hckrnws
Tangentially related:
My coworking space is a century old hardware distribution building in Birmingham, AL. It's about a 1-2 miles away from the predominantly African American neighborhood that was constantly bombed in the 50s.
I was told the FBI searched the building a few decades ago in the hopes of finding the rifle used in MLK's assassination.
Birmingham was a wild town for many years!
Is this innovation depot?
No - but that does fit the criteria now that I think about it, lol. It's Hardware Park.
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) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
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!
I also suspect some arrangements never left paper trails.
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)
At least not so good like the CIA. /s
None of those restrictions have to do with redaction.
Honest question: why weren't they declassified earlier?
The simplest explanation is that the juiciest records were destroyed a long time ago, and released the remaining ones would only lead to speculation and a decrease in trust of the agencies involved.
Because classified records don't always come with expiration dates on their classification status for obvious reasons - even if records are classified for a speficic reason you'd probably want to make sure that reason doesn't still apply ten, twenty or fifty years later. You seem to assume the default is for information not to be classified. The right question to ask is: what incentive would there have been to declassify them earlier?
As others have said, declassification is a process, not a rubber stamp. Declassified records can reference things which are still classified so you need to go through each document line by line and check for such references to make sure they're blanked. Likewise if you want to be particularly helpful you'd have to also go through all previously declassified documents referencing this document and then un-blank their references and republish them, though I doubt that often happens in practice.
You're hoping for a salacious answer. But the real answer is going to be "because declassifying stuff is a time consuming pain in the ass, and no one could be bothered for the file which covered correct letterhead formatting for internal correspondence which technically got sucked into the system 50 years ago and now it's difficult to figure out that that was all it was".
JFK stuff was also declassified under Biden. No one cares because there's nothing in it.
> You're hoping for a salacious answer.
no I don't. I literally said it was a honest question. I truly just want to know more about the underlying mechanisms of why governments classify and declassify things because I don't know much about that.
> 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
A post is trending about the declassification which hasn't actually happened yet. It's not trending about the content of the documents, or even discussing previous documents, in fact no one is even discussing what was in the previous thousands of pages of declassified material.
People care about the idea of the story, not the reality.
JFK investigation documents have been declassified repeatedly, and no one even has any common reference points they bring up about them because ultimately there's nothing there. So this is just the new fantasy: "now, NOW! They'll totally declassify the memo ordering the CIA hit on JFK using mob money and then framing Oswald for it! They've had it the whole time!"
There are lots of interesting / incriminating details in the already released documents. There are also some redacted names which surely would add more context and answer a few questions. I'm sure we won't get many shocking revelations but if they really do release the same documents unredacted that's a step in the right direction.
I remain unconvinced that is going to actually happen, unfortunately. They will present a plan that simply excludes any really revealing documents and what they do release will be a nothing burger. That doesn't mean that there is nothing there, just that they don't genuinely intend to release the goods.
probably because either
1) the CIA and/or FBI knew about the assassination plot and either couldn't, or didn't, stop it -- they failed
or 2) there is a non-zero chance the Dulles brothers engineered it, either deliberately or through deliberate inaction
my guess is #1
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Most of the documents were declassified already, I think 99% of 170,000 files or some large number. This was through the The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. I don't know what's to gain in this release other than closure?
Someone previously decided that the remaining 1%, 1700 files, shouldn't be viewed by the public. Why? 1700 files is plenty to hold some interesting truths.
I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy.
You want people to tell the truth to government investigations in the future, and not hold something back because they think in 15 years the government might just release a transcript of everything you told them.
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?
Comment was deleted :(
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.
i very much dislike that anytime i see a comment on HN that isn't a wall of text arguing with someone, then the police arrive to tell them they're not allowed to participate in that way
i hate the wall of text on this site. i hate how some people feel entitled to tell others their remarks aren't welcome.
it truly takes away from this site to see the police show up on almost every single thread.
> i very much dislike that anytime i see a comment on HN that isn't a wall of text arguing with someone, then the police arrive to tell them they're not allowed to participate in that way
You either did not read my comment, intentionally and maliciously lied about what it said, or accidentally responded to the wrong comment, because it's extremely clear that I never said anything remotely like "you're not allowed to post anything except a wall of text arguing with someone".
