More than 62 years after President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, elements of the U.S. government are still hiding the truth. The media’s obsession with chasing a “smoking gun” trivializes the larger reality: a damning pattern of evidence pointing to government complicity in the cover-up — and possibly in the crime itself.
In 1992, Congress ordered every record on this matter released by 2017. Presidents of both parties have demanded compliance. After six decades, Congress and President Trump are fed up with federal agencies that continue to defy the law, bury evidence, and insult the memory of a murdered president.
This is no accident — it is deliberate deception that poisons public trust to this day. Tired of intelligence agencies’ defiance, Oversight Chairman Jim Comer (R-Ky.) created the House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets to break six decades of stonewalling. With Trump’s executive order leading the way, the Task Force has achieved real progress, but much more remains to be done.
For decades, intelligence agencies stonewalled efforts to release the assassination records. Fortunately, that attitude has begun to change. In the last six months, more documents have gone public than in the previous 20 years combined. Thousands of previously redacted pages now appear online in fully unredacted form, thanks to the work of the House task force and Trump’s executive order.
No, a “smoking gun” document didn’t emerge, and frankly, it would be short-sighted to expect one. Serious researchers and investigators understand that the most disturbing feature of the newly released documents related to the Kennedy assassination is the fact pattern they reveal. These documents confirm what serious researchers had long argued: The CIA’s ties to Lee Harvey Oswald were far stronger than the agency ever admitted.
One of the most damning revelations concerns George Joannides, a CIA psychological warfare officer who secretly supervised and funded a Cuban exile group called the DRE in 1963. That group had direct encounters with Oswald in the months before Kennedy’s death. Fifteen years later, when Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations to reinvestigate the case, the CIA assigned Joannides as its liaison to the committee without disclosing his past involvement. We now know that Joannides’ real job was not cooperation — it was obstruction.
He withheld the very information that tied Oswald to the CIA’s operations. To add insult to injury, the recent revelations show that the CIA Awarded Joannides a medal, in part for deceiving Congress.
Another document to emerge as result of Trump’s January 2025 order reveals that William K. Harvey, chief of the CIA’s assassination program, secretly obtained false credentials from the Federal Aviation Administration in August 1963 that enabled the Kennedy-hating officer to travel undercover in the U.S., at a time when he supposedly served as station chief in Rome. I had already asked CIA Director John Ratcliffe for Harvey’s travel records in 1963. The latest revelation only underscores the importance of that request, which Ratcliffe has promised to fulfill.
Some argue that after 60 years, the details are no longer important. They are wrong. Cover-ups corrode trust. When the government buries the truth, it fuels conspiracy theories and deepens cynicism. It is obvious now that the Warren Commission reached its conclusions before the “investigation” of 1964 had even started. Americans are not children to be shielded from history. They deserve the truth — especially about one of the most traumatic events in modern memory.
The Kennedy assassination was not just another crime. It was a political murder that changed our country’s trajectory. If intelligence agencies concealed their own role, directly or indirectly, then that cover-up distorted American democracy for six decades. The question is no longer simply, “Who killed President Kennedy?” It is, “Why has our government fought so hard to keep the full story from the American people?”
The recent disclosures represent real progress, but there are still key documents that remain hidden.
Among the most urgent records we need to see:
- Files of the CIA’s Miami station. After the assassination, the CIA station in Miami — known as JMWAVE — conducted an internal inquiry into whether the Cuban exiles it handled had any role in JFK’s murder. Those files, known as SITREPS, have never been released. We know from testimony that senior CIA officers doubted the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” conclusion. JMWAVE’s chief of operations, David Morales, later boasted to attorney Robert Walton in reference to President Kennedy “We took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?” Congress and the American public deserve to see all the records of the JMWAVE investigation into Kennedy’s murder.
