JFK files expose family secrets: Their relatives were CIA assets
65 comments
·June 1, 2025raincom
“The file also reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the U.S.S.R.” How is it possible for Oswald to become a sharp shooter, then?
drewbitt
Practice, but you may prefer the 'telekinesis' theory.
null
ChrisArchitect
Article from March.
A recent Ask HN:
Did someone dig into the JFK files?
hank808
Anyone have a gift URL or similar?
nkurz
To create your own, go to the URL, and prepend archive.is/
Thus for this one, use:
archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/03/22/family-secrets-jfk-files-cia-assets/
otherayden
If you put unbloq.us/ before the URL it will redirect you to the latest archive or generate one for you
xhkkffbf
That sure is a long list of people at the end of the article who "contributed." Yet, there are only a few first person anecdotes that make up the spine of the article. Odd.
timewizard
> The Trump administration’s release of more than 77,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy has thus far shed little new light on the killing
We never expected it to. It has shed much new light on the conspiracy to cover up the crime. It also highlighted how an intelligence agency with no oversight was allowed to continually and constantly break the law and ignore the constitution.
A great story, but sadly, one the main stream media is just not interested in. For some reason.
> Some families are learning for the first time how parents, grandfathers or spouses participated in American spycraft
The CIA actively looked for American businessmen who could be useful to their operations. They called the "Clandestine Contact Service." It's about the lowest level of "participation" you can have in "spycraft."
> “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB. From the description of Oswald in the files he doubted that anyone could control Oswald.”
They just wont give up the cover up. Here we are 60 years after the _murder_ of an elected President and we're still playing these games. Ridiculous. If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
> He was a patriot, Dorothy said, and probably saw his work for U.S. intelligence officials as a way to help his country.
...and then:
> As a child during the early 1960s, his dad would leave for Vietnam and the family wouldn’t hear from him for a month or two.
There was nothing patriotic about the war in Vietnam. This whole article is revisionist deep state jingoist propaganda.
tw04
> If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
Stopping ‘a single “lone nut”’ is by far the hardest thing to do. They aren’t actively seeking co-conspirators so you typically have no idea what they’re planning until they take action if they aren’t blatantly stupid in their planning like trying to steal firearms or buying truckloads of fertilizer for non-ag use.
Thlom
The smart ones move to a farm, orders truckloads of fertilizers but don't fertilize the land.
thrwwy451
And if this were EU, they apply for grants to pay for the fertilizer. That's how good the oversight is.
timewizard
Oswald was in the FBI subversive file. The FBI was actively investigating him and trying to interview Marina. There was a field agent assigned to him.
He was removed from the subversive file ONE day before the USSS searched it before the parade route. They always search the file before a parade.
Had this system worked as intended than USSS would have shut down the Book Depository and would have held Oswald in custody for the day. Even Hoover himself remarked how unconscionable this all was and he punished several agents for it.
This _particular_ lone nut should have been EASY to stop.
MonkeyClub
> would have held Oswald in custody for the day
Preemptive detainment? That doesn't sound very constitutional, to be honest. Is it actually a thing?
cyanydeez
Is this in the files they released now or prior, sauce please.
UltraSane
The secret service was amazingly incompetent for letting JFK ride in an open limo driving between so many perfect places for a sniper to hide. They made is so easy for Oswald. Why didn't they have agents in the buildings along the route?
brandall10
> If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
It literally just happened last year w/ Trump. And this is in an era w/ a trove of online data to monitor for such possibilities.
AlecSchueler
Trump wasn't a sitting president last year.
brandall10
He wasn't, but he had a full Secret Service detail as both a former president and major candidate, and the lapse was noted as an egregious error.
koolba
> It literally just happened last year w/ Trump.
Twice!
lesuorac
> They just wont give up the cover up. Here we are 60 years after the _murder_ of an elected President and we're still playing these games. Ridiculous. If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
I didn't realize this was up for debate.
Which 3 letter agency did Thomas Crooks [1] work for?
Our security theater apparatus largely works because nobody is trying to kill a president.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Don...
pc86
The lone nut is the hard thing to stop because even when they're not focused on super strict operational security, it's unlikely they're telling a ton of people about their plan. The more training they have, the more secluded they are, the less likely you are to have any chance of catching them ahead of time.
JumpCrisscross
> Our security theater apparatus largely works because nobody is trying to kill a president
Eh, it’s halfway decent at thwarting schemes. Where it fails—where most law enforcement and counterterrorism fails—is in the lone-wolf case. (I’ll call it the Wallace’s dilemma.)
cafard
It worked for Ford, it sort of worked for Reagan--he was gravely wounded, but hit with only one bullet rather than several.
ajross
> We never expected it to.
Good grief. Many, many people expected it to contain confirmation of any of probably a thousand mutually incompatible conspiracies.
Then the data shows up, doesn't provide the expected endorphin rush, and now it's all "as expected" and what is really important is some bland point about cold war intelligence overreach? That's a bit much.
vkou
> If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
It is almost impossible to stop a person who really wants to kill someone, and is ready to die to do it, and is a bit lucky.
wat10000
> If you accept this as true then you have to accept the United States Secret Service was criminally incompetent in failing to stop a single "lone nut."
Why wouldn’t I accept that? They’ve since failed to stop two more lone nuts. Unless you think those were conspiracies too?
etchalon
The neat part about conspiracy theories is they're always unfalsifiable.
timewizard
They are completely falsifiable. You would just need to have the intelligence agencies actually cooperate with the investigation and release all their information on it.
We know for a fact they didn't do that. They intentionally obstructed several investigations. They knowingly lied to congress. They destroyed records they were ordered to preserve. These facts are all part of the released documents and they're all plain as day. They tried to keep this all locked up until 2060 for a reason.
At the very least we can retrospectively look at the actions of CIA, FBI and USSS and see their corruption. That they've never been held responsible is unconscionable. I'm glad you're somehow capable of defending them with this lazy nonsense.
Almondsetat
Every piece of evidence an intelligence agency produces you can always claim to be manufactured or altered, so no, it's unfalsifiable
etchalon
I didn't defend them.
DueDilligence
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yieldcrv
any who has worked in DC would find this to be not that interesting
"Hey by the way your 2nd cousin worked for the CIA" like, and?
bamboozled
So there was good reason why the files weren’t released earlier and much of the released content had redacted sections ?
Can we move on now ?
Movies portray spies as some special operations people. However, most of the academics in humanities are potential spies: they gather intelligence by offering fellowships, scholarships and grants to people from abroad to stay at hosting institutions' "Depart of Government", "Center for Peace", "Department of Political Sciences", "Department of Asian studies", "Center for conflict resolution". The targets are usually other Ph.Ds and others who are connected to the elite in the target countries.