> i hate the wall of text on this site.
Then go somewhere else. Hacker News is explicitly for intellectual curiosity, which involves thinking, which involves writing[1][2]. If you don't want to think, then this is not the place for you.
> i hate how some people feel entitled to tell others their remarks aren't welcome.
Your remarks are not welcome if you're going to violate the guidelines and engage in political flamewars. Just like in real life, there are things you can't or shouldn't say. That shouldn't be a foreign concept.
> it truly takes away from this site to see the police show up on almost every single thread.
If the "police" are those calling out violations of the guidelines - you're factually incorrect. The guidelines add to the site, because they're crafted in a way to allow intellectual discussion. Comments such as yours, and the grandparent comment, take away from the discussion by pushing aside curious thought and replacing it with emotional outburst and base instinct.
Notice that you didn't make a single logical point in your comment, nor did you inform or enlighten me or satisfy my intellectual curiosity - you just spoke about your feelings and your hatred. Why would I go to HN when I can read that on Twitter or Bluesky?
[1] https://paulgraham.com/words.html [2] https://paulgraham.com/writes.html
The released files have redactions for this reason. Why couldn't the names be redacted in the remaining? Doesn't pass the smell test.
That's not the stated reason why they're dragging their feet.
What’s the stated reason?
And who stated a reason?
> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy.
Are the Dulles still alive ?
> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy.
you probably also think that mk ultra is a conspiracy theory.
It was a conspiracy.
If the transcript involves evidence against a random psychopath who committed murder against beloved public figures (with no connection whatsoever to the government), I don't understand why anyone involved with such an investigation would be upset about the release of such transcripts immediately, much less 15 years or 65 years in the future.
And if those transcripts don’t have incriminating evidence, should they still be released?
If they interviewed everyone at that parade, what they were doing etc, and some of those people were completely uninvolved but maybe having affairs, or doing something immoral (whatever that is), then shouldn’t they be afforded privacy? Eg Imagine one would be mortified to have what sex toy was in their pocket at the time documented in public transcript.
I think a simple redacted name would address that concern
For people taking part in the parade, I doubt that. Extreme example is Jackie Kennedy. “I was sitting next to the president” identifies her pretty well.
There were people in the crowd who can easily be identified, too. For example, Zapruder’s testimony would have to leave out that he shot a movie and was life on television that day, and quite a few other details to anonymize it.
I’d mostly agree with that. After sufficient years have passed. Name isn’t the only way to identify someone.
In our conspiracy theory riddled world?
The first thing that comes to mind is Sandy Hook. Those poor parents being harassed by people accusing them of being “false flag” actors and all that nonsense. If you were a key witness in the JFK assassination you can bet nutjobs hell bent on some conspiracy theory or another are going to track you down and harass you.
Not to mention the way more vanilla stuff: people whose testimony incriminated friends, family members etc etc
They can still redact the released documents before releasing them. Many of those already released have been very heavily redacted.
If the documents truly are mundane and simply fill in gaps and dox a few old people then it would probably greatly reduce conspiracy theory stuff to reduce them because the gaps in the narrative is where those theories grow from.
> In our conspiracy riddled world?
FTFY
They will name informants and under cover folks and even how the secret service worked and works
Truth to this government is funny
> I think the idea was to wait for people mentioned in those documents to die, so as to not affect their privacy
I also remember that story, but it's no justification for keeping something with this much public interest secret.
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.
Is public interest the only thing we need to drum up if we want to strip away somebody's right to privacy?
They can still redact parts of the documents, including names or other identifying information.
Some people have seen those and are allowed to talk about them:
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?
Sounds like that person knows very little and wants to sound important for a podcast. Security clearances are taken very seriously, you can't just spitball about classified things you've seen.
My dad had classified knowledge from his time in the air force, and he wouldn't even discuss the category of information let alone give an overview of the contents, 50 years onward
Well, these records are special because of an act. Just because a President proactively blocked release does not promote them to a classification. But Mark Zaid on that podcast is a lawyer who specializes in people’s classification. There are many, many more people less qualified than him who are trying to sound important in this domain, like Roger Stone.
