Just the Facts with Gerald Posner

The Washington Post published an article today by Kyle Melnick about Trump’s promise to release all the JFK assassination files and what those documents might disclose. It is thorough old-fashioned journalism, one of most balanced and informative pieces about the JFK files from a mainstream outlet this year.

Melnick sets out the facts and includes interviews with me and Jefferson Morley, the editor of JFK Facts.

The article shows where Morley and I agree: the full release of the files is long overdue. It also highlights were we disagree: I think the remaining files might show the CIA failed to share all its information on Oswald’s trip to Mexico City with the FBI, while Morley believes the files might show that some Kennedy opponents in the CIA worked with Oswald.

Morley says freeing the files is “not about a smoking gun” while I content that even if the documents do not any provide “any evidence of a conspiracy in the case, people believing in a conspiracy will say, ‘Well, see, there you go. They destroyed the real documents.”

A CIA spokesman at the close of the article says the “CIA believes all substantive information known to be directly related to Oswald has been released.” (I will have a separate comment this coming week about the significant shortcomings in that statement).

The Washington Post article is responsible journalism. That, of course, means it is unlikely to go viral or bring in lots of clicks. No problem.

The Daily Mail tabloid knows how to juice a story.

They recast Melnick’s sober reporting into a front-page banner headline: “JFK BOMBSHELL.”

The Mail focuses on Morley’s statements that CIA employees did not believe Oswald acted alone and that a counterintelligence official may have tried to “wait out” the Warren Commission by denying it information.

None of that is surprising.

There were plenty of government officials who thought Oswald was the assassin but suspected he might have done it as part of a conspiracy. LBJ shared the same belief as some in the CIA that Castro and Cuba had a hand in it. The problem was that there was no solid evidence to back up their hunches.

And there is also no surprise that a CIA official denied information to the Warren Commission. I write in Case Closed about how the CIA hid from the Warren Commission, among other matters, that it was working with top mafia bosses to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Melnick quoted me in the Washington Post saying, “Some of the biggest headlines that have been pulled from the JFK files the last four or five years are what I call tabloid stories about stories that were actually old.”

The Daily Mail again proves my point.

Tabloids measure success in clicks. A clickbait headline might be a hit by their metrics. The only casualty is the truth. Little wonder so many people - who check the headlines and do not read the articles - believe there is something explosive still in the JFK files.