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Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

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Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#201

Post by floydnoel »

regularization wrote: post #141
usednet wrote: post #128

It's just a symbolic order, won't actually lead to anything important being released because the agencies have the authority to reject whatever they want. Many of the files have already been destroyed anyways. See: Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) t…

In 1973 DCI Richard Helms ordered all files on Project MKUltra destroyed. We only have documents on it, because some files were stored in an office outside the main records office, which were found in a 1977 FOIA request.

makes me wonder how many of these type of programs successfully managed to delete all the records. what a bunch of evil people!

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#202

Post by fastball »

gitaarik wrote: post #162
fastball wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have assets who are still in the field that they don't want to expose or similar. Classified status is somewhat contagious, in that many of those documents aren't from the time period in question, they could be from yesterday if some government agent had a discussion about it.

You mean like details about who killed him and why?

No. All of the details about who killed JFK (and why) were already released.

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#203

Post by floydnoel »

fastball wrote: post #90
uoaei wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you assuming that the decisions of which pages were declassified was a random sample? Why would they have selected any pages to remain hidden?

Because they have assets who are still in the field that they don't want to expose or similar. Classified status is somewhat contagious, in that many of those documents aren't from the time period in question, they could be from yesterday if some government agent had a discussion about it.

somebody who was an adult during the jfk assassination is still out working "in the field"? do you seriously believe that?

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#204

Post by throw10920 »

agsnu wrote: post #160
throw10920 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a legitimately good reason. Are the entirety of those remaining 1700 documents redacted? If so, then they should just redact parts that would uniquely identify those last surviving people and release the rest of the documents.

Sounds like a bunch of work. I thought the priority was reducing waste of taxpayer dollars?

This is a snide, low-effort comment that didn't have the bare minimum of effort put into it to research whether or not its core premise was correct, and actively degrades the quality of discourse on HN.

It would have taken thirty seconds to Google "President Trump administration priorities" and come up with https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/pres...

The efficacy or utility of those priorities doesn't matter - the fact is that the claim that "the only (or top) priority is reducing waste" is trivially easy to invalidate, in addition to making the gross logical error that good uses of taxpayer money (of which "making sure that the taxpayers are aware of what their money is being used for" is one) and bad/inefficient uses of taxpayer money are equivalent, which doesn't even require a Google search to understand is wrong.

Comments like this shouldn't be on HN. The guidelines directly state "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle." (which is what this comment did) and that HN is for intellectual curiosity, which also didn't happen because it took less than a minute to invalidate the core premise of this comment. HN is explicitly for intellectual curiosity and thoughtful discussion like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874301 - not this.

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#205

Post by AbstractH24 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #195
netdevphoenix wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JFK stuff was also declassified under Biden. No one cares because there's nothing in it. A post about it is trending on HN so saying "no one cares" is a dismissal about the interest on this topic. Your very contribution to the post ironically contradicts the content of your message

> saying "no one cares" is a dismissal about the interest on this topic The point is if you're in a position to declassify banal documents, you probably don't care to do it. You look at them. You see they're banal. You move on. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by boringness.

> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by boringness.

I’ve never heard that variation on the saying. I like it

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#206

Post by lazide »

a2800276 wrote: post #176
TowerTall wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is any truth to the events pictured in the JFK movie with Kevin Costner that is certainly very true.

If it was a movie with Kevin Costner how can you question it's veracity!?

Oliver Stone could also never tell a lie! (/s)

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#207

Post by lazide »

dehrmann wrote: post #133
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would like people to feel comfortable telling the whole truth, unless it’s something really important?

Secret witnesses aren't allowed to testify in the US. Not that these were court trials.

Except for FISA.

And don’t forget that cases ‘pertaining to national security’ get thrown out all the time. [https://www.fjc.gov/content/overview-7]

Either because key evidence is classified, or witnesses are, or testimony would be considered a threat to national security, etc.

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#208

Post by ttyprintk »

petee wrote: post #126
ttyprintk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have seen those and are allowed to talk about them: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast/646/transcript https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast/647/notes

Allowed to talk about classified material? Doubtful

Judge for yourself:

> the correct figure now is about 3,600 documents in the collection of 320,000 documents still contain redactions. That might mean we might have most of the document except for a sentence, a word, a name. In other cases, you know, several pages or, you know, I don't think there's any document that's withheld in its entirety. But, you know, it's still a lot of records. The bulk of those are CIA records. A lot you can tell from the context, like Mark says, stuff about surveillance techniques, covert arrangements with foreign governments. They're very -- they guard those very closely. That's one of the things that they're still keeping. But, you know, why is this necessary? I mean, again, to step back, you know, the JFK Records Act, all this stuff was supposed to be made public in 2017. Judge Tunheim, the head of the review board, I asked him, I said, What did you expect after 25 years? How many records would have to be -- remain secret? And he said, Out of the stuff that I saw, you know, maybe 100 documents. Not, you know, and when in 2017 the CIA and FBI came to Trump and said, We have 14,000 documents that have redactions that we couldn't possibly remove. So it's like, why is the presumption around a Presidential assassination that we're going to keep -- you know, keep these secrets for good?

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#209

Post by blitzar »

nosefurhairdo wrote: post #150
kelnos wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another commenter pointed out, this is just candy to act as a distraction. Trump (and Musk) want people talking about something relatively unimportant like this, and not all the messed up stuff they're doing to gut the executive branch.

Musk and co held an X space last night to publicly discuss their gutting of USAID and more. They have actively publicized DOGE. The idea that this is a smokescreen is totally unfounded. Have you considered that releasing these files is just fulfilling a campaign promise? Or that if a non-Trump admin had done this it would've been celebrated?

A law signed during the presidency of George H. W. Bush ordered the declassification of all records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy in October 2017. When this time arrived during Donald Trump's first presidency, several documents were declassified; however, others remained classified. In 2021 President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum which created deadlines for more declassifications of documents about the assassination, which led to over 13,000 documents being released.

Re: Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]

#210

Post by tanewishly »

saagarjha wrote: post #177
quakeguy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franz Ferdinands death would be higher on that list i reckon.

> in the US

[...] During the war, the U.S. mobilized over 4.7 million military personnel and suffered the loss of over 116,000 soldiers. [...]

From Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in_World_War_I

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