[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE JFK FILES: ASSESSING OVER 60 YEARS
OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S
OBSTRUCTION, OBFUSCATION,
AND DECEPTION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
TASK FORCE ON THE DECLASSIFICATION
OF FEDERAL SECRETS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2025
__________
Serial No. 119-27
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-449 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia,
Mike Turner, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Gary Palmer, Alabama Ro Khanna, California
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Pete Sessions, Texas Shontel Brown, Ohio
Andy Biggs, Arizona Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California
Pat Fallon, Texas Maxwell Frost, Florida
Byron Donalds, Florida Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Greg Casar, Texas
William Timmons, South Carolina Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Emily Randall, Washington
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Suhas Subramanyam, Virginia
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Yassamin Ansari, Arizona
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Wesley Bell, Missouri
Nick Langworthy, New York Lateefah Simon, California
Eric Burlison, Missouri Dave Min, California
Eli Crane, Arizona Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Brian Jack, Georgia Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
John McGuire, Virginia
Brandon Gill, Texas
------
Mark Marin, Staff Director
James Rust, Deputy Staff Director
Mitch Benzine, General Counsel
Jake Greenberg, Chief Counsel for Investigations
Clark Abourisk, Deputy Chief Counsel for Investigations
Mallory Cogar, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Jamie Smith, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida, Chairwoman
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California, Ranking
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Minority Member
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Eric Burlison, Missouri Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Eli Crane, Arizona Dave Min, California
Brandon Gill, Texas Jasmine Crockett, Texas
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 20, 2025..................................... 1
Witnesses
----------
Dr. Don Curtis, Doctor of Dental Surgery, Oral and Maxillofacial
Specialist, Amarillo, TX
Oral Statement................................................... 5
Mr. Abraham Bolden, Former U.S. Secret Service Agent
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Mr. Dan Hardway, Former Researcher for the Select Committee on
Assassinations (HSCA), U.S. House of Representatives
Oral Statement................................................... 10
The Honorable John Tunheim, Senior Judge, U.S. District Court for
the District of Minnesota
Oral Statement................................................... 12
Mr. Douglas Horne, Former Staffer, Assassinations Records Review
Board
Oral Statement................................................... 16
Ms. Alexis Coe (Minority Witness), Presidential Historian, Senior
Fellow, New America
Oral Statement................................................... 19
Written opening statements and bios are available on the U.S.
House of Representatives Document Repository at:
docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
* Letter, May 16, 2025, to Majority Leader, re: Witness;
submitted by Rep. Luna.
* Letter, May 19, 2025, from Scalise, re: Witness; submitted by
Rep. Luna.
The documents listed above are available at: docs.house.gov.
THE JFK FILES: ASSESSING OVER 60 YEARS
OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S
OBSTRUCTION, OBFUSCATION,
AND DECEPTION
----------
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets
Washington, D.C.
The Task Force met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m., in
room HVC-210, U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Anna Paulina
Luna [Chairwoman of the Task Force] presiding.
Present: Representatives Luna, Mace, Burchett, Burlison,
Crane, Garcia, and Lee.
Also present: Representatives Biggs and Ogles.
Mrs. Luna. The Task Force on the Declassification of
Federal Secrets will come to order. Welcome everyone. I request
unanimous consent that Mr. Biggs of Arizona and Mr. Ogles of
Tennessee are waived on into this hearing for purposes of
questioning.
Without objection, so ordered.
Further, without objection, the Chair may declare a recess
at any time. Pursuant to the House rules and regulations for
the remote participation of committee witnesses, I ask
unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from
Chairman Comer to Majority Leader Scalise requesting Mr. Bolden
testify removed and a letter from Scalise granting this
request.
Without objection, so ordered.
I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening
statement. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being
here today. I wanted thank our witnesses, especially those who
have traveled far to be here.
In the past 60 years, on a crowded street in Dallas, Texas,
the President of the United States was assassinated in front of
a horrified crowd, his Secret Service protection, and his wife.
The death of President Kennedy was a monumentous and tragic day
for the entire Nation, as well as the Kennedy family. The
country has never been the same since.
