November 23, 2003
REOPEN THE CLOSED CASE?:
Full Disclosure: The X Files: Forty years later, the CIA is still stonewalling. Time for the agency to come clean (Gerald Posner, 11/24/03, NEWSWEEK)
“I am afraid ... they’ll kill me. Let me in,” the young man pleaded in halting Russian, sobbing in front of several KGB agents in the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He desperately needed a visa to travel to Cuba, to help the Castro government protect itself against future attacks by the CIA.BUT THE CUBAN and Soviet governments had already turned him down. The KGB agents were his last hope. Growing increasingly hysterical, the man reached for his .38-caliber revolver, and swung it about in the air. “See?” he cried. “This is what I must now carry to protect my life.”
The man: Lee Harvey Oswald. The date: Sept. 28, 1963—less than two months before he would be arrested in Dallas for assassinating John F. Kennedy.
The accounts of Oswald’s desperate visit to those communist embassies in the weeks before his rifle shots would change the course of history have long been one of the case’s most troubling issues. Was Oswald alone or with someone when he went to the embassies? Did he threaten to kill the president? Did either Cubans or Soviets encourage him to undertake the assassination? While Cuban and Soviet officials—decades after the event—provided accounts of what transpired, there might be definitive answers closer to home, inside CIA files, in documents never released by the agency.
From 1992 to 1998, an independent federal body, the Assassination Records Review Board, released thousands of records previously deemed too sensitive for the public. But more is needed. While the massive document release of the past decade reinforces the growing consensus that Oswald alone killed the president, there is a continuing failure by key government agencies—particularly the CIA—to disclose everything of relevance. Over the past 40 years the agency has too often served its own interests in this case, at the expense of truth and history.
The CIA covering its bureaucratic butt instead of seeking the truth? Hush yo' mouf.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 23, 2003 12:55 PM
This whole idea that Oswald "changed the world" annoys me no end. There's very little reason to believe that Kennedy would have acted much differently than Johnson, except he might not have been able to get the Civil Rights bill passed. The idea -- beloved of the left -- that Kennedy would have suddenly pulled out of Viet Nam, made friends with Castro and ended the Cold War is contrary to every thing he said and did in his public life.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 23, 2003 8:12 PMGoldwater always thought he could have beaten JFK in '64 and if you look at the pre-assassination polls, he may have been right.
Posted by: oj at November 23, 2003 8:46 PMGiven the scrutiny JFK was under on foreign policy after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's simply wish fulfillment by Kennedy familly supporters than JFK would have turned on a dime on his position on Vietnam and risked a repeat of the "Who Lost China?" problems that plagued Truman after 1949.
But I think one thing would have changed if JFK had survived -- we would probably see a far more moderate Edward M. Kennedy in the U.S. Senate today (if he was still serving). JFK would have borne the brunt of the critcism from the left on Vietnam from 1964 on, which would have forced him to move towards the center to shore up his support. Bobby and Teddy would have followed. After Kennedy was assassinated, Bobby and Teddy moved to the left, because that was the place to challenge LBJ from after their brother's death. Teddy wouldn't have been the next Phil Gramm, but he probably would have been somewher between Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller politically after the anti-war groups had gotten through lambasting his brother.
Of course, a moderate Teddy Kennedy in 1969 probably wouldn't have survived the scrutiny of Chappaquiddick from what would likely have been a far more hostile press, but had JFK and Bobby lived, Teddy may not have ever gotten in that position in the first place.
Posted by: John at November 23, 2003 9:36 PMIf the Bay of Pigs had succeeded, Oswald would still have shot Kennedy; in fact his rationale
would have been increased. Mr. Joannides,would
probably not be involved, than again he might
have been the Havana station chief, in that
circumstances aside; the discovery of
Jefferson "Crack is good" Morley; Posner seems
to have joined the conspiracists in his most
recent tome
Forget the Kennedy files. What about the aliens at Area 51 ?
It's time the public knew the truth. (Although it wouldn't change much about society).
A dumb question from someone who was born after all this took place: JFK and RFK, two cannonized saints of the Democratic party were killed by a communist and a palestinian, respectively. So why has the party been so soft on both?
Posted by: jason johnson at November 24, 2003 10:10 AM