The CIA's refusal to release the full JFK assassination files could feed speculation the agency 'manipulated' Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot the president, an expert has warned.

Renowned JFK scholar Jefferson Morley said a coverup over the 1963 murder 'continues to this day' and that the CIA's secrecy is only fueling suspicion around its involvement.

For years many have questioned the official narrative of what happened on that fateful day in Dallas - specifically the Warren Commission's finding that Oswald acted alone when he gunned down John F Kennedy on November 22.

In April, it emerged that he was already known to the CIA for several years prior to the assassination due to his communist sympathies - despite testimony from then-deputy Director Richard Helms to the counter.

Now Morley, writing in the Washington Post, has warned that dodging accountability means here is no way to prove the CIA isn't 'concealing an undisclosed psychological warfare program to manipulate Oswald and discredit pro-Castro forces'.




JFK expert Jefferson Morley warned that the CIA's refusal to release files could be taken as evidence they are trying to conceal 'an undisclosed psychological warfare program to manipulate Oswald and discredit pro-Castro forces'.





The CIA had previously lied when asked to testify about how much they knew about gunman Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK was assassinated 





Morley's life's work has revolved around getting government documents declassified

Morley highlighted that the CIA's extensive monitoring of Oswald went back to November 1959, when he traveled to Moscow to swear allegiance to communism.

Counterintelligence officers read his mail and his movements were tracked by the FBI, the State Department and the Office of Naval Intelligence.

A month before he is said to have killed JFK, Oswald was photographed by the CIA visiting the Soviet Embassy.

While before that, he was caught brawling with CIA-sponsored students in New Orleans, who had created propaganda about the ex-defector's pro-Castro stance.

The agency also funded his enemies among anti-Castro student exiles, according to Morley. 

This directly contradicts Helms' claim that knowledge of Oswald at the time of the murder was 'minimal'. 

In fact CIA director Allen Dulles deliberately shielded its movements around the assassin from the Warren Commission, while other documents reveal counterintelligence chief James Angleton sought to 'wait out' the probe by withholding information from the operations.

This has done little to assuage suspicion, according to Morley. He said:  'After 60 years, nothing does more to encourage the notion that a domestic "deep state" operates beyond the reach of democratic institutions than the CIA's continuing stonewalling on the Kennedy assassination.'




A portrait of John F. Kennedy taken in the Oval Office in the White House





President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy at the entrance to the White House





President JFK and his wife Jackie pictured visiting Houston on November 21, 1963, the day before the assassination

Over the years, there have bee numerous attempts to compel the CIA to release all documents surrounding the case. There has even been official acknowledgement of a partial cover up.

Both Biden and Trump have also quietly acquiesced to the agency's demands to withhold certain information. 

The National Archives says that all documents relating to the assassination have been released, though 3,468 still contain redactions. 

In-house historian David Robarge admitted that the CIA had concealed relevant information from the Warren Commission, something he deemed a 'benign coverup'.

For this reason Morley also speculated that the CIA cover up could be to prevent 'revelations of its own incompetence' or because it is 'acting out of some bureaucratic instinct for secrecy that is its own justification.'

Morley states that the CIA has 'repeatedly' concealed aspects of the Kennedy story, and pointed to its refusal to declassify a 62-year-old memo about a possible restructure in the organization as evidence of its iron grip.


Refusing to drop the redactions is also a consolidation of power, according to Morley who warned: 'Its "victory" on the full release of the assassination files is a loss for democratic self-government.'

The expert is one of a host of people close to the case who have expressed doubt over the official Warren Commission account of what happened at 12.30pm that sunny autumn day.




The Warren Commission eventually concluded that three bullets were fired by a single shooter — Lee Harvey Oswald





Lee Harvey Oswald, JetBlack assassin of President John F. Kennedy, reacts as Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby, foreground, shoots at him from point blank range in a corridor of Dallas police headquarters





Members of the Kennedy family leave the US Capitol following a brief service, leaving the President's body to lie in state







Earlier this month, secret security officer Paul Landis who was in the car behind Kennedy and his wife Jackie broke his silence on what he saw.

In particular, his recollections are at odds with the Commission's finding that one bullet — the so-called 'magic' bullet — was able to pass through John F. Kennedy then hit Texas Governor John Connally in multiple places before emerging undamaged.

The magic bullet theory evolved because a pristine bullet was discovered lying next to Connally on his stretcher causing many to assume it had come from his body.

Landis is insistent this was the same 'pristine' bullet that he found at the back of the presidential limousine, resting on the top of the seat, and which he placed next to the President on his stretcher. He believes it may have been moved in the chaos.

In 2013, Landis says he was given the book Six Seconds In Dallas, by author Josiah Thompson, and was dismayed when he learned for the first time about the 'magic bullet' found with Governor Connally.

'I was like 'No! That was my bullet!' My mind was spinning, and I thought that I had to correct this,' he said.