- William Harvey’s travel records. Harvey was the CIA officer in charge of assassination plots against Fidel Castro. He despised the Kennedys. After the White House disciplined him in 1962 for running unauthorized, reckless operations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was sent to Rome to head the CIA station there. Yet a colleague later reported seeing Harvey on a flight to Dallas in the weeks before Nov. 22, 1963, and the CIA still refuses to release the assassination specialist’s travel vouchers. Why? If Harvey wasn’t in Dallas, we want the records to prove it. And we know the records are known to the CIA’s FOIA office. We want them released.
- FBI tapes of Carlos Marcello. Marcello, the mob boss of New Orleans, openly loathed the Kennedys. Before Nov. 22, 1963, he had signaled foreknowledge of the crime. In prison in the 1980s, he even told an FBI informant that he had orchestrated the president’s assassination. Yet the FBI still blocks release of the surveillance tapes that could confirm his confession. These are records of immense historical value — and the public has a right to hear them.
- Details of Secret Service file destruction. In 1995, three years after Congress unanimously passed the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed assassination-related documents. The Assassination Records Review Board had explicitly requested that all files be preserved. Instead, the very agency tasked with protecting the president illegally shredded its own records. To this day, no one has been held accountable. Who ordered it, and why?
- Interviews of Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy. At Wesleyan University sit sealed transcripts of interviews Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy gave to historian William Manchester in the mid-1960s. Manchester returned them to the Kennedy family using a “deed in trust,” meaning that the Kennedy family — not the government — controls releases. They are closed to the public until 2039.
I recognize this is painful for the Kennedy family, which has carried the burden of two assassinations — President Kennedy in 1963 and Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) in 1968. But Jackie Kennedy was the closest witness to her husband’s assassination. We know from close associates of Robert Kennedy, the attorney general at the time, that he never accepted the “lone gunman” theory. The unfiltered views of Jackie and RFK are of enormous historical importance. Keeping them locked away until most living Americans are gone serves no purpose but secrecy.
I believe that the work of our Task Force is honoring the fallen president and senator. We should not suppress history.
Each of these records could shed light on what really happened in Dallas. Each is still hidden, six decades after the fact.
This should not be a partisan issue. Truth and transparency are American values, and they are reflected in the JFK Records Act of 1992, which Congress passed without dissent. Trump’s executive order requiring compliance with that law was not a partisan act but a recognition that secrecy had gone on too long.
I have seen how much resistance still exists inside the federal bureaucracy. Agencies delay, redact and obstruct. They hope Congress will grow tired, the press will move on, and the public will forget. That cannot be allowed to happen. As chair of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, I have also seen what courageous leadership looks like. CIA Director Ratcliffe committed to the release of the Joannides files to comply with the president’s order, and it was done, despite whatever internal opposition he faced.
Congress must follow up on what our task force has uncovered. I call upon both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to demand full release of all remaining JFK records and declassification of all CIA and FBI files still withheld. Together, we must also investigate and hold the Secret Service accountable for the illegal destruction of records pertaining to Nov. 22, 1963. Congress should hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and, if necessary, pass new legislation to compel full compliance.
If agencies continue to ignore the law, they must face consequences — including budgetary ones. Every year agencies withhold evidence, they feed suspicion and undermine public trust.
After 62 years, we now know enough to say with certainty that the government lied and covered up the truth, starting with the fiction that Lee Harvey Oswald was a “lone nut” with no connections to the intelligence community. Worst of all, it has been clear for decades that the Warren Report’s conclusions were decided before the investigation had even begun.
The report was a major part of the cover-up and remains a stain on our country — the blame for that falls on both Republicans and Democrats on the commission, the staff of the commission and President Lyndon Johnson. The complicity of the supposedly free press in shutting down criticisms of the Warren Commission’s conclusions should frighten all Americans.
The days of blind acceptance of the Warren Report are over. Americans deserve the truth now — not in 2039.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination was one of the greatest tragedies in American history. The cover-up and secrecy that followed were arguably even worse. It is time Congress finish the job of establishing full transparency.
Anna Paulina Luna is a U.S. Representative for Florida’s 13th Congressional District. Rep. Luna serves on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees and chairs the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
