Open secrets.

In his excellent article, "A Filmmaker's Credo: Some Thoughts on Politics, History, and the Movies," in the September/October 1997 issue of The Humanist, Oliver Stone failed to mention his greatest contribution to the understanding of our nation's secret history. The uproar caused by his film JFK embarrassed Congress into passing the JFK Records Act, which provided for the release of all previously classified documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. George Bush signed the bill into law during his last days in office. Bill Clinton completed the mandate of the law and appointed the Presidential Assassination Record Review Board, which was given the authority to oversee the release of the previously classified documents. Appointed to the board were Henry Graff, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University; Kermit Hall, professor of history at Ohio State University; William Joyce, librarian at Princeton University; Anna Nelson, professor of history at American University; and John Tunheim, attorney general of the state of Minnesota.

The creation of the review board establishes, for the first time in American history, that citizens can force the military and other government intelligence agencies to declassify previously classified documents. The board itself has subpoena power to depose witnesses for the taking of testimony. But there is one hitch: a government agency can resist disclosure by direct appeal to the president. The justification for appeal has to be that, for some reason, the best interests of the nation will be served if the document in question remains sealed from public view. The intent of this law is to ensure that public discourse should take precedence unless the reason for protecting national security is sufficiently strong.

Since the review board's inception, the Central Intelligence Agency and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation have repeatedly appealed to President Clinton on the grounds that "sources and methods" of gathering intelligence would be compromised. According to the law, the president has thirty days to render a decision either for or against declassification. To date, Clinton has generally proved unresponsive. By his refusal to render a decision, the review board and the appealing agency have often been forced to work out a compromise. As a result, the whole process has gotten bogged down, and some documents have been released only in part or with deletions.

Nevertheless, several hundred thousand documents have been released so far. Because the amount of information being brought forth is too voluminous for the review board and its staff to handle, they have asked citizen researchers to help them locate and interpret key documents. As a result, two organizations have been formed and have provided the board's investigative team with many leads. The Coalition on Political Assassinations and Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination are in regular contact with the review board and its staff. Through their combined efforts, we now know much more about the events surrounding the November 22, 1963, assassination and how previous governmental investigative bodies operated. Emerging evidence does not match everything the government has been telling us for so many years.

For example, we now know that the Warren Commission was created for the purpose of keeping a lid on the facts of the assassination instead of uncovering the truth. The commission was a purely political creation intended to go through the motions of an investigation in order to placate the public. Tape recordings recently released by the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, clearly demonstrate several facts: Lyndon Johnson did not want to deal with a genuine inquiry into his predecessor's murder in an upcoming election year; the commission was created to forestall proposed investigations in the House and Senate; and most importantly, the commission was created to rubber-stamp the conclusion that the FBI had already come to by November 29--that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

In hours of tape recorded telephone conversations with Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and members of Congress, not once are the words truth or justice mentioned as a motive for forming the Warren Commission. It was Yale University Law School Dean Eugene Rostow who first suggested the formation of a blue ribbon commission in a call placed to the White House only two hours after Oswald was killed on November 24. The discussion centered on the need to assure the rest of the world of the stability of American institutions. Johnson also received a call from syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop (later shown to be a person whom both the CIA and the FBI regarded as a "media asset"), warning Johnson that the government could not allow the rest of the world to get the impression that the United States was a "banana republic" Alsop told the new president that it was important to establish an independent body that could create a report from FBI files that "doesn't need to use the things the FBI says can't be used"

Johnson was initially opposed to the idea of a presidential commission, making the incredible statement, "We can't be checking up on every shooting scrape in the country" He finally came around once he was convinced it was the most politically expedient way to handle the situation. Carl Albert, who was Speaker of the House, concurred with Johnson that a commission would be a good way to "shut up" any doubters of the FBl's integrity. In a call placed to Senator Richard Russell, who was chosen to serve on the commission, Johnson said, "All you're gonna do is evaluate a Hoover report that he's already made" Nine months later, the commission completed its evaluation, without the benefit of its own investigative staff.

Perhaps it's not surprising that there was no serious attempt in 1963 and 1964 to investigate Kennedy's death, given what we now know about how closely U.S. intelligence agencies were monitoring Oswald's activities before the assassination. Immediately after, the intelligence community bent over backward to assure the public that it never had any association with Oswald. Though the ex-marine had once defected to the Soviet Union and made his way back to the States, Oswald had somehow mysteriously slipped through the cracks. Former CIA Director Richard Helms made this assertion on national television as recently as 1993. We now know it to be false.

