top of page
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Search

Bonus: The Congressional Hearing & Top 10 New Records

  • Matt Crumpton
  • Apr 16
  • 16 min read

We’ve now wrapped up our study of the Secret Service - one of the many alleged plotters that we’ll be covering during this third season of Solving JFK.

 

Next, we’ll be moving on to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. But, before we do that, I wanted to take an episode to cover some major breaking news and developments around the JFK Assassination: namely, the release of many of the remaining classified documents as ordered by President Trump, and the Congressional Hearing on the JFK Assassination records on April 1st.

 

In mid-February, I got a call from the House Oversight Committee asking if I would be willing to assist. Of course, I was honored to be considered and volunteered to help in whatever way I could.

 

After the initial contact, the next time I heard back was a few weeks later, when I was asked if I would be willing to testify to the committee. I said that I would be happy to speak if they wanted to hear from me, and noted that, while I do have citations for all propositions of fact, there are a lot of people who know much more about the case and have been studying it longer than me.

 

Ultimately, the Committee chose three excellent JFK Assassination scholars for the April 1st hearing: Jefferson Morley, Oliver Stone, and Jim DiEugenio – and invited me to attend as a guest – which is how I landed the front row seat, with my face and red tie hilariously behind Jim and Oliver. This was a very “look mom, I’m on TV” moment.

 

In a recent bonus episode with Andrew Iler, we touched on the work being done by the Congressional Oversight Committee, headed up by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. The Committee has endeavored to cover many topics that are considered to be shrouded in government secrecy, with the JFK assassination being just one.

 

The hearing on April 1st was dedicated to the JFK Assassination only. Aside from Jefferson, Oliver, and Jim, there was a privacy expert on the panel named John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Each speaker was able to give a 6 minute statement. Then each committee member had 5 minutes to ask questions.

 

Here are a few highlights from the hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf3_f9-cJPg

 

-       Jefferson Morley Clip

 

-       Oliver Stone Clip

 

-       Jim DiEugenio Clip

 

From the vantage point of being a few feet away from the speakers, these are my major takeaways from the hearing:

 

-       The moving parts of the JFK Assassination are complex. It’s a lot to ask of a congressperson to understand the amount they would need to know about the case to ask the right questions. This is just one more reason why we need to have a new investigation to put out a final report on what the assassination records tell us – now that they have pretty much all been declassified. This is what Oliver Stone called for during his testimony. The forum of a congressional hearing is not well suited to laying out the current state of the case.

 

-       Jefferson Morley is known for not overstating facts. He’s a reliable reporter in my view. When Morley said that Oswald did not kill president Kennedy, that was major. It was also a big deal when he explained that three CIA officers: Helms, Angleton, and Joannides, had all lied to the government under oath about Oswald.

 

-       The most disappointing aspect of the hearing was the partisan nature of the interest in the JFK Assassination. The Republicans certainly have more to learn about this very complicated case (as demonstrated by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert asking Oliver Stone questions about a book written by Roger Stone). But, the Democrats on the committee, with the exception of Congressman Garcia, had no interest in talking to the speakers about the case. Instead, they used the hearing to talk about current day partisan political issues. They also rightfully condemned the release of the documents with social security numbers of living people. Yes, that was bad. Everyone agrees that was bad. Still, the committee Dems’ position seemed to be that it was a waste of time to even be talking about the JFK Assassination, which recently has not been a partisan issue. And the original leading researchers in this case, people like Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg, were all progressive Democrats.

 

-       Everyone wants to know what the big find is in the new records that have been released. But, this is a major ongoing endeavor. Most of these documents were previously redacted, which means that we have to find the original redacted document so that we can see what exactly was unredacted. That process takes a long time.

 

I was able to get an interview with two of the speakers in a rush hour Uber going from the Capitol to Dupont Circle, and ask them how they thought the hearing went:

 

         Jim, how did that go versus, how you thought it was gonna go?

 

I thought it was interesting today because it was really nice to have nobody attacking you. Everybody seemed either in favor or neutral about what we were doing. And Congresswoman Luna, I thought she was just excellent. The questions she had for Oliver right off the bat, I thought were very interesting questions. And I think that got us off to a good start in front of Congress.

 

Oliver, you have testified before Congress before famously when JFK first came out. How do you think today went and was that kind of weird to be back up there again?

 

Yeah, I come back every 20 or 30 years and they ask the same things over and over again. I called today outrageously for a new complete investigation from the ground up, I love that. You’re pissing in the wind. What I’m saying is, it went good. It went okay. I think those young Congresspeople are far less politicized than the older generation and maybe they will do something. You know, it would be nice.

 

Do you guys have any particular aspirations or hopes for what happens next with where we are?

 

Ask me when I’m 89 or maybe 100.

 

What about you Jim?