Former directors have answered this pretty openly. Anything that is left is just because it contains identifiable information for people still alive. Lots of home addresses, names of investigators, etc.
Interesting truths? Maybe. Possibly some embarrassing things for FBI Or CIA. But nothing likely to satisfy conspiracy theorists.
We know who killed JFK
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/671ky4/is_th...
> Yes, the official explanation that Lee Harvey Oswald was, on his own, responsible for murdering President Kennedy is overwhelmingly accepted as correct. It has largely held up to intense scrutiny over the past 50 years and there is no substantial evidence toward any other explanation.
> As I mentioned in my older post linked elsewhere, one of the reasons why there was so much criticism of the official explanation after the fact is that the investigation was not handled well. This resulted in a lot of seemingly contradictory and unexplained information that opened the door to questioning the overall conclusion as a whole.
The remaining 1% is almost certainly where the good stuff is.
Or just people's names. Something like "Joe Blow said he saw a person with a brown bag." You'd redact Joe's name even if there's nothing particularly interesting about him.
You'd redact a name, but not an entire file.
Depending on what remains, it may be possible to unblind the redacted names by considering the sum total of evidence. For example, these 10 people in the room all would have given testimony, but we only have nine statements with attached names. Who could this 10th unnamed persona be? Far easier to just keep the entire thing redacted.
With LLMs that even might be automated
Constraint solvers would be a better choice, IMO.
LLMs may help convert the text into a form for the constraint solvers, but they're not the tool I'd use for actually connecting the dots.
And if it turns out that there isn't anything interesting in that 1%, will you abandon this heuristic, and be more ready to accept that maybe the mundane explanation of 'they were kept classified because the people involved are still alive' is the norm for stuff like this?
This is the big question. I think Pompeo told Trump that the remaining 1% includes the names of US spies inside Havana and Moscow. How would you ensure their descendants are protected?
The theory is that there must be a big reason why those last 1% haven't been disclosed. I dunno, but curiosity did kill the cat. It's a powerful force.
> I don't know what's to gain in this release other than closure?
Classic Trump PR move. Claim he's doing something that's already done and then take credit loudly.
It was a campaign process and obviously people want to know the whole story.
> obviously people want to know the whole story.
And, yet, they never will.
Or they already do.
This isn't quite true. Those files were redacted. Now they would be unredacted.
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.
You mean like details about who killed him and why?
No. All of the details about who killed JFK (and why) were already released.
somebody who was an adult during the jfk assassination is still out working "in the field"? do you seriously believe that?
Please read the rest of my comment.
Why do you think a certain amount has remained classified?
To play devil's advocate, you could declassify 99% of the files, and still leave out the incriminating parts. I don't believe this is what happened, I'm just saying 99% of the truth can still leave a lot out.
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JFK's assasination is one canonical event of US history.
Why would you not want this to be released?
Weird.
The dinner menu and guest list for royal functions over 100 years ago was (and may still be) redacted by the state in the UK. Sometimes, secrets are not really about very much.
I am personally more interested in the MLK data than the JFK data because flawed though they were, the many eyes on that prize didn't find even the scent of a smoking gun worth much. If it had been the other side of the Iron curtain, by now they'd have capitalised on proving it. The ability to tie that era's democrat party to the mob was too delicious to keep secret if provable. (yes, even being killed by the mob taints you with the mob) so either political, foreign, or crime related I can't see how successive governments could have resisted showing-and-telling all.
MLK, I felt was swept under the carpet the way decent "folk like us" wanted. The moment of political advantage in the facts faded much faster, the underlying unease of what agencies of the state might be complicit remains. I think we all deserve a bit of clarity here. We know he had feet of clay, thats not the point. The point is how poorly the state defended a man trying to build a better america.
Neither are anything like as important as current events. The release is not just a mechanistic "I am a man of my word" moment, its a distraction from the everyday events. Any hour news online dedicates to these stories, is time not spent worrying about what dismantling the US state means in practice in 2025.
> The release is not just a mechanistic "I am a man of my word" moment, its a distraction from the everyday events.