Compounding that tragedy, however, has been over 60 years
of half-truths, deception and outright lies that the Federal
Government has offered regarding the details of that day and
the events surrounding it. I want to thank the National
Archives for their cooperation with this Task Force. The
Archives has provided these posters behind us that had were
allegedly produced for the CIA to show President Johnson on the
days following the assassination. They are, of course, images
of the Zapruder film that Americans have come to known as
capturing the final moments of President Kennedy's life. But
Americans have come to understand about the assassination of
President Kennedy has mostly been controlled and filtered
through the ascent and watchful gaze of Federal agencies who
have often resisted efforts to reveal the truth.
They have done this, at best, because of their own
embarrassment about their failures to protect President Kennedy
that day. At worst, they have resisted for more nefarious
reasons, such as failing to acknowledge the extent of power and
reach that the CIA in the 1960s had and beyond to the point of
deceiving even the U.S. Congress. That is why we are here
today. We are here to listen to the witnesses who have waited,
in some cases, decades to tell their stories.
I want to be clear, the Task Force on Declassification of
Federal Secrets is not here to provide the definitive account
of what happened on November 22, 1963. Instead, the Task Force
is meant to root up the hidden pockets of Federal Government
that has for too long remained in the shadows out of reach for
even good-faith investigators to reach.
I also want to thank President Trump for committing to the
principles of transparency and holding the government
accountable to the people. His executive order regarding the
declassification of documents related to the assassination of
President Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. is a step forward in the right direction.
The job of the Task Force is to ensure that the Federal
agencies follow that order because in the past, a President's
order for transparency has not always been heeded by the most
secretive portions of our government. The objective of this
Task Force is not to indulge in conspiracy theories, but to
push forward the release of information so these theories could
be put to bed and so the American people can finally have
truth.
It is the Federal agencies that lack transparency for 60
years that have led to the people's distrust in their
government and it is time to restore that. I would also like to
provide for those who have been closely following this to
include researchers an update on several documents that are
outstanding. To date, the Joannides file has not been located,
a whistleblower report from CIA alleging the CIA's implication
has also not been located. Lee Harvey Oswald's travel records
have not been located and the DS-201 file, who was a plausible
suspect for the Delaney Plaza shooter and then as well as the
MAA documents concerning CIA penetration of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee.
Last week, for an update, I did speak to the CIA directly,
not in a SCIF so I can talk about it publicly, and they did
notify me that four of these five documents will be publicly
released in the coming weeks, but there was one that was
outstanding, and I do believe that that one outstanding
document is the Joannides file.
Without further ado, I would like to yield this next
portion to Ranking Member Garcia and then also prior to that we
also had requested footage from NBC. They gave us something
like 20 hours of footage, all of which is not the Wegman
footage that we had asked for, so we are kindly asking NBC to
reassess their archives and produce that documentation.
Without further ado, Ranking Chairman Garcia.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Chairwoman Luna, I wanted to note--
first, thank you to the witnesses that are here. Now, as the
Task Force continues its work, we need to continue to follow
the facts and provide transparency for the American people.
I think we can all agree that this Task Force was not set
up to chase conspiracy theories, and I am glad, of course, to
have Chairwoman Luna reiterate that.
It is responsible, though, for us, to focus on
declassification of historical records and that allows, as we
all know, the public to gain a better understanding of the
past, can restore trust and restitutions, and ensures
accountability in our shared government.
Now, on March 18, 2025, the National Archives and Records
released more than 77,000 pages related, of course, to the
November 22, 1963, assassination of President Kennedy. Now, we
know that many of these documents, most in fact, were already
in the public record, but continued work to make the documents
more accessible is important and valuable.
Now, over the past several decades, our government has
collected and released almost 6 million pages of documents
consistent with President John F. Kennedy and the Assassination
Records Collection Act of 1992.
Now, together, we should push back on decades of
overclassification relating not to just the JFK assassination,
but a variety of subjects. We should be very clear, and it
should be done in a bipartisan way, that the FBI and the CIA of
the 1960s were deeply flawed institutions. And while they have
taken lessons from their past trespasses, there is no question
that they continue to opt in overclassified information often
out of an unnecessary abundance of caution. And it is also
important to note that the FBI and CIA did harm in numerous
areas, over the few decades, particularly when you look at the
time of the civil rights movement.
