WHY THE JFK FILE WAS A DAMP SQUIB

Saro Thiruppathy reviews incidents leading up to the assassination of former US president John F. Kennedy and the Warren Commission findings

The greatly anticipated document dump of information pertaining to the assassination of former US president John Fitz­gerald Kennedy (JFK) in 1963 proved to be extremely disappointing – except for the fact that it revealed many of the CIA’s nefarious activities around the world.

Although Americans had hoped that the Warren Commission’s findings would finally reveal new information about the identity of the assassin and reasons for his actions, they hadn’t stopped joining the dots to try and understand what could have provoked such a dastardly act.

And interestingly, analysts identified possible reasons for the assassination other than that it was simply the act of a deranged lone gunman.

The 1960s painted the international arena with excitement, disappointment and abject sorrow. Apollo 11 landed on the moon; and for the first time in history, two human beings walked on our only satellite’s surface. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War, which would eventually leave three million people dead – including 58,000 Americans – raged on.

But the event that sent shock waves around the world was JFK’s assassination on 22 November 1963 as he travelled in a motorcade through Dealy Plaza in Dallas with First Lady Jackie Kennedy and Senator John Connally.

Americans were in shock when they heard that Kennedy had succumbed to his injuries. And as they tearfully watched his cortège travel to Arlington National Cemetery, the world joined them in their inconsolable grief.

THE BACKGROUND However, this assassination didn’t take place in a political vacuum. Some of JFK’s actions placed a target on his back because he managed to anger several powerful entities.

In 1962, he forced the influential American Zionist Council (AZC), now known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to register as a foreign entity. That may have angered the Israelis because it potentially prevented them from funding American officials. And interestingly enough, the AZC’s registration was reversed after Kennedy’s death.

JFK had also locked horns with Israeli prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol over Israel’s nuclear programme.

Furthermore, Kennedy’s desire to withdraw American troops from the Vietnam War would have set the cat among the pigeons in the US’ military-industrial complex (MIC).

JFK also angered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) when he refused military support, which he had previously authorised for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Cuba’s supremo Fidel Castro.

THE ASSASSIN Twenty-four year old Lee Harvey Oswald was a former US marine who was discharged from active duty in 1959. As a youth, he was convicted of truancy and assessed by a psychiatrist as being “emotionally disturbed.”

He later defected to the USSR, married a Russian woman and lived in Minsk. Oswald then returned to the US with his family and lived in Dallas. Even though he wanted to serve the Soviet Union, Russian officials rejected his application claiming that he was a “neurotic maniac” and “poor shot.”

Though the official claim is that Oswald shot JFK from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas, witnesses claimed they heard shots fired from the adjacent grassy knoll. And when their testimony was ignored, there were fears of a cover-up.

Subsequently, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed the supreme court’s Justice Earl Warren to lead the investigation into JFK’s assassination. And in 1964, the Warren Commission declared that there was credible evidence Oswald was the only gunman on the scene despite witness testimonies to the contrary.

After the initial report was released in 1964, some documents were sealed for 75 years.

DOCUMENT DUMP Under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 however, all relevant documents had to be released within 25 years, bar a few exceptions; and 98 percent were made public in 1992.

More papers were shared in 2017; but on the advice of the FBI and CIA, President Donald Trump in his first term agreed to withhold some files and release them in 2018.

Then in March 2025, there was a further dump of declassified documents, which continued to reiterate the Warren Commission’s findings that Oswald was a lone gunman.

NO ANSWERS Law enforcement claimed that about 45 minutes after shooting Kennedy, Oswald murdered Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit, and then hid in a movie theatre where he was caught and arrested for Tippit’s murder, as well as charged with the assassina­tion of JFK.

But Oswald denied killing Tippit and claimed that he was simply a patsy and fall guy.

However, authorities never found out why Oswald killed Kennedy – because while he was being transferred to another jail, a local Jewish nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot him dead on 24 November 1963 on live TV as he feared the Jews would be blamed for killing JFK.

Ultimately, the documents revealed nothing new; and since the investigation had been shrouded in secrecy, many Americans continue to doubt the official narrative.