Excellent point that I hadn't considered. We're already flooded with executive orders and news of Musk's capricious wrecking ball. Ultimately who killed JFK or MLK doesn't matter all that much today, except as a matter of historical accuracy. But it's something that people will certainly talk about, distracting us from the real dangers going on in this administration.
Ultimately I don't think we'll learn much from this anyway. I expect any juicy documents (if any existed) were destroyed long ago, and the departments in custody of any related files are still free to redact whatever they want, or simply decide not to release the parts they don't want to release.
Another possibility is that the remaining files contain something incredibly damaging to a group or agency he hates. Like say the MLK files implicate the FBI somehow. Trump hates the FBI now (which was not the case during his first term), and files pointing the finger at the FBI would be more ammunition for purging and remaking the FBI.
There might be some news in some details. You have to be pretty dedicated to think the news outweighs other stories of the moment. Qualified historians of the 1960s will be lining up to re-strike positions on what the minutia say about the Warren Commission, washington insider politics, previously misunderstood relationships between agencies, great stuff for PhDs.
Oliver Stone cares, of that I am sure.
>Ultimately who killed JFK or MLK doesn't matter all that much today, except as a matter of historical accuracy.
Come on those would be the most high profile murders in the US in the 20th century?
Undeniable. And Bobby Kennedy. But, ask yourself why you care more than the deaths of McKinley, or Hoffa or Malcolm X
I maybe said it badly. I think MLKs unanswered questions have more current value, than JFKs because I think they tell us more about morally corrupting behaviour in US institutions. I don't tend to think any US agency paid a part in JFKs assassination, although they bungled the aftermath.
I've been to the book depositary. Sad place. Banal even.
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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I wouldn't call it FAFO given 11 presidents in a row including Trump sat on the files. It wasnt fucking around, it was established practice. Your other point, that he campaigned on it is true. It was possibly his least consequential lowest bar act. I'm not personally sensing a massive public THIS IS WHY I VOTED FOR HIM moment on it tbh. Maybe in the rooms people discuss pizzagate, the grand conspiracy comes up from time to time but I can't imagine many of the core caring about MLK. That may have been a sop to black voters.
I will be truly interested in both files, how much new emerges. Imagine when the same level of info comes out about Reagan and the Iran thing, Kissinger and Nixon and the Vietnam war, Clinton in Bosnia, Clinton & Bush and Iraq. Future historians will have a field day. I'll be interested but they just don't feel very .. big.
> established practice
The established practice is fucking around. It’s not just any one thing. There’s a widespread feeling among Trump voters that the executive branch is secretive and unresponsive. There is a continuity between the MLK/JFK stuff all the way to executive-branch refusal to enforce immigration laws (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...). E.g. the deep state turned H1B from what Congress promised was a temporary worker program into a pathway to permanent immigration.
Surely nobody sees this as a bad thing. It’s been a bit since these events happened.
During his first term, Trump was the one who stopped all the records from being released automatically. This is his MO, to claim as victory something that would have happened without him opening his mouth in the first place.
This might make sense if the MLK and RFK assassinations weren't also being disclosed, and that without any act of congress.
I don’t get the downvotes; this is factually true. We don’t know what Pompeo told Trump in 2017, when the records would automatically release the remaining 3,648 by law, yet Trump blocked. Biden released 2,672 of those. Unless he finds a secret stash, Trump can’t beat those numbers now.
He was asked about this by Joe Rogan, his response at there is some concern that some of the people involved was still alive, but now he feels that doesn’t override the need of the families and American people to know.
This post is not political whether you believe or do not believe Trump is up to you.
Yep. That person is Ruth Paine
But we already knew everything about her?
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Maybe its truly a nothing-burger. even if released uncensored the most salient information would be details about how the secret service deployed and what they did wrong? Personally I think that is probably the most likely thing that would be still considered classified even if the details are completely obvious.
I mean most classified information is classified because its classified. By that I mean it is classified because nobody declassified it. That gets you hilarious press conferences like that navy UFO thing in trumps last term where the spokesperson could only say "the US does not have the technology to build a flying object like this" (paraphrased from memory).