Now, transparency is how we ensure accountability and
trust. The American people have the right to know as much as
possible about what our government does and how our tax dollars
are spent in a way that does not, of course, interfere with
national security.
Now, I understand the interest in the second hearing on
President Kennedy's assassination. But I hope we, on our Task
Force, can continue to work in a bipartisan way on the many
other topics under its purview as they are also important to
the public.
Now, as we hear testimony from our witnesses today, I want
to make sure that we remember that President Kennedy's
assassination is more than a historical event; it was also a
human tragedy. President Kennedy was a husband, a father, a
brother, and a son. Revisiting and relitigating the tragic
killing is also painful for the real people that were impacted
and for the family. And I think it is important to uplift that.
We should be respectful and responsible as we work to
address the public's questions about this tragedy. And we know
that President Kennedy's legacy has made America the country
that it is today. Now, at a time when we are looking, of
course, for--and the Majority is pushing for tax cuts,
oftentimes for the wealthiest, we need to remember that
President Kennedy believed in a society where Americans took
care of one another. He fought to expand and lay the groundwork
for the program which, of course, became Medicare, which was
enacted under President Johnson. He, of course, was a huge
proponent of advancing civil rights. And President Kennedy
proposed the Civil Rights Act, which became a landmark law in
1964. He supported the courts and the rule of law, which we
know that President Kennedy worked tirelessly to enforce, of
course, courts, support courts and orders, even sending U.S.
marshals and the National Guard to desegregate the University
of Mississippi.
Social Security was also critical to President Kennedy. He
worked to expand Social Security to increase benefits and cover
more people with disabilities.
President Kennedy, over and over again, of course believed
that government could do big things. He invested in scientific
discovery and challenged us to put a man on the moon. We know,
and he knew, that our country was strongest as a global leader
fighting for freedom and democracy. He believed in working
through our alliances.
And I want to make sure that the family also knows that we
will work and always work to uplift President Kennedy's legacy
and what he left for this country and his community.
It is important that we follow the facts and that we work
to continue and declassify, oftentimes, things that have been
overclassified by, particularly, the FBI and the CIA in the
past.
Thank you. And I yield back.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Chairman Garcia [sic].
And if it is OK with the Chairman [sic], I would like to
allow our witnesses to give more detail in their testimony if
they go over the 5 minutes. So, how it works typically is, with
the opening statements, you are usually allotted a certain
amount of time. But given the nature and context of this
hearing, take your time, no one is in trouble, we want to hear
your story for historical purposes and significance. So, just
take your time, you are not under any pressure.
Our witnesses here today are pretty historical. Joining us
via Zoom, we actually have Mr. Abraham Bolden. Mr. Bolden was
an agent with the U.S. Secret Service appointed by President
Kennedy in 1961. And, sir, we want to thank you very much for
attending today. We are very happy that you are here.
We also have Dr. Don Curtis. Dr. Curtis was a resident in
oral and facial surgery at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. And at
12:45 p.m. on November 22, 1963, he was actually in the trauma
room one attempting to save President Kennedy's life. He is
joining us today in person.
Dr. Judge Tunheim. Mr. Tunheim is currently a Federal
district judge in Minnesota, but previously served as President
Bill Clinton's Chair of the Assassination Record Review Board.
As well as Mr. Hardway. Mr. Hardway was an investigator with
the Select Committee on Assassinations of the House of
Representatives. As well as Mr. Douglas Horne. Mr. Horne was a
staffer at the Assassination Record Review Board. And then as
well as Ms. Alexis Coe. Ms. Coe is a Presidential historian and
senior fellow at New America.
Pursuant to the Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform Rule 9, the witnesses will please stand and raise your
right-hand.
Dr. Curtis, you can sit, but please raise your right hand,
sir.
Do you so solemnly swear and affirm that the testimony that
you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
[Chorus of ayes.]
