- A large batch of the long-awaited and last remaining
classified files of the investigation into the 1963
assassination of President John F.
Kennedy were made public Thursday.
The documents were held from public view for 25 years,
until this week, when President Donald Trump
decided to release them.
Many files remain under agency review for the next 180 days,
but Thursday's release gave historians plenty to pore over,
including Madison College history instructor Dr. Jon
Pollack and thanks a lot for being here.
- Thanks for inviting me.
- So with that said, how many of these files have you managed
to pore through since late yesterday?
- Like five. I haven't made a huge amount of headway on that.
- And in those five,
did you see anything that was illuminating?
- Well, so the first thing I did was I looked at--
anybody can do this, go to the national archives website.
It's pretty easy to get to this big excel spreadsheet
that has the files on it.
So I was kind of scrolling down
and I was looking for a headline that looked kind of interesting.
I saw Castro.
I thought, "Ok, this will be great."
So I clicked on that.
It was a document written, I want to say in the mid-1970s,
was kind of intra-agency kind of history of CIA efforts
to kill or otherwise mess with Castro in some fashion.
And there were things we all kind of knew about.
I mean, there might have been -- I'm not super expert in what
exactly did various CIA agents kind of spitball around and say
this would be a good way to get rid of him,
but they seemed in line with other things that were being
talked about.
- What were you hoping to find, if anything,
in these long-awaited documents?
- Honestly, I really didn't have much hope for it at all.
I was looking for a title that jumped out because I thought
most of what was going on-- most of what would be
in the files would be kind of transcripts of conversations,
of random bits of intelligence coming in which might have been
-- could have been things that in other documents that are
already released were revealed to be bogus or stories that
didn't check out or things where it was just one little piece of
evidence that turned into a dead end.
So I didn't have a whole lot of high hopes going into this.
- What about the stuff that they have held back
for another 180 days?
What do people like yourself
think might be embodied in those?
- Yeah.
So I think what's in there also is going to be relatively minor,
that it's going to be-- I think what's going to be in those
documents might be names of people who are still in some
fashion working in intelligence for the United States or if
you've got, you know, a parent and child with the same name who
are both in intelligence, because that's something
families sometimes sort of go into.
So those are being held back so as not to jeopardize
anybody who's out in the field.
I don't think -- it wouldn't make sense for there to be this
really juicy information that we're just holding on to for
another 180 days, de-classify it
and then it'll change everything.
- Right.
But after waiting 25 years for this stuff,
would this be regarded as kind of a dud
or don't you think we actually know yet?
- I think it is kind of a dud.
I think we know what's out.
I think we know pretty much everything that's going to be
out there that's going to be released.
I mean, I think, you know,
there are a few different scenarios I have.
Partly is the most simple explanation which is,
yeah, Oswald shot Kennedy.
He had various ideas. He had been in Russia.
He had been in Mexico City, talking to Cubans and Russians
which we now have a little more information about
through the most recent release.
But we don't have intent.
That hasn't been captured.
And who told him -- what did people talk to him -- we don't
have records of those conversations nor do I think
those are going to surface.
But yeah.
It's -- I think the -- most of what we know is in there.
If we are going to be nefarious about it,
if we're going to be conspiratorial and say,
"OK, so maybe that's not it."
If the CIA or the FBI or Johnson or
Johnson's driver or whoever the heck conspired to shoot Kennedy,
taking on a president compared to like burning government
documents, you know, taking government documents home and
putting them in your fireplace and setting them on fire,
might that not have happened? You know?
I mean, federal agencies by law
are supposed to save their documents.
So if we're a mindset that says well people from the federal
government or outside of it, they're also not supposed to
shoot the president.
That's a no-no.
If people have the gumption to do that,
then wouldn't they also
have demolished the paper trail on that?
Would that have been captured in a paper trail?
For minor level workplace gossip,
people don't email that stuff back and forth.
They talk to their coworkers about it.
And so for something of this magnitude,
would people really have typed up memos in triplicate and said,
"Hey, here's how we're going to take down the president?"
Likely? No.
So if those things-- if there's a more nefarious reason
or conspiracy behind Kennedy's death,
then it's probably not going to be captured in documents at all.
- All right.
Well, still we're waiting for the next round in 180 days.
Jon Pollack, thanks very much.
- Thanks for having me.