New evidence reveals that, within days of his 1959 defection, Oswald became a member of a very select group of American citizens--one of only three hundred to have his mail illegally intercepted by the CIA. In fact, documents reveal that Oswald was under active surveillance by a number of departments within the agency, including James Angelton's top secret Soviet counterintelligence division. In 1960, the CIA opened a 201 file, or "personality profile," on the twenty one year old former marine. As new documents demonstrate, nearly every U.S. intelligence agency, the State Department, and even the Post Office kept a close eye on Oswald from the moment of his defection until he was gunned down by Jack Ruby in front of seventy million Americans watching on television.

But it appears that there was more than just surveillance going on. Dr. John Newman, a University of Maryland historian and retired military intelligence analyst, is the author of Oswald and the CIA, an exhaustive work based upon the newly released files. Newman believes that Oswald was being used by the CIA in a secret operational capacity of some sort.

That Oswald may have had ties to the CIA seemed ludicrous to many in 1967 when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison charged local businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to murder President Kennedy. Garrison claimed that Shaw and Oswald were connected to each other through the CIA and that Oswald was used as a patsy in the assassination. Shaw was acquitted by the jury because Garrison was unable to prove any connection between Shaw and the operational details of the assassination, although all of the jurors believed that a conspiracy existed. The new evidence reveals that there was much substance to Garrison's allegations.

Documents have surfaced detailing Shaw's many dealings with the CIA's Domestic Contacts Service--much more than would be typical for a businessperson who might be briefed occasionally after traveling abroad. One document states that Shaw was given a covert security requirement for a still classified agency project called QKENCHANT. One former CIA official claims that this indicates that Shaw was probably involved in the agency's Clandestine Services Branch. The House Select Committee on Assassinations was so suspicious of Shaw that, in a recently declassified fifteen-page memo, staff counsel Jonathan Blackmer wrote, "We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the anti Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and was possibly one of the high-level planners of the assassination or 'cut out' to the planners of the assassination. "

It is not surprising that Garrison's case never got off the ground, given that the CIA and the FBI collaborated with friendly members of the news media to label the district attorney as a publicity-seeking egomaniac. Newly released documents frighteningly reveal how much collusion exists between the mainstream media and our intelligence apparatus, especially when the government feels that a story needs to be given a certain spin or kept quiet altogether. Reporters Jack Anderson of the Washington Post, James Phelan of the Saturday Evening Post, and Hugh Aynesworth of :Newsweek all checked with the FBI ahead of time before writing articles about Garrison's investigation. On one occasion, after Anderson had interviewed Garrison for several hours, he informed the FBI that he thought the district attorney had a legitimate case; yet he continued to write derogatory articles about Garrison. A May 18, 1967, FBI memo states that Richard Townley of NBC affiliate WDSU-TV in New Orleans was given instructions from NBC New York to prepare a one hour television special on Jim Garrison with the instruction to "shoot him down."

A CIA document has surfaced explaining how, during the 1960s, the agency attempted to use "propaganda assets" in the news media to counter the critics of the Warren Commission report. Apparently, this is still going on today. In recent years, both PBS and Arts and Entertainment have run specials on the life of Oswald in which they use a supposed expert named Priscilla Johnson. Recently declassified documents reveal that she had applied to the CIA for employment in 1953. Though she was disapproved "because of her associations and activities," she was later classified as a "witting collaborator" In the television documentaries, she never mentions any of the new evidence linking Oswald or Shaw to the CIA.

Given this appalling lack of objectivity, it is no wonder that the media today is virtually ignoring the newly released evidence from the review board. Instead, the media as a whole has gone out of its way to defend the reputation of the Warren report. In 1993, just as the government was finally beginning to release classified files, the media heaped inordinate praise on an author named Gerald Posner, who was prematurely trying to close the case with his book, Case Closed. Meanwhile, John Newman is still waiting for a major publication to review his groundbreaking book.

Though the media continues to ignore it, more and more material is available for public scrutiny. Independent civilian researchers are analyzing new evidence side by side with that which has been previously disclosed.