Mrs. Luna. Thank you. Let the record show that the
witnesses have answered in the affirmative.
The Task Force certainly appreciates you for being here and
we look forward to hearing your testimony. Let me remind you
and the witnesses that we have read your written statements,
and that they will appear in record in full. And it is an
accommodation, because of the historic nature of this
testimony, please also be ensured that you will not be rushed
for your opening statements, but try to keep it around 10
minutes, if possible.
As a reminder, please press the button on the microphone in
front of you so that it is on and the Members can hear you.
When you begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn
green. After 9 minutes the light will turn yellow. And when the
red light comes on that means your time is up, but we will not
be gaveling you out, so please take your time.
I now recognize Mr. Bolden to give an opening statement.
Mr. Bolden. [Audio malfunction.]
Mrs. Luna. Sir, we cannot hear you. Is your microphone on?
We still cannot hear him.
Mr. Bolden. [Audio malfunction.]
Mrs. Luna. OK, we are going move to Dr. Curtis while you
guys work through the mic issue. But Mr. Bolden, please be
assured we will be coming back to you, so we will just pass. We
will be coming back, though.
Dr. Curtis, if you can.
STATEMENT OF DR. DON CURTIS
DOCTOR OF DENTAL SURGERY
ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL SPECIALIST
Dr. Curtis. Thank you. My story begins when I left my
office to go to get something to eat before I did surgery. And
to do that, I had to go by the emergency room. And when I went
by the emergency room, a policeman came of the door into the
emergency room. Right over my shoulder and he said, ``Are you a
doctor?''
Can everybody hear?
Mrs. Luna. Yes. I am sorry, Dr. Curtis.
Mr. Bolden, we can hear you now. Your microphone is
working, but Dr. Curtis is doing the opening statement. And so,
if you could just pause real quick and then put yourself on
mute, thank you.
Dr. Curtis, please continue.
Dr. Curtis. All right. So, the policeman asked me if I was
a doctor, and I said, yes. And he grabbed me by the arm and
pulled me into the emergency room and took me to the trauma
room. And when I looked in the trauma room, there were three
people in the room. One was the President, and he was laying on
the gurney, and extremist, and the other was Dr. Carrico, James
Carrico, and one nurse. And the reason Dr. Carrico was on his
own is because the Governor Connally was brought in before him,
and he was very seriously ill. And the staff, all the staff in
the emergency room, went to help him. And then Dr. Carrico was
left to take care of President by himself. So, I walked in and
he had just placed an endotracheal tube.
And then I walked up and held the tube so he could connect
the Bird machine to it. The Bird machine is an intermittent
positive pressure respiratory help. And it works by filling the
lungs and then letting the air come back out. And the way it
works is that the inspiration continues to a certain pressure
and then the expiration continues to another low pressure. And
therefore, that spaces the breathing. Normally, that is about
10 or 15 minutes, 10 or 15 times during a minute. But in this
case, it was going about 100 to 125 conversions in a minute.
So, it was rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
I knew the machine, Dr. Carrico knew the machine. We used
it a lot. And so, the question was is, the machine not working
or is the tube blocked or what? And he had placed the tube in.
If you place endotracheal tube, you place it between the cords
and then you know you are in the trachea and have got an
airway. But in this case, apparently we did not have an airway.
It was a question, is it the machine or what is it?
And so finally, it got to a point where I said, ``Jimmy,
what do you want to do?'' And he had already made the decision,
he said, tracheostomy, we need do a trach. So, if there was
going to be a trach, well, I knew that shirt would be in the
way. So, I moved around to take the shirt off and the nurse was
way ahead of me with her scissors and we took the shirt off.
And in the meantime, Dr. Malcolm Perry came in, and he was
on the medical staff. He is a professor in the medical school,
senior to Dr. Carrico. So, he decided to do the tracheostomy.
