Do latest Kennedy assassination docs say anything about JFK’s visit to Fort Worth?
By presidential order, thousands of pages of documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, many never before seen, were released on March 18, sending historians and conspiracy theorists into a tizzy late into Tuesday night.
While the trove offered some interesting tidbits for both grizzled Kennedy heads and curious neophytes, there was nothing that would implicate any group or person, other than Lee Harvey Oswald, in Kennedy’s assassination.
The review is still ongoing, but the Star-Telegram’s deep dive into the documents also didn’t reveal anything new about Kennedy’s brief stay in Fort Worth before the shooting, nor did it shed additional light on the movements of Secret Service agents the night before the assassination.
On Nov. 21, 1963, President Kennedy landed in Texas for a whirlwind cross-state tour. In a single day, Kennedy made stops in San Antonio and Houston before arriving in Fort Worth, where he and Mrs. Kennedy stayed at the Hotel Texas (now the Hilton Fort Worth).
The next day, Nov. 22 — the day tragedy struck the nation — Kennedy began his morning with public remarks alongside vice president Lyndon B. Johnson, Texas governor John Connally, Texas representative Jim Wright and Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce president Raymond Buck. Kennedy then returned to the Hotel Texas for a breakfast hosted by the chamber of commerce, during which he praised Fort Worth’s aerospace industry’s contributions to national security.
At 11:24 that morning, Kennedy left Fort Worth from Carswell Air Force Base aboard Air Force One bound for Love Field in Dallas. Little more than an hour later, he would be felled by an assassin’s bullet.
It has long been acknowledged that several on Kennedy’s detail stayed out late drinking at the Press Club of Fort Worth and the Cellar Coffee House. Some allegedly caroused until dawn. The men started work no later than 8 a.m. on Nov. 22.
What was in the documents?
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required the government to make public all investigation-related documents within 25 years. Presidents Trump and Biden released tens of thousands of new and newly unredacted documents, but many were kept from the public for various reasons. This latest release marks the first time there’s ostensibly been full transparency.
According to a Reuters report, U.S. Justice Department lawyers in the Operations Section of the Office of Intelligence were ordered Monday to each begin reviewing hundreds of JFK documents before they were made public. The documents first hit the National Archives website late on Tuesday, and the release continued Wednesday.
The bulk of what was released concerns the U.S.’s involvement in Cuba in 1960s. Many revealed the depths the CIA went to to undermine Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, which is one reason why some experts believe the documents were withheld for so long.
Apart from that, the Star-Telegram’s research revealed the following:
▪ On Nov. 27, 1962, the CIA’s Los Angeles field office reported that assistant U.S. attorney Bill Spivak had contacted the agency to report that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s yacht, the Potomac, was being used by Alpha 66, a paramilitary anti-Castro organization, to smuggle arms from Long Beach port to Seattle. A subsequent document later in the release indicated a CIA presence in Seattle.
▪ On Nov. 29, 1962, Adolph Jay Albrecht, a U.S. citizen living in Sweden, reported to the U.S. embassy in Sweden that a local named Karl-Erik Ridderstrale, an alleged Castro sympathizer, had predicted Kennedy’s death days before his assassination.
▪ Documents pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Mexico City in September 1963, including his alleged acquaintance with Silvia Duran, a suspected CIA asset, and Oswald’s supposed attempts to obtain a Russian visa and an in-transit visa to Cuba.
▪ A written acknowledgment of a shipment of ammunition to “Corpus Christi” in October 1963. Whether this is Corpus Christi, Texas, or Corpus Christi, Sonora, in Mexico is unclear.
▪ A handwritten CIA memo from someone in search of a photo of the “three tramps” who were allegedly present on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. The conspiracy minded believe these men were part of a group that fired upon the president that day.
▪ Classified testimony given by Yuri Nosenko, a KGB defector, in which he talks about the KGB’s supposed disinterest in Oswald while he was in the Soviet Union, despite his professed communist sympathies, his desire to defect to Russia and his background as a military radar techn at a base that handled U-2 spy plane flights.
▪ A formerly top secret CIA file that talks about Oswald sightings in Cuba prior to the assassination, as well as a debrief of the Cuban government’s reaction to Kennedy’s death.
▪ Testimony from Robert Maheu, a CIA contractor and aide for Howard Hughes, regarding some of his work for the agency, including purchasing a Greek newspaper with CIA money. Some believe Maheu was involved in the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy assassination. He was claimed to have helped the CIA recruit Chicago mobsters Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli to assassinate Fidel Castro.
There’s undoubtedly more of interest, but the documents are seemingly arranged haphazardly, and none are labeled in any way that allows for easy classification. As such, locate a comfortable conspiracy bunker and prepare for a long reading session before diving in.