According to a poll conducted Tuesday by a research group, more than 75% of voters want President Joe Biden honor his commitment last year and release the final collection of JFK assassination documents on Dec. 15.
According to Jefferson Morley (vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation), the largest national online source of JFK assassination documents, approximately 16,000 of the most secret government secrets into the assassination almost 60 years ago remain undiscovered. In October , the group sued Biden to reveal the records.
Biden had issued a memo delaying documents’ release until now one year ago — unless federal agencies convinced him to give them more time. Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor in office, delayed disclosure of the records in 2017. The records were to have been fully released under the Presidential John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act (1992). It was passed unanimously by Congress in response to Oliver Stone’s Oscar-nominated film, “JFK”.
According to the poll of 2,000 U.S. citizens, Fernand Amandi, a JFK historian and consultant with Bendixen & Amandi International, Biden would have broad bipartisan support if he made the documents public Dec. 15.
Amandi presented his poll results Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington alongside Morley.
According to the poll, 71% of voters believe the records should be made public. Only 10% say that the release should be delayed if requested by the FBI or CIA. The young and Republicans are the most supportive of disclosure.
The poll revealed that half of respondents believe there were multiple conspirators in the assassination, while 38% believed Oswald was the sole gunman. The poll also revealed regional differences, with Northeastern voters less likely to believe Oswald acted in concert with others, while Southwestern voters were twice as likely to believe Oswald was acting alone.
The White House, CIA and FBI spokespeople did not respond immediately to inquiries for comment.
Gallup polling shows that the majority of Americans or close to them believe Oswald was responsible for the assassination. However, the numbers have fluctuated.
Gallup polling found that support for the lone-gunman theory was strongest in the mid-1960s at 36%, with 50% saying other conspirators were involved. The support for the lone-gunman theory dropped to the low single digits over the years, while the belief in other conspirators fluctuated between 70 percent and 80 percent. In the 2000s, margins began to shrink.
Amandi’s poll found that 31% believe Oswald was part in a conspiracy. 13 percent believed the mafia was involved. 7 percent believed the Cuban government. 6 percent believed the Soviet Union.
Over the years, the CIA played a key role in covering up the information about JFK’s assassination.
Biden and Trump lobbied the agency to keep records secret. For decades, it misled Congress and the public about Oswald’s contacts and knowledge. It also misled congressionally appointed investigators about Oswald’s activities. Morley’s research, reporting, and other historians who relied upon the JFK Records Act, said that George Joannides was a Miami-based case officer who supervised and monitored the anti-Fidel Castro group “Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil”.
The group is known by the initials DRE. Oswald came in contact with the group in New Orleans on August 5, 1963. He was immediately identified with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro Castro group, according to records.
In 1963, Oswald was known for being a pro-Castro activist. The Pentagon was preparing a plan called Operation Northwoods in which a false flag attack would be staged in the United States. This would blame Cuba and justify a military confrontation in order to rectify the failed Bay of Pigs incident two years earlier. Oswald was immediately identified as a pro Castro sympathizer shortly after JFK was assassinated. This was thanks to news articles that were published and documentation that emerged when he met Joannides’ group.
However, most records that Morley found in other lawsuits are still sealed.
“What are they hiding?” There’s 44 documents that we know exist, that are assassination-related but have not been released. They relate to covert programmes in which George Joannides was implicated,” Morley stated in an interview. “Oswald was the subject of authorized operational activity before the assassination. These documents are a record of that activity.
Morley stated that one of the records withheld is why Joannides was awarded a Career Intelligence Medal at a secret 1982 ceremony. Morley stated that Joannides had retired from the agency in 1975 but returned to work as a CIA-appointed liaison for congressional investigators three years later. These investigators were lied to when Joannides claimed that he was not involved with any activities related to the assassination. Joannides was 68 when he died.
“He didn’t get the medal until he stonewalled Congress. Morley stated that he got the medal after he had stonewalled Congress. “And what’s being kept from the public is the reason he got this medal.”
Morley, a former Washington Post reporter determined the exact number of records regarding the program through an open records lawsuit. The CIA described the contents in vague and general terms.
Amandi called Morley’s research a paradigm shift in understanding how closely the CIA was to Oswald before the assassination.
Rolf Mowatt–Larssen, a former CIA agent who was also a JFK lecturer, is critical of his former agency. He said that the information he, Morley, and others have uncovered — thanks in large part the JFK Records Act – shows that it’s now time to release these records. He stated that there is no reason to redact records based upon “sources” and “methods” from six decades ago.
“The poll results are not surprising to me. Mowatt-Larssen stated that people want the government tell them the truth. “There has never been a time in my entire life when trust in government was this low. So why not disclose?”