I am pretty sure an analyst looked at the footage and identified a sea-bird and the US does not have the technology to build a bird exactly. But analyst output is automatically classified so.....
> in between democrats were in power they didn't release
That's not true. Biden did release more files during his term:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/us/politics/biden-jfk-ass...
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> This is his MO, to claim as victory something that would have happened without him opening his mouth in the first place
We used to call this confirmation bias....
Agreed. Trump should never have allowed the redaction of rhe JFK files in 2017 when he was legally bound to release them In the first place.
Nope, not a bad thing, but I'm still waiting on the sasquatch files.
While you wait check out "Saxsquatch" on YouTube, he's currently on a North American tour. I can't wait to see him!
You’ll get those when they release the UFOs.
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.
Sounds good to me too. Wasn't making a comparison between administrations, just pointing out that Trump, Musk, and co do not appear to be hiding any of their activities. The idea that releasing documents is a smokescreen makes no sense when this administration is constantly announcing everything they're working on.
just pointing out that Bush, Obama, Biden and co do not appear to be hiding any of their activities
I think its good, but humorously waiting for the conspiracists to shift the goal posts so we can spend the next 50 years talking about the "documents the fed shredded"
Reminds me of the flat earth experiments to prove the definitive truth that prove the earth is spherical and thus prove that the deep state manipulated the experiment which acts only to strengthen their resolve to get to the "real" truth.
It got better recently if you've seen the fall out from the trip to the Antartic; the flerfs completely turned on their top-tier streamers when they observed that the sun does in fact stay in the sky 24hrs a day: green screen, video walls, planted gov agents, sound stages, claims of "see i always said they'd actually be a shill"
Very funny watching flerfs realize other flerfs arent actually willing to look at real evidence without making it a conspiracy.
Is it really shifting the goal posts if we have evidence it really happens?
You mean the fact that shredding as an action exists? Or specifically that the fed shredded JFK docs?
Its shifting the goal posts when the call has to been release all the documents, and when they do just that, saying it wasnt in fact all the documents...it would be impossible to have evidence of it, or verify it. Just unsubstantiated claims, but thats enough for some
I can think of a few agencies that might be sweating. Or maybe it'll come out that it really was just a random nutjob. Or they'll redact something and conspiracy theorists will forever say that the crucial piece of evidence is contained under the last remaining Sharpie ink
Bullseye. That's exactly what will happen. They have much more to gain by keeping some of the mystery. If they hand out a black and white explanation they have 1 less leverage to manipulate the mass.
We know who it was We have known for decades
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald
Just because the government messed up the first investigation in a rush doesn't change the fact that they came to the correct conclusion as the following decades has shown. It's possible there's something embarrassing to the fbi in those files but it wouldn't be assassination of prominent figures
Heck, it doesn't matter even if there are zero redactions. I saw a good cartoon along these lines: Trump agrees with the need to release any and all info about the JFK assassinations, which shows that all the evidence points to Oswald being the lone killer. The conspiracy theorist responds "This goes deeper than we thought..."
I'm all for releasing all the known evidence about the case, but a large swath of people will never be satisfied unless they hear exactly what they want to hear. There are still a sizable number of people who think the Moon landings were faked, despite all evidence to the contrary.
We can also just say flat earthers exist. That equally proves the point.
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I am sure it makes some TLA look bad. I fully expect to not have everything released.
It depends on how bad it is. For example, if it turned out that a Secret Service officer fired a stray round that hit the President then I don't think we're going to see that made public ever.
I love that one, but IIRC all the serious inquiries into it did not deem it credible. Great out-of-the-box thinking though!
I'm quite sure that's why Trump is ordering this release.
He's explicitly at war with the deep state and existing institutions. Trying to tear them down and seize power. If these files make the FBI and/or other TLA(s) look bad, further public eroding trust and support, he wins.
The Republicans are also starting to win back non-white voters. Shedding light on the MLK assassination certainly does not hurt that effort.
The FBI.
The FBI was out for MLK.
In his first term Trump liked the FBI so he allowed them to redact the JFK files he was legally supposed to release to the public.
