80,000 pages of unredacted JFK files are being released tomorrow. Think we'll learn anything new? Or find out who was really behind his assassination? Was it the mob? Lyndon B. Johnson? The Mo**ad? George Bush Sr.? All of the above or none of the above?

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/trump-to-release-jfk-files-on-tuesday/

https://nypost.com/2025/03/17/us-ne...-80000-jfk-assassination-files-tomorrow/

Once again: Don't expect any smoking guns that will either prove or disprove conspiracy theories--if any such evidence existed, it would have been destroyed decades ago. The material to be released should be of considerable interest to scholars. Among the items released by Trump in '17 were two memos--by Nicholas Katzenbach, Deputy Attorney General (#2 position in Justice Dept.) and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, both written just hours after Oswald was killed. Both stated that the priority should be to convince Americans that there was no conspiracy. How could they have known, in that short time frame, that there was no conspiracy?

I have to agree with you, Turnbull. If there was anything significant, or the answers everyone has been waiting for, I can't believe that the government wouldn't make some major announcement and not just release the files but specifically show the proof along with the release of everything just to put an end to all the conspiracy theories. And, like you said, anything of significance would've been destroyed decades ago. It's all a distraction IMO.

JFK was killed because he made promises to Giancana and didn't keep his word after Sam helped him get elected.

I completely agree with the both of you. IMO, that's 1000% correct.

It is also speculated that Murray Humphreys played a role in swinging John F. Kennedy's 1960 election, leveraging the mob's influence in key states.

This falls under "Durable Myths of the Mafia." Let's take a look at reality:
Myth: Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father, had ties with organized crime going back to Prohibition, when he was a major rumrunner, and kept up with them after Repeal. In 1960, he contacted Sam Giancana, to solicit money and support from the Outfit and its ally, the Teamsters Union, to help his son win Illinois in the general election. In return, Kennedy promised that his son’s administration would keep hands off organized crime. Giancana agreed to help. But JFK appointed his brother, Robert, as Attorney General. Bobby Kennedy declared war on the Mob and on the Teamsters. So, the conventional wisdom states, JFK had to be killed as revenge, and to keep the government off of the Mob’s back.

Another wrinkle: Giancana and JFK shared a mistress: Judith Campbell Exner, a model and would-be actress, introduced to both by their mutual friend, Frank Sinatra. Later, Exner, terminally ill with cancer, alleged that JFK had used her as a go-between to deliver cash to Giancana to fund assassination attempts on Castro, and to have Giancana arrange for her to have an abortion.

Reality: Joe Kennedy never was a rumrunner during Prohibition. That myth got started because, in 1932 when Prohibition was about to be repealed, Joe Kennedy formed a partnership, Somerset Importers, and in '33, after Repeal, started bringing in, legally, several brands of scotch and gin from the UK. His partner in Somerset Imports: James Roosevelt, FDR's son.

Giancana had no motivation to help JFK carry Illinois. In 1957, he was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, which was looking into OC infiltration of labor unions. JFK was a Dem on the subcommittee, his brother Bobby was chief counsel. Giancana took the Fifth Amendment each time he was asked a question, and gave out a little laugh. "Why are you giggling, Mr. Giancana, Bobby asked him in front of the TV cameras, "I thought only little girls giggled." You don't say that to a Mob boss in front of millions of viewers and expect him to support your brother for President. That hearing also marked the opening of the long war between the Kennedys and Teamster's President Jimmy Hoffa, with JFK shouting at him: "Why don't you stop hiding behind the Fifth Amendment and answer questions truthfully." Hoffa and Bobby almost came to blows at the hearing. The Teamster supported Richard Nixon in 1960.

JFK didn't need the Mob or the Teamsters to carry Illinois because it was delivered to him by his friend and ally, Richard Daley, Chicago's all-powerful Mayor, by the time-honored tactic of having the dead vote early and often. Nixon was co8mfortably ahead in Illinois until 11 p.m. when a huge chunk of JFK votes came in from Cook County. JFK carried Illinois by 8k votes.

As for Exner: JFK didn't know he was sharing her with Giancana until FBI director J. Edgar Hoover informed Bobby that Exner had called the White House switchboard more than 30 times in two weeks--and that one of the calls was traced to a phone in Giancana's home. JFK immediately dropped Exner, and Sinatra, and had no contact with either after that.