 

Oliver did something very daring today. He asked the committee to open up a new investigation. That’s really out there. But Luna, the Chairwoman of the committee is very fair and very interested in this case. So, I hope she. She’s actually talking about a second meeting. She wants to have a second meeting. That would be terrific if she did.

 

Hopefully, they’re smart and, I think we presented some good information today. Morley was great. He’s more of a journalist. Mainstream. He doesn’t want to cross one narrow step across because he’ll get attacked by all his colleagues at the New York Times, blah blah. Jim was great. And, I of course, bring up the rear.

     

The JFK Records 

 

On March 18, the first trove of newly declassified JFK Assassination records was released. There were 3,886 records still classified. As of the recording of this podcast, 2,359 of those records have been released, leaving another 1,527 still withheld.

 

I am unclear on the exact status of those still classified documents. But, we know that there are a few important documents with redactions that are still awaiting an unredacted version to be released. These include Bill Harvey’s travel records for the Fall of 1963, and the George Joannides file.

 

The question that everyone wants answered is ‘What are the biggest finds in the new documents?’ First, we have to remember that we are talking about 80,000 pages. And we have to then cross reference the newly released clean documents with the previously redacted documents to find out what exactly was censored before. Of course, on top of that, to make sense of these new releases, you would have to know many detailed aspects of the case inside out. In other words, it’s gonna take awhile before the JFK research community can fully digest these releases.

 

TOP 10 RECORDS

 

Having said that, I did want to provide an overview of some of the most interesting documents that have come out over the last month. Without further delay, these are my top 10 2025 JFK Assassination document releases so far:

 

    10) James Angleton’s Unredacted Church Committee Testimony. When former CIA counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, testified to the Church Committee in June of 1975, we now know from one line that has been unredacted that Angleton introduced Bill Harvey to the Israelis. The mere fact of this introduction is not a big deal. But the previously classified line of the transcript says QUOTE “I had introduced Harvey as the only officer to the Israeli operational people on the Cuban business.”[i] So, the question here is what does it mean that Bill Harvey was introduced to Israeli operational people as it relates to the Cuban business. Harvey led efforts against Cuba during Operation Mongoose. Does this mean that there was Israeli operational support or involvement for Mongoose? We don’t know that from this document. But, it raises that question.

 

     9)  September 1996 CIA Memo About Oswald in Japan. Tip of the hat to my friend Max Good for bringing this to my attention. The memo says that a local UPI reporter in Japan was about to file a story about Oswald being recruited by the CIA while he was stationed in Japan. The story was based on an interview with a retired Marine officer who claimed to be Oswald’s commander in Japan. The previously redacted section says QUOTE “as a long shot at keeping a CIA-related story from surfacing in Japan, thereby prompting Japanese journalists to pursue the same information, Chief of Station suggested to the press officer that she pass the number of the historical office at headquarters responsible for dealing with public queries to the reporter, advising that his scoop may, in fact, be old news.”[ii]

 

         What puzzles me here is that the CIA is focusing its critique of the story on the fact that it isn’t a new story that Oswald was allegedly recruited in Japan by the CIA. And the part that looks like it was previously redacted talks about wanting to stop Japanese journalists from looking into it. This of course raises the question – why would the CIA be against QUOTE “Japanese journalists pursuing the same information” if there was no truth to the information in the first place.  

 

     8) A May 21st, 1982 letter from David Blee, who was the Counterintelligence Chief of the CIA at the time, in response to questions about Valeriy Kostikov.[iii] You may remember Kostikov from when we covered Oswald’s alleged trip to Mexico City. Kostikov met with a man who claimed to be Oswald – whether it actually was Oswald is not proven and remains disputed. The historical understanding has been that Kostikov was the head of the Soviet Union’s Department 13, which handled assassinations in the Western Hemisphere.[iv] Of course, Oswald meeting with the head of Soviet Assassinations a month before the president was killed seems to imply that Oswald may have killed the president, and that he may have done it at the behest, or at least with the knowledge of, the Soviet Union.

 

But, this new document from David Blee seems to cast doubt on the historical understanding of Kostikov’s role and says QUOTE “Although our file indicates that Kostikov may have been a member of Department 13 (Executive Action), we have been unable to confirm this. Also, to the best of our knowledge the KGB has not engaged in such executive action since 1959.”[v] So, what does the CIA really think about Kostikov? I’m not sure. Maybe that’s why Angleton called intelligence work a wilderness of mirrors.

