For decades, our pop culture has been rife with questions and concerns about the original American conspiracy theory: Just what took place in Dealy Plaza on the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
There have been volumes written on the subject, and perhaps more pseudo-documentaries than could ever be watched in one lifetime. The Zapruder film, (the only footage of the event ever recovered), has been examined to the point of madness, and every possible angle has been dissected to death.
And still we have more questions than answers…even after our government has pushed to release more and more files on the subject.
A new batch of declassified documents released on Wednesday offer a few more details about the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including the CIA’s “technical surveillance operation” that monitored Lee Harvey Oswald in the weeks before the killing.
But researchers said that the files, which had previously been made public with portions blacked out, didn’t appear to reveal any significant new information or leads — and in at least several cases are documents that were already fully released as part of previous disclosures.
Some material raises the question of why it took nearly 60 years to release the information and sparked new criticism about the government’s handling of the files, including thousands more yet to be made public.
The criticism came hot and heavy.
For instance, one newly released file discloses “a crank call” made to the U.S. Navy attaché in Australia more than a year before the assassination about an alleged plot against Kennedy by the Soviet Union.
“Why should we trust that some or most of the additional, unreleased material is not simply B.S. or overclassification?” asked Stuart Wexler, an assassination researcher and author. “And more importantly, why should we trust that they are being held for legitimate reasons and not because they are embarrassing in some way?”
Will we ever find out the truth about one of the most harrowing days in American history? At this rate, it certainly doesn’t seem likely.