And then Dr. Carrico said to me, ``Don, why don't you go ahead
and do a cut down on that left leg? And so, I went and did
that. A cut down is a very small operation, but it is a very
important thing to do. The reason for doing it, is that most
people come into the emergency room as bled out where their
blood volume is low. If the blood volume is low, well, then,
the heart does not have anything to pump, and that is basically
a cause of death
Well, if you can replenish the blood volume quickly, well
then that causes a better chance of survival. So, a cut down is
to put a catheter in a vein so that you can get the fluid in
earlier, faster. And the operation is to make an incision
across the front of the shin and dissect out the saphenous
vein, which is the vein that goes right up the front of the
leg, make a little hole in the catheter, put a catheter in
that, then put a stitch around the vein to close it off and
hold the catheter in place
The nurse, at the meantime, has the bag hanging without any
fluid and 500 CCs in a collar that she can pump up and when she
does that, where she forces the fluid into the vein. So, that
is what I did.
Then after I did that, then Dr. Perry had already completed
the tracheostomy, and I looked up and then the President's
heart had stopped or it was not running. They put a monitor on
the President, they found his heart was not beating. And so,
the external cardiac massage was being done by Kemp Clark, the
chief of neurosurgery. Somebody relieved him and Kemp Clark
went and picked up the head and stopped the resuscitation. This
wound is not compatible with life. It got dead quiet; nobody
knew what to say, nobody said anything for the longest time.
Then he said, ``OK,'' and he looked at--by that time the
chiefs of all the social services were against the wall across
the room from me and all in white coats. And they had responded
to the call that they needed to help. And so, he said--pointed
them out, ``I need to tell each of you individually what the
wound is so that you can say that later on.''
And then he described the wound as about a 3-or 4-inch hole
in the posterior cranium. And then there was a bullet hole in
the right temple. So, he described it as the bullet came
through the temple into the cranial vault, created a huge
pressure in the cranial vault. And when the bullet finally
tumbled into the posterior wall, it blew it out. And he
explained all that, individually, to these five doctors, six,
seven doctors. And those doctors knew what was happening and
what happened to the President and the wound that killed him
and they never were called by the Warren Commission. So, that
did not work.
And so, after that, I stood there and I could not leave
because Mrs. Kenny was to my right, and I could not get past
her. So, I had to just stay there for a while, but then
eventually everybody left. And I went around to look at the
wound and I could not see it, it was laying on the pillow but I
could see where it was.
Then I left there and went into an adjacent room, the X-ray
waiting room, a large room. And right in the middle of the room
was Lyndon Johnson and he was telling people to go talk on the
phone and he was, obviously, he set the government up and had
taken control.
And then I looked around and I could not see a single
person that I thought looked like Secret Service. I could not
see any weapons that were protecting him. I was a little
uncomfortable being there myself, because at that time, we had
no idea what was going on in our government. We did not know if
the government would be intact or not. But it made me feel good
to know that he was right in the middle of the room and he was
the President. He was absolutely fearless.
Then I wondered, why is he so absolutely fearless? I mean
if it is a coup, he would be the next one to go. So, with that,
I left, and that is what I learned in the emergency--in the
trauma room.
Then later, we found out that the residents and the interns
should not talk to each other about this, and so, we did not.
And Dr. Carrico and I would have lunch together many times,
often just him and me, and we never mentioned it to each other.
And so, one thing I would like to get started today is that
the magic bullet was a product of the Warren Commission that
does not make any sense. And I could go through these bullets
that fell, but I think I am out of time.
Mrs. Luna. Well, so just so you know, we will be giving you
opportunity to go back to that because we are very interested
in that, and thank you for that.
Dr. Curtis. OK.
Mrs. Luna. Because of previous technical issues, Mr.
Bolden, if you can, please give your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ABRAHAM BOLDEN
FORMER U.S. SECRET SERVICE AGENT
Mr. Bolden. Chairman Luna, and all of the senior Members of
the Committee. My name is Abraham Bolden. And I am an ex Secret
Service agent from 1960 to the 1964. I helped protect President
Kennedy, and also Bud Eisenhower, and LBJ Johnson. Now, we have
a document here that all Americans should respect. And it says,
we hold these truths to be evidence, that all men are created
equal, that are endowed with the Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Now, that should apply to all with the
courageous evidence that we support what the Forefathers wrote.
