FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Sixty Prominent U.S. Citizens Demand: Reinvestigate U.S. Assassinations
Jan. 21, 2019 (EIRNS)—To mark this year’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 60 prominent American academics, lawyers, intellectuals, and researchers, including two of Robert F. Kennedy’s children, are calling on Congress to open new investigations into four assassinations of the 1960s, Consortium News announced in today’s issue, and included a list of signers of the call.
“On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60 prominent American citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy,”
the statement says.
Signers of the joint statement include Isaac Newton Farris, Jr., nephew of Reverend King and past president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., a close associate of Dr. King; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, children of Sen. Robert Kennedy.
Other signers include G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that the President John Kennedy had been the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who tried to save President Kennedy’s life, and saw clear evidence that he had been struck by bullets from the front and the rear; Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who served as a national security advisor to the Kennedy White House; Martin Sheen, Oliver Stone, and others.
“The joint statement calls for Congress to establish firm oversight on the release of all government documents related to the Kennedy presidency and assassination, as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. This public transparency law has been routinely defied by the CIA and other federal agencies. The Trump White House has allowed the CIA to continue its defiance of the law, even though the JFK Records Act called for the full release of relevant documents in 2017.
“The group statement also calls for a public inquest into ‘the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the course of American history.’ This tribunal—which would hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims—would be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. This American Truth and Reconciliation process is intended to encourage Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four organized acts of political violence....
“Signers of the joint statement, who call themselves the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, are also seeking to reopen the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case, stating that Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction was based on ‘a mockery of a trial.’ ”
