Excerpted from Justice Integrity Project version
Did the CIA try to thwart the nation's last investigation of President Kennedy's assassination?
"The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation," says G. Robert Blakey, the former general counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which issued its report in 1979.
"It is time that either Congress or the Justice Department conducts a real investigation of the CIA," Blakey said at a conference last month. "Indeed, in my opinion, it is long past time."
Blakey, shown above, urged the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to comply promptly with a federal law unanimously passed by congress in 1992 requiring release of JFK records.
Archives leadership refuses to release the documents until 2017 without CIA or presidential approval. The CIA has said it lacks the personnel to process the documents sooner in ways that protect national security.
But at what point does refusal to cooperate with a murder investigation signify a broken system?
As part of an ongoing OEN series on the JFK murder and Warren Report, today's column examines Blakey's allegations. They exemplify the intelligence community's ongoing resistance to congressional oversight.
Blakey and others especially focused on the late CIA officer George Joannides, the agency's liaison to Blakey's congressional staff as they re-examined the validity of the 1964 Warren Commission report on JFK's murder.
Blakey's written statement here attacked Joannides for obstructing the congressional probe under the guise of help. Blakey announced his views Sept. 26, 2014 at a three-day conference in Bethesda, MD organized by the non-profit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).
The AARC conference title was "The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures." Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren had led the seven-member commission, which included former CIA Director Allen Dulles among its membership of high-ranking federal officials and former officials.
The commission announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, had acted alone in killing Kennedy with three shots from behind.
Looking ahead, Blakey and two fellow congressional researchers, Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, said at the AARC conference they will seek missing CIA records about JFK later this fall -- unless the Archives complies with their recent request.
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