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Notes -
The executive order says only that a plan for "full and complete release" is to be presented to the president, by February 7 for the JFK files, and by March 9 for the RFK and MLK files. It does not provide a deadline for the releases themselves.
Of course, as weeks elapse after February 7 and March 9, you can argue that the releases will never happen.
My guess is that the JFK files confirm that Oswald did it (or at least that the deep state genuinely thought he did) but the investigation into Oswald's background and history pulls in hard-to-declassify material about Cold War era espionage.
Of course, releasing JFK files which confirm that Oswald did it is a political loser for this (or any other) administration because none of the people looking forward to the files being released will believe that they are seeing the real files.
To me the most parsimonious explanation is that there are details that are relatively probable but highly embarrassing to the federal government. For example, if Oswald did indeed start shooting, but that it was an accidental discharge from a Secret Service agent (possibly still alive) which blew Kennedy's head off and killed him.
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I find it kind of a weird idea to suppose there was a conspiracy capable of murdering a president and getting away with it but incapable of getting rid of the paper trail when given six decades to do so. If there is evidence for conspiracy in the JFK files, it will be entirely deniable circumstantial evidence, something like "this report was filed weekly except this one time in October 1963."
Also there’s already a lot of pretty suspicious circumstantial stuff that’s public knowledge that has still been summarily ignored by the media and the general public. Like the fact that Oswald had a CIA handler (George de Mohrenschildt). Or that Alan Dulles spent November 22 hunkered down at the Farm (the CIA’s training complex) even though by then he no longer worked for the CIA. Or the fact that Alan Dulles spent the months leading up to the assassination taking documented meetings with various sketch Cuban exiles. Or the fact that there was a massive spree of CIA backed assassinations of various foreign leaders in the months leading up the assassination (Ngo Dien Diem’s assassination was less than three weeks before Kennedy’s). Or that Robert Kennedy suffered a similarly convenient assassination when it looked like he might unexpectedly be in a position to investigate his brother’s death. Or that Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon all seem to have believed there was a conspiracy. I don’t think throwing a few more facts onto the pile of things that make ABigGuy4U go “hmmmm...” is going to break the dam.
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I've long suspected that the problem is that the files hold some still relevant procedural detail that the US doesn't want people knowing (my theory: just how long JFK was "dead" before the announcement was made - in his case they officially continued life saving measures for awhile despite clear futility, likely to allow for succession planning related stuff).
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You're probably right.
I figure that Oswald likely did pull the trigger, but did so as part of a wider conspiracy/plot for which Jack Ruby was tying up loose ends.
I agree. Oswald’s protestation “I’m just a patsy!” doesn’t necessarily imply that he’s saying he’s innocent, just that he’s the designated fall guy for a larger operation. If you look at declassified CIA assassination manuals from that era, half the word count boils down to “find a mentally unstable political radical to do it for you”. I would argue that even if Oswald was the only shooter, it doesn’t necessarily rule out a conspiracy.
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