The president of Mary Farrell had some interesting things to say about some of the information released:

Nice post Turnbull ! But you forgot to mention the influence Frank Sinatra had.

Hollander,
I'm not aware of any involvement Sinatra may have had.
Could you elaborate? Thanks.

Through his worldwide popularity Sinatra was a much sort after celebrity during that era (1950s-1960s), and he had many close friends that straddled the fence between Hollywood and politics. A perfect example was fellow actor/movie star Peter Lawford, who was an intimate of Sinatra's. So much so, that Lawford was a card-carrying member of Sinatra's famous "Rat Pack" which consisted of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Frank himself. It just so happened that Lawford was also a brother-in-law to President John F. Kennedy. Some believe that Sinatra was able to get in Kennedy's ear through Lawford.

Sinatra was believed to also exert influence over the Kennedy brothers (and the White House) thorough Hollywood bombshell Marylin Monroe and a few others.

That's right NYM people forget that Sinatra was also involved in politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_life_of_Frank_Sinatra

Are you saying that Sinatra had a connection with the JFK assassination?

No No only that Sinatra was a key link to both upper and underworld.

I hope he isn't. I think Oswald acted alone, if Were to go either a conspiracy theroy it would be Russia or people inside the United States government, and I doubt the latter one a lot. Frank Sinatra hung out with comedians, athletes, mob guys, and politicians. Most big celebrities do, and the rumors come springing forward.

Knowing people from all walks of life does not make him a go between for them.

Most in the Kennedy family believe it was a political conspiracy at least a cover-up.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy remains a mystery to people and a source of conspiracy theories. New documents published by Donald Trump will probably do little to change that. Still, it is a smart move by the American president.

I agree with you Hollander, although anything Trump does gets criticized here in the U.S. It's been a few days now, and no big revelations have come out.

Documents on mystery add fuel to conspiracy fire
Why did ex-CIA agent John Underhill panic and tell friends he feared for his life the day after the JFK assassination?
author avatar
Paul Jansen

19 Mar 2025in International

Washington - Researchers and journalists are digging through the mountain of JFK files, which have been released by order of the White House. The documents offer a juicy glimpse into a secret world full of intrigue. So far, however, without the 'smoking gun' of an assassination plot against

President Kennedy. John Underhill (inset), who did 'special jobs' for the CIA, was able to report that the assassination of JFK was an inside job by a small group within the service, who were involved in a lucrative clandestine arms and drug trade. Kennedy is said to have gotten wind of it.
© ANP/HH

John Underhill (inset), who did 'special jobs' for the CIA, was able to report that the assassination of JFK was an inside job by a small group within the service, that there was a lucrative clandestine arms and drug trade. Kennedy is said to have gotten wind of it.

A former secret agent who suspects a 'small clique' within the CIA, wiretapped Cuban diplomats who point to the US and the Soviets who investigate whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a KGB agent. The release of tens of thousands of documents about the assassination of President Kennedy opens the door to all kinds of conspiracy theories.


What about former CIA agent John Underhill, who, the day after the assassination attempt on the president in November 1963, panickedly told friends that he feared for his life. The former officer, who was friends with the top of the Pentagon and did 'special jobs' for the CIA, was able to report that the act was an inside job by a small group within the service, who were involved in a lucrative clandestine arms and drug trade. Kennedy is said to have gotten wind of it.

See also:

Tens of thousands of secret JFK documents on Kennedy assassination released: this is what they say about Lee Harvey Oswald
The secret memorandum from June 1967 also states that Underhill was found dead in his apartment six months later. There was a gunshot wound behind his left ear and the gun was on his left side, which an acquaintance found strange since Underhill was right-handed. The official cause was nevertheless suicide.

Image from the film that Abraham Zapruder made on November 22, 1963 of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

John Underhill was a personal friend of the arms dealer
The complications surrounding CIA agent Underhill surfaced in an American magazine in the sixties. The revelations proved serious enough for the American authorities to include them in a memorandum labelled 'secret' after publication. A striking fact was that Underhill had also been a personal friend of an arms dealer, who had the CIA as a client. The same dealer also delivered the rifle that Oswald bought, officially via a mail order to a sports shop.

The rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald is said to have used in the assassination of JFK.
© ANP/HH

The rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald is said to have used in the assassination of JFK.

