him in writing a letter to the president asking him to follow the requirements of the law.
...more
The last of the perps died recently, so there’s no longer any reason to keep them sealed.
The only reason they would release any of these
is if they could prove a republican was somehow guilty
or involved.
Hey, nothing stops the Media Wing of the DNC from changing party affiliations in their shill pieces.
The same groups that went after President Trump is the same group that had JFK murdered.
“If Biden wants to help restore the American people’s faith in government and its institutions in general”
Who writes this $#it?
The administration holding office on a lie, who has lied about everything for 9 months, is going to restore our faith?
If Biden quit today, declared Harris ineligible, locked Hillary up, fired Psaki, and deported Obama, he couldn’t undo the damage done by this bunch.
Laws were not meant for dems.
100% FAIL.
Try again Mark but you have just about nothing to work with.
.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