Consider, for instance, the various W-2 forms that were found among Oswald's possessions. They were photographed by the FBI and released to the Warren Commission. These records purport to document Oswald's work history before he entered the Marine Corps in 1956. One resarcher questioned the authenticity of the records and recently contacted the Internal Revenue Service to verify the employer ID number appearing on two separate W-2 forms. Astonishingly, the IRS responded in writing that both of the employer tax ID numbers were issued in January 1964, two months after Oswald was killed. Why would the FBI create fake teenage employment records for a lone nut assassin?

It is obvious that the FBI did not want the world to know about some of Oswald's possessions. Indeed, the FBI apparently tampered with much of the other photographic evidence. Together, the Dallas police and the FBI had taken five rolls of film in the course of documenting Oswald's belongings. When the FBI developed these five rolls of film, they mysteriously became condensed down to two rolls of film. Upon close inspection, it is clear where film has been spliced together and some items blacked out entirely. In one photograph, there is a table with nine of Oswald's possessions placed on it. Eight of the nine items are blacked out. The FBI's excuse was that the Dallas police used poor quality film. But why would one image develop clearly while the other eight did not? A Minox camera was supposed to have been photographed and labeled as item 375. When the FBI developed the photos, the Minox camera had mysteriously changed into a Minox light meter. What is so unique about a Minox camera? On the CIA's current web site is a picture of a Minox camera similar to the one found by the Dallas police. Under the picture is the inscription, "This ultraminiature precision camera has been a favorite of spies around the world for years"

The FBI knew as early as January 1964 that it would need to account for the missing camera, which was still documented in the Dallas police inventory. At first, the FBI attempted to pressure Dallas police detective Gus Rose, who originally found the camera, into saying that he found only a light meter. Detective Rose refused to change his statement and the police inventory. A detailed description of the pressure applied to him is set forth in a newly released transcript of his testimony before the HSCA.

When this tactic did not work, the FBI went to the home of Ruth and Michael Paine (who had been sheltering Oswald's wife and children), where the camera was originally found by the Dallas police. The Paines searched their own garage and "found" the camera after all. This time, the FBI asserted that the Minox camera belonged to the Paines and not to Oswald. The FBI never bothered to explain how, in November 1963, the Dallas police could have had a photograph of a camera that wasn't discovered until January 1964.

What does all of this mean? We can say for certain that the government has been much less than forthcoming about the life and activities of Lee Harvey, Oswald. He was a much more complex individual than the angry loner portrayed by the Warren Commission and its apologists. Far from being closed, the case is only now being truly opened. But just as this is happening, there is a risk of it being slammed shut once more.

Despite the successes of the review board, much work still needs to be done. Both the CIA and the FBI are fighting to prevent further disclosure of documents. Though these agencies publicly express a spirit of openness and cooperation, their behavior seems to speak otherwise. Furthermore, military intelligence files, which promise to unlock much more of the Oswald mystery, have barely been touched. Classified military documents take up an underground vault that occupies twenty seven acres in Suitland, Maryland. Hardly a scrap of paper has ever been released from this place on any subject, let alone on the Kennedy assassination.

It appears that the strategy of the intelligence community is to drag its feet as long as possible, knowing full well that the review board's authority will expire on October 1 of this year. Then it will breathe a collective sigh of relief that the secrets of three decades ago will most likely remain hidden forever.

But what price is secrecy? In the long run, the damage done to this country will be far greater than the damage caused by the gunfire in Dealey Plaza. By not pressing for full disclosure, our intelligence agencies will continue to erode the faith that people have in their government. Ultimately, this is a greater crime than the assassination itself. For when a people become truly cynical and distrusting of the institutions that are supposed to serve and protect them, their society will eventually decay.

In his book, Arrogant Capital, Kevin Phillips states that only 19 percent of the American public trust their federal government. He claims that this decline in trust began with the issuance of the Warren Commission report in 1964. If our government is at all serious about regaining the faith of its citizens, then a first step is to come clean about the sins of the past--no matter how embarrassing or incriminating they may be.

Ideally, the review board should continue indefinitely until the job is done. Unfortunately, this is too unrealistic a hope with today's budget conscious Congress. Though Congress has the authority to extend the board's term for one or two more years--by voting to extend the John F. Kennedy Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992, Public Law 102-526--it will never do so unless there is a public call to do so.

Steven Jones is a chaplain and counselor at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Veteran's Center, a state funded facility near Philadelphia. He has a long time interest in studying the history and politics of the Cold War and is a founding member of both Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination and the Coalition on Political Assassinations.