The revelations fuel new speculation about conspiracy theories behind the assassination of Kennedy, which according to the official historiography was the work of one man: Oswald. The disclosure was supposed to put an end to all the Indian stories. During the election campaign, President Donald Trump had promised to remove the fog around the most notorious political assassination of the twentieth century. That happened on Tuesday evening, when tens of thousands of papers were released in two tranches.

Experts had warned in advance not to have too high expectations. Many documents had been withheld because of still-living contacts, not because of plots to be concealed, they said. Nevertheless, not everything seems to be public yet. According to National Security Director Tulsi Gabbard, an unspecified number of files are subject to judicial restrictions. These must first be lifted. It is equally unclear whether this also concerns the 2,400 mysterious FBI files that suddenly surfaced last month.


See also:

Secret agent Clint Hill (93) saved the life of first lady Jackie Kennedy, but lived with a sense of guilt until his death

Was Lee Harvey Oswald an extension of the CIA?
An initial scan of the more than 2,200 files yields few new leads about Oswald. The question has always been whether he acted on behalf of the Soviets or was perhaps secretly an extension of the CIA. Interesting in this regard is a report from the nineties that tells the story of an American professor who spoke to a high-ranking KGB official in Moscow about Oswald. In those days after the end of the Cold War, the Russian spy said he had gone through five thick files on the Kennedy assassin and concluded from them that the American had never been run by the Soviets.

See also:

New documents stoke conspiracy fire around JFK assassination: from plausible ideas to downright fabulous brainchildren
See also:

FBI discovers thousands of 'new' secret documents about JFK assassination: 'This is gigantic'
Wiretapped Cuban diplomats in Uruguay also immediately thought that the assassination was the work of the CIA after the attack. However, employees at foreign posts of the communist regime feared that they would be blamed.

Wiretapped Cuban diplomats in Uruguay also immediately thought that the assassination of JFK was the work of the CIA after the attack.
© ANP/HH
.

In addition to information about the assassination of Kennedy, the released documents provide a broad picture of the turbulent international political developments in the sixties, as well as of the world of the secret services. Assassination plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro, coup plans in Vietnam and Congo, a European drug criminal who would be recruited via Luxembourg as a CIA hitman and a Belgian arms dealer in Havana are just a few of the remarkable cases that are reviewed in the JFK files.

See also:

Is a can of worms opening around the JFK assassination? 'Truth sadder than myth'

The criminal who had to be recruited as a murder broker via the embassy in Luxembourg is particularly reminiscent of a Hollywood film such as The Bourne Identity. The CIA wanted to set up a network of assassins via this operation RIFLE. The murder broker had to arrange weapons, cars and safe houses. The plan, which was discussed around the time of Kennedy's inauguration as president in 1961, ultimately died on the drawing board.

Will two Dutch journalists solve the assassination of Kennedy? 'Puzzle pieces fall into place'
Assassination of Kennedy a revenge action by Cuban insurgents?
Many documents are about the communist regime in Cuba. A frequently heard conspiracy theory is that the assassination of Kennedy was an act of revenge by Cuban insurgents for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, which was set up by the CIA. A former secret agent saw danger from the same quarter. Four years after the assassination, he sounded the alarm to warn of possible involvement of a student association of Cuban exiles in the US, which had been sponsored by the CIA. The student association had been in contact with Oswald a few months before the assassination of Kennedy. After that, the trail goes dead.

It seems to be the fate of the flood of released documents.

In addition, the bizarre figure of Wiroque is highlighted in the files, an adventurous man who worked for the CIA and led a colorful life.

JFK would have been one of the best presidents IMO.

Kennedy is known to the general public as the president who announced the American plans to put a man on the moon in order to win the space race with the Soviet Union . In addition, his prematurely terminated term was marked by the Cuban Missile Crisis and increasingly strong American involvement in the Vietnam War and his attempt to stop the arms race. However, Kennedy was a more pragmatic than ideologically inspired leader.

Given the passage of more than 60 years, the deaths of so many people who might have been in the know, and the probable non-discovery, or loss--accidental or deliberate--of evidence, the only thing I'm reasonably sure of is that the case will never be closed. People will still be having these inconclusive discussions 60 years from now.

In 1963, Kennedy secured an agreement with Britain and the Soviet Union to limit the testing of nuclear weapons in space, underwater, and in the earth's atmosphere, seeking to reduce Cold War tensions.