 

   7) The Regis Blahut Security Investigation from the HSCA. While we have not yet covered it on Solving JFK, the research community has long known about an incident where CIA officer Regis Blahut was caught breaking into a safe used by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. That safe was used for safekeeping important evidence, including autopsy photos. Nothing was taken, but the autopsy photos were tampered with. Specifically, the autopsy photos of Kennedy’s head wound had been taken out of their slip cases and were left in disarray. We know it was Regis Blahut from the CIA who broke into the safe because the HSCA took it very seriously and had finger prints taken! Blahut denied it at first and later admitted it. The CIA said that Blahut was just curious and that’s why he broke into the evidence safe.[vi]

 

We now have the complete file on Blahut’s HSCA safe break-in. It’s a 159 page document, so I have not had time to ascertain what sections were previously redacted.[vii] Still, what jumps out at me is the handwritten note on the first page of the file that says QUOTE “This file is of an unusual nature because it deals with an incident involving a CIA employee and this committee. It has not been logged into our system by agreement with the CIA.”

 

In other words, the HSCA found a security breach, but then covered it up because they had an agreement with CIA to do that. Of course, it didn’t end up making a difference that the file wasn’t logged into the system because the story was eventually reported anyway. But, it does bring into question why the HSCA would have such an agreement with the CIA. And, it also makes you wonder what Blahut was really doing with those autopsy photos in the safe.

 

On a related note, Dan Hardaway, one of the primary HSCA investigators, relayed to journalist Jeff Meek that he was offered a job by CIA when he started working with the HSCA to investigate the CIA. Hardaway turned the CIA job down and reported back to his boss at HSCA that the CIA approached him. The officer who wanted Hardaway to work for the CIA - at the same time he was investigating it - was Regis Blahut.[viii]

 

    6) Two documents that bring light to Priscillia Johnson McMillan’s relationship with the CIA. We covered Priscilla Johnson McMillan so far in the context of her meeting with Oswald for an interview in the Soviet Union about 2 weeks after Oswald arrived there. We also noted that journalist Aline Mosby told the HSCA that McMillan worked for the CIA. It’s also true that when McMillan testified to the HSCA, for some reason she had immunity from prosecution.[ix]

 

Now, we have two recently declassified documents that clarify McMillan’s relationship with the CIA. The first one is a May 1962 request by the CIA to approve Priscilla Johnson (this is before she was married) as a news editor for China Quarterly and Encounter (two publications subsidized by the CIA). It says QUOTE “Subject has been of previous interest to the Agency though she has not been hired by either a proprietary operation or used in any FI project, Subject subsequent to clearance and hire will be considered by the Project for possible re-assignment into more responsible work.”[x] So we know that, as of 1962, the CIA was aware of her and she was actively an asset under Project QKOpera, per this newly released document.

 

The other unredacted document on Priscilla Johnson McMillan is 4 pages of notes from the HSCA staffer who interviewed her that conclusively demonstrate that Priscilla McMillan had an ongoing relationship with the CIA throughout her career up to that time. The last note says QUOTE “January 5, 1975 - PJ witting collaborator.”[xi]

 

So why should we care about Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s background? Because she is the one who wrote the official biography of Marina Oswald, which is relied upon heavily and viewed as the gold standard by the mainstream press and academic historians. We now know with certainty that the woman who wrote Marina Oswald’s biography was a witting collaborator of the CIA in 1975, which means that her book, written in 1977, cannot be regarded as an honest attempt to capture what actually happened – and should instead be regarded as CIA propaganda.

 

    5) Two CIA documents about what Cubans Thought Happened to JFK. These are in the form of CIA memos that document what was overheard by Cubans. First, there’s one written on the day of the assassination that was previously fully withheld. This memo says that after Kennedy was killed, the head of the Cuban embassy in Chile, Pedro Martinez Pirez, said QUOTE “The person arrested was president of a Fair Play for Cuba Committee and that if the Yankees or CIA assassinated Kennedy to resume the assault on Cuba, then a third world war would start. He said things are very clear and there is no doubt that they have assassinated him, the contradictions are well defined and the moment was very special, like that of the Maine.”[xii]

 

The other document is a 1994 internal CIA memo that says QUOTE “In 1969, [an] informant personally saw Fidel Castro meet with a group of US radicals. Castro talked to them for 2 hours about why just one assassin could not possibly have killed Kennedy. Castro ordered a reenactment of the crime using his best marksmen, and they could not duplicate what Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly did by himself.”[xiii]

 

So, why do we care about memos capturing what people from the Cuban government thought. They weren’t there. So there is no reason we should trust them to know what happened. But, on the other hand, what possible basis could there be to keep these documents classified all these years? The fact that the first memo is from the day of the assassination and specifically mentions the Maine, a ship that was sunk as part of a false flag operation to start the Spanish-American war, makes me wonder if the real reason why this document remained classified all these years is that the Cubans got it right on the first day.[xiv]

 

4) The fully declassified June 30, 1961 Arthur Schlessinger Memo About Reorganizing the CIA.[xv]This document was the result of President Kennedy famously saying after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that he would QUOTE “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.” Kennedy’s advisor, Schlessinger, drafted this memo to layout the practical considerations for re-organizing the CIA. For years a large portion of the memo was redacted. Really, we could do an entire episode just on this memo alone. But, to keep it high level, here is the summary of what we now know from the declassified section:

 

CIA officers had historically used the State Department as cover abroad. However, by 1961, things were getting out of hand. 47% of political officers serving in US embassies were CIA. This had the result of the CIA effectively taking over foreign policy from the State Department in some places. For example, in France, the president of the National Assembly would only speak with the CIA, not the Ambassador.

