JFK news is heating up in 2017

The assassination has been in the news quite a lot recently.  The media is starting to catch on to the JFK Records Release with stories on MSNBC, Salon, Politico, The Independent, and several others. The Trump angle of the story seems too irresistible–the President is the only one who can block the remaining documents scheduled for release by October 27, 2017.  And some people expect that he might do just that.

Much has been written about Trump as the “conspiracy theorist-in-Chief” (see NYT video and article below) and his accusations about Ted Cruz’s father, but it’s not hard to imagine that Trump will again betray his populist rhetoric and align himself with the establishment.  Blocking the records, or at least the most sensitive ones would be a great way to demonstrate loyalty to the CIA.

The History Channel also has a new six-part series  on the assassination, “JFK Declassified,” which airs on Tuesday nights and can be seen online for free. The series features former CIA agent Bob Baer and seems to point towards a Soviet/Cuban connection. This is the “fall back” conspiracy that has long been touted by a minor but well-publicized contingent of JFK researchers. Most of the highly respected independent researchers consider Oswald’s connections to communist plots to be highly dubious.  You can read some critiques of the History Channel series on CAPA and Kennedys and King.

The New York Times also just published a 12-minute documentary with an accompanying article under the headline, “Who’s Fueling Conspiracy Whisperers’ Falsehoods?”  The film is titled, “Conspiracy’s Grip” and is produced by Retro Report.  The film features JFKFacts.org‘s Jefferson Morley and the first half is surprisingly fair to JFK conspiracy research, but by the end, all “conspiracy theories” are equated with Pizzagate, faked moon landings, UFOs, and President Trump.  You can read Jefferson Morley’s response, “In ‘Conspiracy’s Grip’ distorts the JFK story.”

One of our interview subjects, Max Holland has written a piece for the Daily Beast covering one of his long-held theories about how the KGB supposedly planted the story of the CIA being behind the assassination.  Holland comes down on the side of the Warren Commission.  This theory has been never gained much steam because many critics consider it ill-informed and irrelevant.  You can see a debate from 2004 between two of our interview subjects, Holland and Dr. Gary Aguilar on this very matter on C-SPAN.  Jefferson Morley also has a response to Holland’s new article, “Daily Beast goes for an unfounded JFK theory.”