2017 is supposed to be the year of disclosures, when classified files are scheduled for release. To be specific, 2017m is the year that the U.K.'s Rudolf Hess files are supposed to be released, and that the U.S.A.'s Kennedy assassination files are to be released. In that, I suspect, there is something more than just coincidence, but tempting as the thought me be to explore that "synchronicity," time does not permit it. However, that said, as I pointed out in my most recent book - Hess and the Penguins: The Holocaust, Antarctica, and the Strange Case of Rudolf Hess - released just a few days ago, the problem is that many researchers into the Hess case have pointed out that files are missing, some have been altered, and so on. Thus, release or no release, the "source" is already tainted, and any releases or non-releases should be viewed with suspicion.

Similarly, JFK assassination researchers have pointed out a similar problem with archives on President Kennedy's murder: files (and even the President's brain) have gone missing, others have been redacted. The idea of a full and complete disclosure is a forlorn hope, and I would suggest, very naive, in both cases.

That said, many people sent me various versions of this story and - surprise surprise! - certain files of the C.I.A. which related to the alleged assassin of the President, Lee Harvey Oswald, have gone missing (please copy and paste the link into your browser: my linking function appears to be malfunctioning today!):

As the article points out, what has been released has done nothing but confirm the JFK assassination "truthers'" suspicions that the fingerprints of the American deep state were all over the President's murder. For example, recent releases confirm that the mayor of Dallas during the murder, Earle Cabell, brother of Charles Cabell (A high-ranking CIA official fired by Kennedy in the aftermath of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion), was himself a CIA asset during the 1950s:

As Sputnik reports, the release in July of 3,810 CIA and FBI documents on the assassination by the Assassination Records Review Board threw up a number of revelations that JFK researchers have hungrily devoured and enthusiastically publicized. For instance, the mayor of Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Earle Cabell, was a CIA asset in the 1950s, and his brother, Charles Cabell, a high-ranking CIA official until 1962.

But, as the article also notes, various techniques have been used to hide materials to this day:

The release in October has been highly anticipated by those seeking answers. However, thanks to a deliberate fudging or records, or a conveniently timed clerical error, an entire volume may never see the light of day.

Hess Mess researchers will recognize this pattern!

In this case however, the "explanation" given for the missing files is ingenious, if not darkly laughable:

As late as 1977, the entire 7-volume collection of documents was intact, having been checked out by Russ Holmes in the Office of General Counsel and noted the 7-volume series was all together, not missing any volumes. But when the CIA was asked to turn over the volume of documents on Oswald, the hitman in the assassination, it seems the agency stonewalled a bit, like a shell game according to independent investigator Malcolm Blunt. Blunt described the stonewalling: This huge search by CIA did not surface Oswald’s security files and the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) remained uninformed about their existence. Not until 1997 when an ARRB staffer stumbled across evidence that two previous congressional investigations had access to these files did CIA “discover” them. The AARB eventually received the 7-volume set of documents on Oswald in 1998, but staffers quickly realized there was one volume missing—volume 5. An agency explanation was offered that volume 5 could have been consolidated into Volume 4, or Volume 6 for example. Eventually, the agency concluded, according to Blunt, Volume 5 of Oswald’s Security file may never have existed.

(Emphasis added)

Uh huh... sure... that's believable...

NOT!

The Warren Report was, of course, adopted as the "official narrative" of the assassination by the Executive branch, and it has remained such ever since. But there is another official narrative, adopted by Congress in the wake of its own investigations of the President's murder (and of the assassinations of his brother Senator Robert Kennedy, and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King), namely, that it may have been the result of a conspiracy, and that there may have been more than one gunman.

In other words: the murder remains "unsolved," as far as the government is concerned.

The bottom line, however, is that the non-release of the missing and "never existent" volume five serves only to highlight what JFK assassination researchers have known all along, almost as soon as the events transpired and the ink was drying on the Warren Report: it was - and could only have been - a conspiracy, and that to pull it off, elements of the American deep state had to have been involved.

See you on the flip side...