But in 2025 they’re his bogey man so releasing it so Kash Patel has an even easier time remolding it in his image makes a lot of sense.
If the FBI had really done it, I doubt they would have left classified records saying they had. Most likely, either the records would have been destroyed long ago, or they never would have created any in the first place
Other possibility: they really didn’t do it, but there’s some classified record which sure makes it sound like they did. e.g. some record of J. Edgar Hoover joking about doing it
If the FBI did it off the record then technically it's not the FBI it's a rogue actor or cell that happens to work for the government
If a bus driver for a federal prison snapped and shot him we could say the same thing.
Where is the line between agency and private party if it's not drawn on the record?
I think there’s a big difference between “random FBI field agent decides to murder someone” and “FBI director asks his deputy to murder someone”. Attributing the murder to the FBI as an institution makes a lot more sense in the second case than in the first
Personally, I agree with you. We have semantic problem.
*If the director asked, and we know that he asked, then it is on the record.
*If the director asked off the record, then it's called classified.
*If there is a conviction then it was a rogue cell.
The agency is clear in all cases whether we like it or not. Same as a corporation, but worse.
Legally, a government agency like the FBI is immune to criminal prosecution. Its officials can commit crimes as individuals, but it can’t commit a crime as a government agency because government agencies are excluded by legal definition.
But, it still can be judged guilty or innocent in the court of public opinion and the accounts of future historians
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean. Given what is known about the FBI and MLK how much worse could it get?
Fun fact: there is a statue of MLK at the FBI academy in Quantico.
I don't think the majority of the public is aware of the extremely devious stuff the FBI has done w.r.t. civil rights leaders etc.
Even if nothing substantively new is released it gives him a chance to rant about the FBI as part of his mission to seize power and discredit the "deep state" while cosplaying as a supporter of truth, justice, people of color, etc.
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does the FBI have anything memorializing Ernest Hemmingway as well? That'd certainly be ironic.
Mossad and CIA might have a different take … some people say.
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let’s get this party started
And once it is released you'll know and the mystery will be gone. I (Australian) was very enthused when the "Somerton man" was resolved. But it took away mystery and wonder from me which actually gave me joy.
Sorry if I missed something, but was it really resolved? AFAICT they likely ID'd the man, but not really anything else about the bizarre case. The note, the clothes labels, the cipher, etc.
Strictly speaking there is a strong suggestion backed by forensic geneology as to who it is, but the Police haven't confirmed it. But for most people it's Carl Webb and not a spy or something more exotic and the ID is enough.
Most likely outcome is docs are released and there is still mystery.
Put me on record as being in the "nothing ever happens" camp: Oswald done it, the grassy knoll is just a particularly grassy knoll, and the remaining 1% or whatever unreleased files contain a fat nothingburger.
You still have to explain the magic bullet impossibilities, fully intact bullet on the stretcher, Oswald as known CIA asset (CIA reports show this), etc.
None of this is really explainable by the official story.
> You still have to explain the magic bullet impossibilities
This has been explained ad nauseam. The bullet went in a straight line.
> Oswald as known CIA asset (CIA reports show this)
I’m sure the CIA has used a lot of unstable people all over. It’s not inconceivable that one of them went on to commit an assassination without being directed to by the CIA. Sometimes things are just boring.
I completely agree that this is the most likely case.
That said, the public deserves to know the extent of the CIA's involvement.
I would be wholly unsurprised if it turned out to be some Mujahideen type deal where taxpayers invested a bunch to up-skill this guy, left him alone once the reason for the investment was over and he eventually came back around to shoot at us.
Sure, maybe the CIA did it, maybe the Cubans or Soviets did it. I'm not really invested in the "real truth" of the situation. I'm just saying that I don't think the remaining documents are going to say anything that we don't already know.
I'm personally on the "JFK shot himself" bandwagon now.
We've had it all wrong, JFK clearly must've shot Oswald and assumed his identity
Now you're starting to get it.
Just my 2ct of trivia: The crown has still not reused the records regarding Jack the Ripper. Some assume this might be because someone from the royal family was involved.
I looked this up and this looks to be thoroughly debunked.