Now, growing up in east St. Louis, Illinois, my father,
Daniel Bolden, and my mother, Ophelia, I noticed that there
were quite a bit of trauma and things that were going on. I
wanted to get to the bottom of, criminal activity, hate,
racism, lack of respect.
So, after I graduated from Lincoln University in Jefferson
City, Missouri, I became the first African American after
having a choice between becoming a music teacher in Kentucky
and a Pinkerton agent. I chose the Pinkerton agent because I
wanted to find a solution to the problems that we were having
in America and that became my goal in life.
Now, when I became a Secret Service agent in 1960, I was
surprised at what I found, the racism, the inequality of job
assignments. Now, everything that I will tell you today, none
of it came from research. I am not a researcher. Each fact that
I give you today are from my specific actions. No one has
prompted me to say anything. I have been waiting for this
opportunity since 1964.
Now, as it so happened, that God made it possible for me to
answer one of my dreams first, and that was to meet President
Kennedy. The President came to Chicago after he won the
election. By me being a Secret Service agent, the Secret
Service disrespected me as an agent by replacing a position
near President Kennedy, and putting a fireman in my position.
And they placed me by the bathroom at McCormick Place, there
were lots of jokes about it in the Office of the United States
Secret Service.
All I wanted to do was carry out my duties, to God and my
country and the President of the United States. But they took
my position, my position which should have been near the
President, and placed me by the washroom at McCormick Place,
two flights down from the convention hall.
Now, when the motorcade stopped in front of the McCormick
Place, the President the first thing he wanted to do was use
the washroom and there I stood. Now, the President walked up to
me and we shook hands. He asked me if I was one of Mayor
Daley's finest or a Secret Service agent. I answered the
question notifying him that I was a Secret Service agent. Then
he asked me, he invited me to come to Washington, DC. and
become the first African American appointed as a Secret Service
agent, which I thought was very great.
But in becoming an agent, I found that there was so many
cracks in this petition. The agents were drinking on duty, some
of them were smoking weed. They were going around with
prostitutes when they were supposed to be on duty, and they
were particularly racist against President and Robert Kennedy.
There were some who were also worried about the fact that they
thought that President Kennedy and his family were trying to
form a dynasty. I heard a lot of talk about them forming a
dynasty, that President Kennedy would be first, then Robert
Kennedy, and then Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. And then, when
that happened, then the Catholics would run America for the
next 100 years and that had to be stopped.
Now, on the detail, as I said, there was a lot of drinking,
a lot of smoke, and I became against it. I warned them about
it.
Now, when President Kennedy was coming to Chicago in March
in 1963, we got a call from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
who had a meeting, because President Kennedy was due in
Chicago, this was in March. We received a call from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation here in Chicago from a person who the
FBI identified only as Lee. And this man, Lee, said that
President Kennedy was going to be assassinated between O'Hare
Airport and the Conrad Hilton hotel. So, in order to protect
him, we had the airplanes land, and then we brought him by
helicopter to a medics field, which was not being used at the
time, which I thought and recommended that they do that. That
was my recommendation how to get the President there.
Now, during the President's trip in March, I noticed one
thing that every time the photographers would take our pictures
together, where I was concerned, that they had an agent
assigned to remove all of the negatives. They took them and I
do not know what they did with them. But we have not been able
to find suitable pictures yet.
Now, as I said, I was one of the strong agents who was on
their tail about their conduct and they did not like it and I
did not like their conduct. So, we were even-steven. So, we had
an opportunity, with President Kennedy's invitation, to go with
the President to Massachusetts to Hyannis Port. They were very
disrespectful to me, calling me nigger and different terms such
as that moolie, and they made it miserable for me as an agent
of the United States Secret Service.
So, the President invited me on July 2 to arrive on
Nantucket Sound on his yacht, the Marlin. The President did
that. And I was seated next to the Chief of the United States
Secret Service, Rowley. While we were on the yacht, Marlin, the
President sent to me lunch, clam chowder, and said to the
fellow who brought me lunch--I am going into this to tell you
what type of person, what a wonderful person that President
Kennedy was. And he made intentions, had me placed on Air Force
One and also on the Marine One which is the helicopter with all
his staff.