He also founded the Peace Corps.

Although the 1964 Civil Rights act was signed into law by LBJ,Kennedy is credited for laying much of the ground work.

Kennedy also played a role in revolutionizing American politics. Television began to have a real impact on voters. Similar to Trump and social media.

True but Frank was powerful and there was an atmosphere of intimidation that surrounded Sinatra. His code name within the CIA I believe was Napoleon.

BTW Martin Scorsese still want to revive Frank Sinatra biopic with Leonardo DiCaprio that would be cool.

I disagree.
There were no blacks in JFK's cabinet or among his special assistants. The Kennedy Administration’s response to the early Civil Rights movement was diffident. Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s first reaction to the violent Freedom Ride attacks was to ask civil rights leaders to desist because the violence was giving the Soviets more fodder for anti-American propaganda—in effect, blaming the victims for the crime. JFK deferred to segregationist Southern Congressional leaders in appointments to the federal bench and other key positions. Into 1963, JFK, when asked about segregation, said it was "a matter for the states to decide"--the party line of Southern segregationists.
RFK approved wiretaps on Martin Luther King after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover warned that King was surrounded by “Communists”; Hoover used the taps as part of the illegal “COINTELPRO” operation that sought to discredit King, and other civil rights and antiwar leaders and groups. He sent excerpts of King's philandering in hotel rooms to RFK, who played them for his guests to "prove" that King wasn't a moral paragon--as if he and his brother were.
A KKK bombing of a black Birmingham AL church, killing four little girls and wounding 17 others, stimulated JFK to introduce a civil rights bill. But the Kennedy brothers initially opposed the March on Washington in 1963 because they feared that a large crowd of Blacks would turn violent. After they relented, they arranged for King’s hotel room to be bugged, and instructed an administration advance man, assigned to help with audio arrangements, to cut off the sound system if rhetoric became violent or radical.
At the time of JFK's assassination, the civil rights bill was dead in committee. Johnson, who had far more empathy with blacks and vastly greater commitment to civil rights, revived it and got it passed.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release-2025


A boon to historians of the Cold War
The latest release also is a boon to historians of the Cold War. Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFK’s presidency, said scholars now appear to have more details about U.S. intelligence activities under Kennedy than under any other president.

For example, in October 1975, U.S. senators were investigating what the CIA knew about Oswald, and an October 1975 memo said they considered the agency “not forthcoming.”

A version of that memo released in 2023 redacted the name of the CIA’s security contact on Oswald in Mexico, as well as the identity of someone behind the “penetration of the Cuban embassy” there. The latest version shows that the security contact was the president of Mexico in 1975, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, who died in 2022, and that the Mexican government itself penetrated the Cuban embassy.

Also, Naftali said, before the latest release, the government had made public copies of Johnson’s presidential “daily checklist” of highly sensitive foreign intelligence in the days after Kennedy’s assassination, but with much of the material redacted. Now, he said, people can read what Johnson read.

“It’s quite remarkable to be able to walk through that secret world,” he said.


https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/...-cia-but-dont-yet-point-to-conspiracies/

Nice job Hollander, I did not know of the CIA connection other than the dual often related stuff. Them following him to Mexico is the thing that stands out, I wonder what they thought he was up to?

Trump weighs in on JFK death theories during extensive interview after declassifying slew of assassination files

https://nypost.com/2025/03/24/us-ne...classifying-slew-of-assassination-files/

Mafia, the FBI and unanswered questions

For years, rumours swirled that the Mafia had played a role in Kennedy's death. The newly released files don't debunk that theory. If anything, they make it more plausible.

FBI reports confirm what many suspected: the mob felt betrayed by the Kennedys. JFK's election victory was closely watched by organised crime figures, only for Robert F Kennedy, as attorney general, to declare war on the underworld.

The files now expose once-redacted names of informants — suggesting that the Mob had motive, means and connections.

And then there's Jack Ruby. The Dallas nightclub owner who shot Oswald before he could talk had deep ties to crime syndicates. Some reports suggest the FBI was warned about Ruby's intentions but failed to act. Even more chilling?

Certain documents hint at Ruby's links to Cuban exile groups, adding another layer of intrigue to an already tangled story.

A vault of secrets

Even with this final document dump, the puzzle remains incomplete. Many pages are still heavily redacted. Some files hint at intelligence failures; others suggest a possible cover-up.