I have to wonder if that theory is how the plot of a certain game about a late-19th century Japanese Attorney was born...
Panem et circenses while they dismantle the few safeguards left
Fun to note no word about Epstein's...
It's neat to know that, whether the files prove something or don't, theorists will refuse to accept them unless they prove JFK wasn't shot by Oswald.
Somewhat related: if somebody is interested in King's story in more depth, I can really recommend Jonathan Eig's book from 2023, titled "King: A Life". Amongst many other resources, he has used the (back then) recently released FBI files about King. He did a really stellar job of portraying MLK not just as a legend, but also as a human being.
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Flooding the zone. Don't lose focus.
This is a distraction and nothing more.
They should also declassify who is Satoshi Nakamoto.
He's the guy with the PhD in distributed computing.
National Lab? Maybe Argonne?
What about the Epstein Files
Still redacted?
doesn't matter. many of the entities investigating at the time have since destroyed their records.
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Remember when they said they’d get to the bottom of the “drones”? Don’t be so easily distracted from what they are doing to the country.
Great do Epstein next
He probably already knows, because, well, ya know
It should be bipartisan at this point to demand the release.
If it makes everyone in office look bad then all the better!
Because a ton of people in office were his "clients". This country is rotten
Reading the Epstein saga start to finish has been instructive as to how power works in this country.
I previously had not understood it.
What you wrote is very interesting (and intriguing). What readings would you recommend?
Not the person you asked but what (s)he described sounds like "One nation under black mail" by Whitney Web. Actually worried whether the author would get Epsteined herself.
> (s)he
'they' works wonders in such cases :) (hope this is not seen as snarky or whatever)
Not the previous commenter, but I would recommend Hiding In Plain Sight, by Sarah Kendzior. It centers on Donald Trump, but covers in great detail what is publicly known about the seedy history of the people in his orbit, including Epstein, and it calls into question how the people in power in the political, business, and media worlds have left so many questions go unanswered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiding_in_Plain_Sight_(Kendzio...
I think Biden sniffing every kid he could get his hands on qualifies as "hiding in plain sight".
That's precisely why we'll never see it.
No I don't know, tell us.
Because he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein and has personally seen the island
Trump, a sexual offender known to grab pussies of random women, had a relationship with Epstein.
Yeah, unless his dementia worsens even more he's not going to release those files.
Unless the release won't actually hurt him. There's a big group of persons that will aspire to be powerful enough to do those sorts of things... It would help strengthen his image
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I think the desire to keep that stuff quiet is bipartisan because loads of people from both parties are exposed, as well as too many wealthy people.
Now that we also have P-Diddy it makes me wonder just how many high class sleazy pimps with blackmail operations are operating at a given time. This must be a standard racket.
Back in the late 2010s, I worked with someone who had a personal relationship with PD, to the point that my business partner was soft pitching our business to PD...
The person that I worked with partied with PD and mirrored some of the same (alleged) sort of toxic and abusive antics in their own home and social circles, which I experienced firsthand. There was a darkness emanating from this person that I haven’t really felt before or since. We ultimately stopped working together due to them violating our contract.
The public allegations so far totally jibe with my experience associating with PDs associates and my limited visibility into the world of PD. I’m very glad to have come to my senses and avoided any closer orbit of this world.
That darkness… wow. I’ve met someone like that, and it made me think I was crazy. I guess it’s your brain stem warning you that this person is dangerous in a certain kind of way— extreme dark triad traits.
There's a good chance it will happen, Musk has been pushing for this.
Just like he’s a free speech absolutist, right?
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at this point "free speech absolutist" is nothing but a revealed preference for censorship
Sums up the social media era so far. Everyone is a free speech absolutist right up until they get the power to censor.
oh wow this is what hacker news is now, reddit light lol
Edgy comments without any substance sure do make it seem that way.
I doubt he's pushing for it internally:
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfrie...
Yeah, you can bet it won’t be on a slow news day.
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I can safely say that even if all material is released that people will still believe it was a government conspiracy that is being covered up.
No amount of evidence will ever be enough. See: the moon landings.
Next up, Area 51?
shiny object is shiny
Next is the Epstein files?
