Here & Now

Local Historian Breaks Down JFK Assassination Documents

Frederica Freyberg:

A large batch of the long-awaited and last remaining classified files of the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were made public Thursday. The documents were held from public view for 25 years, until this week, when President Donald Trump decided to release them. Many files remain under agency review for the next 180 days, but Thursday's release gave historians plenty to pore over, including Madison College history instructor Dr. Jon Pollack and thanks a lot for being here.

Jon Pollack:

Thanks for inviting me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So with that said, how many of these files have you managed to pore through since late yesterday?

Jon Pollack:

Like five. I haven’t made a huge amount of headway on that.

Frederica Freyberg:

And in those five, did you see anything that was illuminating?

Jon Pollack:

Well, so the first thing I did was I looked at — anybody can do this, go to the national archives website. It’s pretty easy to get to this big excel spreadsheet that has the files on it. So I was kind of scrolling down and I was looking for a headline that looked kind of interesting. I saw Castro. I thought, “Ok, this will be great.” So I clicked on that. It was a document written, I want to say in the mid-1970s, was kind of intra-agency kind of history of CIA efforts to kill or otherwise mess with Castro in some fashion. And there were things we all kind of knew about. I mean, there might have been — I'm not super expert in what exactly did various CIA agents kind of spitball around and say this would be a good way to get rid of him, but they seemed in line with other things that were being talked about.

Frederica Freyberg:

What were you hoping to find, if anything, in these long-awaited documents?

Jon Pollack:

Honestly, I really didn’t have much hope for it at all. I was looking for a title that jumped out because I thought most of what was going on — most of what would be in the files would be kind of transcripts of conversations, of random bits of intelligence coming in which might have been — could have been things that in other documents that are already released were revealed to be bogus or stories that didn’t check out or things where it was just one little piece of evidence that turned into a dead end. So I didn’t have a whole lot of high hopes going into this.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about the stuff that they have held back for another 180 days? What do people like yourself think might be embodied in those?

Jon Pollack:

Yeah. So I think what’s in there also is going to be relatively minor, that it’s going to be — I think what’s going to be in those documents might be names of people who are still in some fashion working in intelligence for the United States or if you’ve got, you know, a parent and child with the same name who are both in intelligence, because that’s something families sometimes sort of go into. So those are being held back so as not to jeopardize anybody who’s out in the field. I don’t think — it wouldn’t make sense for there to be this really juicy information that we’re just holding on to for another 180 days, de-classify it and then it’ll change everything.

Frederica Freyberg:

Right. But after waiting 25 years for this stuff, would this be regarded as kind of a dud or don’t you think we actually know yet?

Jon Pollack:

I think it is kind of a dud. I think we know what’s out. I think we know pretty much everything that’s going to be out there that’s going to be released. I mean, I think, you know, there are a few different scenarios I have. Partly is the most simple explanation which is, yeah, Oswald shot Kennedy. He had various ideas. He had been in Russia. He had been in Mexico City, talking to Cubans and Russians which we now have a little more information about through the most recent release. But we don’t have intent. That hasn’t been captured. And who told him — what did people talk to him — we don’t have records of those conversations nor do I think those are going to surface. But yeah. It’s — I think the — most of what we know is in there. If we are going to be nefarious about it, if we’re going to be conspiratorial and say, “OK, so maybe that’s not it.” If the CIA or the FBI or Johnson or Johnson's driver or whoever the heck conspired to shoot Kennedy, taking on a president compared to like burning government documents, you know, taking government documents home and putting them in your fireplace and setting them on fire, might that not have happened? You know? I mean, federal agencies by law are supposed to save their documents. So if we’re a mindset that says well people from the federal government or outside of it, they’re also not supposed to shoot the president. That’s a no-no. If people have the gumption to do that, then wouldn’t they also have demolished the paper trail on that? Would that have been captured in a paper trail? For minor level workplace gossip, people don’t email that stuff back and forth. They talk to their coworkers about it. And so for something of this magnitude, would people really have typed up memos in triplicate and said, “Hey, here’s how we’re going to take down the president?” Likely? No. So if those things–if there’s a more nefarious reason or conspiracy behind Kennedy's death, then it’s probably not going to be captured in documents at all.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Well, still we’re waiting for the next round in 180 days. Jon Pollack, thanks very much.

Jon Pollack:

Thanks for having me.