On this edition of Parallax Views, journalist Jefferson Morley, author of The Ghost: The Secret Life of Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, Scorpion’s Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate, and Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation, joins us for an urgent update on his work related to the JFK assassination and the ongoing fight to have the last of the JFK records released to the public. Morley and the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a resource on the Kennedy assassination, have filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and the National Archives over the withholding of 11,000 or so documents related to the assassination that have yet to be released despite the promise years ago that they would be declassified. Recorded on 12/14,/22, Morley and I discuss how Biden will have to make a decision on 12/15/22 as to whether the CIA will have to give up the last of the JFK documents. In edition to all of this, Jefferson will also explain why the CIA’s argument that these documents can’t be released for national security reasons and because not all of the people in the files are dead is, from his perspective, a bogus argument. Morley also goes over what he consider the “smoking gun” with regards to the assassination: the CIA’s knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald before 11/23/63 and the CIA’s use of Oswald for intelligence purposes (in other words: as an intelligence asset). Jefferson is quick to point out that he is not interested in theorizing or speculating about the assassinations. Instead his interest is in what the documents say rather than any conspiracy theories.
We also delve into the recent National Press Club conference by the Mary Ferrell Foundation featuring Jefferson and Judge John R. Tunheim of the Assassination Record Review Board, the across the board/political spectrum support for releasing the documents on grounds related to the need for government transparency, and the mainstream media’s coverage of Jefferson Morley and the Mary Ferrell Foundation’s recent work.
In the second segment of the show, Patrick G. Eddington, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former CIA analyst joins us to discuss his recent Antiwar.com article “Is the FBI’s ‘Black Identity Extremist’ Label Still in Use?”. In 2016 a report was leaked to the press in which the FBI was revealed to be using the term “Black Identity Extremist” as a domestic security threat. Due to the vagueness of the term as well as the rise of Black Lives Matter and the fact that the majority of domestic terrorism has come from white nationalist terrorists the BIE report was heavily criticized. In the intervening years FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Judiciary Commitee that use of the term has been abandoned by the FBI. However, recent documents obtained by the Cato Institute through a FOIA request, raise questions as to whether that truly is the case.
In addition to this specific story, Patrick and I also delve into the history of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation targeting black activists in the era of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, FBI overreach and lack of accountability, the long history of FBI targeting of left-wing activists, the 21st century targeting of Chinese-American, and much, much more!
