Will Trump Buckle Again on the JFK Records?

Reminder: Our online Zoom conference on open borders concludes this Monday evening, November 11, with Richard Ebeling and me. We wrap up our series on open borders with a session that addresses the common objections to open borders. 7 p.m.-8 p.m. Eastern Time.  Register here.

Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer conference and also at the CAPA conference.  The Lancer conference is being held on November 22-24 in Dallas. The CAPA conference is now being held online. There is also another excellent JFK conference on the same weekend sponsored by the JFK Historical Group. All three of them are fantastic JFK-assassination-related conferences. I highly recommend registering for all three and then picking and choosing which sessions you would like to attend at all three conferences. The registration prices are moderate and it’s a great way to support three great conferences. I will have some of my JFK books at my presentations at the Lancer conference to autograph and sell at a discounted price. I hope to see you all there!

*****

A fascinating situation has now developed between President-elect Donald Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment with respect to the long-secret JKF-assassination-related records that the CIA has succeeded in keeping secret for more than 60 years. Despite Trump’s campaign vow to release those records, it’s not at all clear how this matter is going to be resolved. I will give my prediction at the end of this article.

There are three major factors at play:

1. During his 2024 campaign, Trump vowed that this time around he is definitely going to order the National Archives to release those 60-year-old secret CIA records. Moreover, as he told Joe Rogan, he is going to do it “immediately.” See “Trump to Rogan: If Elected, I’ll Open Remaining JFK Files ‘Immediately’” by Jefferson Morley.

Let’s place this first factor in a historical context.

The JFK Records Act, which was enacted in 1992, ordered the national-security establishment and all other federal agencies to disclose their JFK-assassination-related records to the public.

However, the law gave federal officials an out. If they claimed that the release of certain records might jeopardize “national security” in various ways, they could keep them secret for another 25 years. Yes, 25 additional years of secrecy, on top of the secrecy from 1963 to the 1990s! Taking advantage of that out, the national-security establishment, especially the CIA, continued keeping thousands of its assassination-related records secret.

That 25-year-period ran out during Trump’s first term as president. At first, Trump declared valiantly that he was going to comply with the law and permit the National Archives to release and disclose the records.

But then just before the deadline arrived, Trump was visited by the CIA, who insisted on continued secrecy of its assassination-related records.

Trump immediately buckled. While allowing some records to be released, he did what the CIA wanted him to do and ordered that thousands of other records continue to be kept secret for another few years.

When the new deadline occurred under President Biden, the CIA convinced Biden to continue the secrecy of the records into perpetuity. Thus, the CIA felt it could now sleep easy, knowing that its long-secret assassination-related records would never see the light of day.

2. There is no doubt that the CIA does not want people to see its assassination-related records that it has succeeded in keeping secret for more than 60 years. That’s undoubtedly because the records contain incriminating material — that is, evidence that points further in the direction of a national-security-state regime-change operation against President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963.

No, I’m not suggesting that there is some sort of “smoking gun” in those records, like a confession that states “We orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” That would be a ridiculous notion especially because the CIA’s policy was to never put any reference to a state-sponsored assassination into writing. Moreover, the CIA would never have turned over such a “smoking-gun” record to the National Archives in the first place, even if it wouldn’t be released for another 25 years.

Instead, it is a virtual certainty that the secret records contain bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence that further fill out the mosaic of a regime-change operation. The CIA knows that assassination researchers are an extremely sharp and competent group of individuals and that they will scour those remaining records with a fine-tooth analytical comb. They know that if there is incriminating evidence, the researchers will find it.

When the CIA prevailed on Trump and Biden to maintain the secrecy of its assassination-related records, it knew that it was a virtual certainty that people would accuse it of a continued cover-up of its state-sponsored assassination of Kennedy. The CIA was obviously willing to pay that price, which indicates how important it is to the CIA that those those records never ever be released.

3. Longtime readers of my blog know that I steadfastly maintain that it is not the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court that run the federal government. Instead, it is the national-security branch of the federal government — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. This is a notion that I would say most Americans simply do not want to confront because it is so discomforting.

In other words, the quaint notion is that the United States is a civilian-run government in which the military is subordinate to the civilian control. The truth is that once the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state in the late 1940s, the national-security establishment became in charge of the federal government, just like it is in countries like Egypt and Pakistan.

But here is the kicker: to ensure that the American people never come to the realization of what that conversion did to their federal governmental structure, the national-security branch has always permitted the other three branches to maintain the veneer or the appearance of being in charge. The national-security branch doesn’t care about appearances or veneers. It just cares about being in charge.

For a great book on this subject, one that convinced me of the validity of this thesis, I have long highly recommended National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, professor of law at Tufts University and former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That’s how the CIA got Trump to change his mind about releasing the JFK records when he was president. The CIA is in charge. Trump, as president, answers to the CIA, not the other way around.

So, now what? You have these three factors at play: (1) Trump’s vow to immediately order a release of the records as soon as he is sworn in as president; (2) The CIA’s obvious desire that those records never see the light of day; and (3) If the CIA pulls rank and orders Trump to cease and desist and to violate his vow, it will be confirming my thesis (and Glennon’s thesis) that it is the national-security branch that is running the federal government, something that they do not want the American people to realize.

Therefore, to ensure that Trump retains the veneer of being in charge, the CIA might simply permit him to release the records, something it was not willing to do the last time that Trump was president. But that obviously means releasing assassination-related records that the CIA clearly does not want to be released.

My prediction: The CIA is going to order Trump not to release the records and Trump is going to comply with the order by engaging in another buckle, just like the last time he was president. Like the first time around, I predict that he will declare that “national security” is still at stake and order a partial release of some irrelevant records and make a big deal of it, while continuing to keep the rest of the records — i.e., the incriminating ones — secret. Of course, this option would continued to keep the CIA’s records secret and therefore advance the cover-up of the national-security establishment’s assassination of President Kennedy, but, at the same, time would confirm my thesis (and Glennon’s thesis) that the national-security branch runs the federal government and the other three branches, including the executive branch, defer to its rule.