 

I would not be surprised if there are numerous CIA officers who continue to work under State Department cover today. That could have been a good reason to keep part of this memo classified. But, there is also another part of the memo that was previously classified that looks at the heart of President Kennedy’s concern with the CIA.  

 

It says QUOTE “The contemporary CIA possesses many of the characteristics of a state within a state….CIA operations have not been held effectively subordinate to United States Foreign Policy.” The memo goes on to say QUOTE “Though CIA’s autonomy developed for historical reasons, it has been able to endure because there is no doctrine governing our conduct of clandestine operations. The problem of doctrine for CIA is the extent to which its various clandestine missions are compatible with a free and open society.”

 

I understand why the CIA taking over the state department with undercover officers was withheld for a long time. But, there was no reason whatsoever to withhold Schlessinger’s view (shared by Kennedy) about the concerns with CIA not being compatible with a free and open society. If the CIA had nothing to hide, why would it censor this information for so long? Is CIA really that thin-skinned or was it hiding something?

 

3)              A November 27, 1962 Memo from Bill Harvey. In this document, Bill Harvey, who lead CIA’s Operation Mongoose against Cuba, laments that because of JFK’s post Cuban Missile Crisis assurances to Cuba, QUOTE “These assurances will preclude any meaningful CIA action on a phased basis to provoke a revolt inside Cuba…”[xvi] It’s hard to tell exactly what was previously redacted on this document. But, from the underlining, it appears that it was this section, QUOTE “In view of these factors, the so-called Track Two course of action, i.e., unlimited support of Cuban exiles and exile groups with no real control or objective purposes, in the hope that these groups will be able to shake the Castro regime will, although unrealistic, become increasingly attractive at various levels in the United States government.”[xvii]

 

What I take from this is that Bill Harvey is saying that since Kennedy promised peace with the Cubans, others in the government who disagree are going to want to limitlessly fund the Cubans for no reason other than to make it hard for Kennedy to keep the peace. The fact that the head of Operation Mongoose is saying that people inside Kennedy’s own government would be willing to work against him, even though it was unrealistic, shows just how much the QUOTE “various levels of the government” (as Harvey put it) did not view themselves as having to follow the President’s directives on Cuba.

 

2) James Angleton’s Declassified HSCA Transcript, which shows that Angleton lied under oath about what he knew about Lee Harvey Oswald while JFK was alive. Angleton put Oswald under mail surveillance, which Angleton refers to as mail coverage, in November of 1959 under HT Lingual – which we covered in Season 2. Reuben Efron ran the mail coverage program for Angleton. In the newly available testimony, Angleton is asked QUOTE “To your knowledge, was Oswald ever the subject of any CIA project?” Angleton responded No. Then, Angleton is asked if he knows Reuben Efron, who led the mail coverage program, and Angleton says yes.[xviii] To Jefferson Morley’s point, this absolutely does establish that Angleton lied to the HSCA. Official story defenders will argue that Angleton probably just forgot. But, it’s harder to take that position given that the information was classified for so long. If it didn’t matter, then why hide it all these years?

 

1)              January 22, 1958 Memo from Alan Belmont at the FBI that is also about mail coverage. The memo says that the FBI discovered a mailing address used by illegal Soviet agents all over the world and the Bureau wanted to get mail coverage on that address. This led to James Angleton telling the FBI about the existing CIA mail coverage operation, HTLINGUAL.[xix]

 

What is interesting about this newly unredacted memo is what Angleton told the FBI about the purpose of the CIA’s mail coverage program, which, as you may recall, included Lee Harvey Oswald. The memo says QUOTE “[Angleton] further indicated that the coverage has been in existence in excess of a year and he stated that the sole purpose for the coverage was to identify persons behind the Iron Curtain who might have some ties in the U.S. who could be approached in their countries as contacts and sources for CIA. Angleton indicated that CIA had successfully developed several sources through this means.”[xx]

 

In other words, about a year and a half before Oswald began having his mail read, James Angleton is on the record saying that the only reason the mail reading program exists is to identify contacts and sources for CIA. This, of course, raises the question, of whether Oswald did, in fact, become a contact or source for the CIA, if he wasn’t already one at the time the CIA began to read his mail.

 

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We continue asking the question “if not Oswald, then who” by looking at the role of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.


[xvii] Id. at 3.

 

 
 
 

Comments

© 2025 by Matt Crumpton

bottom of page