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Interesting considering the attempted assassination of Trump. Perhaps he feels that some sunlight could help prevent future assassinations, or maybe he simply feels kinship to these his fallen political peers.
I think he's been talking about this stuff for a while. He's a populist and people are generally interested in this stuff.
I've assumed he thought it would damage the FBI/CIA/someone he's dismantling. I'm a millennial so I didn't grow up with it but I can't explain how little I care. JFK was born in 1917.
Seeing people line up at the curve in the road where he was shot in Dallas was wild. It's literally just a curve in the road going downtown. Nothing remarkable. Too bad he didn't return a few years ago, I guess.
Nah, one of two things: 1) it's a distraction from the actually important, messed up stuff he's doing, or 2) there's something in the files that makes some government agency that Trump hates (like the FBI) look bad.
A very convincing confession was published for the first time last month, of someone who alleges to have shot JFK.
How long was Keefe D on YouTube talking about Tupac's murder before the police took him seriously enough to do something?
Commentors suggest it was put out 12 years ago.
Taped March 22, 1994, IIRC.
99% of influencers would confess if it got them clicks.
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As much as some would like to pretend it does, his issues in his personal life still don’t make segregation and lack of voting rights an okay thing.
Yes, but he was really bad in some respects, that clashes with his public image/caricature in a way that kind of matters
You can say the same thing for literally every political figure throughout all of human history. People have said this throughout all recorded history.
Please read a book.
The most liberal comment in this site's history
kind of
In what respects?
He is known to be a womanizer and to have used his fame to sleep with women, and may have fathered some illegitimate children.
But the most damning is that apparently the FBI has an audio recording of him laughing and even giving encouragement while another man rapes a woman in a hotel room.
The same FBI that sent him anonymous letters, trying to encourage MLK to choose suicide?
It's hard to blackmail someone with false information. That's why Hoover was spying and digging up dirt.
Why didn't the police proceed with criminal charges?
He wasn't "really bad". He was a hero but also a human with human faults
I mean, we're regressing everything else back to the good ol' 1960's, so yeah, sure, why not, lets whip out the ol "sexual deviant" playbook to discredit some basic human rights and fairness.
As long as people are distracted by some black guy's bisexuality or whatever they won't ask questions about all the underage human trafficking on epstein's lolita express with the people who are actually alive and running the government today.
Oh, and icing on the cake: it's a good pretext to remove MLK Day and that Black History Month. Guy was a sexual deviant, so clearly the civil rights movement was a giant discredited DEI sham. eg https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/defense-agency...
cool
mlk's philandering will then be used as a pretext to change mlk day to elon musk day
water is wet. truth is truth.
Water wets.
Would melting frozen water be considered wet water? Seems to satisfy the requirements.
I thought the JFK assassination was tragic but not really relevant/interesting until I listened to this podcast by journalist Soledad O’Brien:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-killed-jfk/id17146...
There’s actually a mountain of evidence pointing to a horrifying conclusion.
It’s not easy to summarize, and anyhow I don’t want to give spoilers here.
I once listened to a Pittsburgh-area local legend coroner named Cyril Wecht (RIP to one of the best public speakers it was ever my pleasure to see) go on about this for a half hour and the number of things that had to happen for the first time in human history in order for the warren report to not be entirely bullshit is staggering. A trained rifleman passing on an approaching shot in favor of a shot where the target is moving perpendicularly, hitting the shot anyway, then the target snapping back against the direction of applied force and developing an entrance wound bigger than the exit wound?
That’s right, and those aren’t the only inconsistencies in the official report.
More interesting to me is who had the motive and opportunity, and this podcast makes a compelling case for who was behind it.
What’s the conclusion?
That the comment bots are getting better at phrasing things as clickbait?
I’m not a bot, look at my history.
What is the horrifying conclusion the mountain of evidence points to? To me the fact that you said that but didn't specify the actual conclusion also gave me pause. If you can't post the specific conclusion you reached, are you that confident in it?
Don’t want to spoil it for you
I asked you to.
It's not that deep, dude. He is just a well-known proponent of the second shooter claim, and that the assassination was a government conspiracy.
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