But this type of habitual drinking and wild life continued,
even after the 4th of July in Hyannis Port. When we were on Air
Force One, I mentioned that to Rowley. I told him there was too
much drinking going on. He told me just enjoy the yacht ride,
we will discuss that later on.
Now, we get back to Washington, DC. Now, one incident I
want to make clear, is that I was standing outside the Oval
Office on June 29 about 7 o'clock in the evening. A big,
chauffeured limousine pulled up in front of the White House
door, the other agents had left for lunch. President Johnson
exited the chauffeured limousine and slammed the door as hard
as he could. He walked straight to the Oval Office where I had
interdicted him and I was standing by the door first. I walked
before he did because I figured where he had to be going and I
was the only agent there to take control of the situation.
President Johnson, the first thing that he said as he
passed me and walked into the Oval Office, he said ``you
bastards ain't trying to send me to jail over some goddamn
cotton.'' And after that particular time, an argument ensued
between the President and Bobby Kennedy that was so violent, or
lots of violent words about Bobby, about cotton--I could not
distinguish every word that they said, but when Johnson left
the Oval Office, he first wanted to know who I was standing by
the Oval Office door. His chauffeur told him he must be Secret
Service or FBI, or he could not be standing there.
Now, as Johnson exited the office, he looked back, told the
President and Bobby Kennedy, ``You bastards are going to get
enough of fucking with me.'' Those were exact words. And he was
in such a temper, violent mood, that I reported it to the then-
head of my shift, Harvey Henderson. Harvey Henderson's thought
was I would kill the motherfucker myself if I had a chance.
Now, some of these facts are in ``The Echo from Dealey
Plaza'', for the book that I wrote. Some are not and I left
them out simply because I felt that my life would be in danger
if I included it.
Mrs. Luna. Mr. Bolden, if you can for a moment, we actually
have some questions in regard to your testimony. So, is it OK
if we move to some of the other witnesses for opening and then
come back to you with specifics on your experience?
Mr. Bolden. Yes.
Mrs. Luna. And also, too, both the Ranking Member, Mr.
Garcia, and I would like to thank you for your service to this
country, especially as the first African American Secret
Service officer. Your sacrifice for this country and your
service to this country does not go unnoticed so we applaud
you, sir.
Mr. Bolden. Thank you.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, sir.
Mrs. Luna. Now, I would like to recognize Mr. Hardway for
an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DAN HARDWAY
FORMER RESEARCHER FOR THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS (HSCA)
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. Hardway. Thank you. For the past 62 years, the Central
Intelligence Agency has actively and continuously obstructed
the investigation of the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy with no consequences for their actions.
Ten years ago, the CIA's official historian admitted that
the CIA had hidden information from the Warren Commission
during its investigation. The CIA stonewalled the Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to
intelligence activities, the Church Committee.
The CIA was not forthcoming with the Rockefeller
Commission. The CIA misled and slow-walked the Assassination
Records Review Board. James Angleton's preferred method in
dealing with the Warren Commission was to, quote, ``wait them
out.'' The first CIA officer I ever interviewed looked at me
and said, ``You represent Congress, what the F is that to the
CIA? You will be gone in 2 years, and we will still be here.''
In 1978, the CIA ran an illegal, domestic covert operation
involving an undercover officer to subvert and obstruct the
House Select Committee on Assassinations. That officer served
undercover, that terminology is the terminology the CIA used to
describe his assignment working with the select committee in a
statement that their representative made under the penalties of
perjury in a lawsuit in 2005.
I personally experienced the CIA's obstruction of the HSC
investigation and can testify firsthand about what happened. In
1977 and 1978, I was employed as a researcher by the Select
Committee and I have submitted a detailed 17-page description
of what happened then and since then, which I hope you will
read.
Briefly, my primary area of responsibility was Lee Harvey
Oswald's activities in Mexico City in the fall of 1963, and the
performance of the CIA in monitoring and reporting those
activities, as well as other issues related to the possibility
of CIA knowledge of or involvement in the assassination of
President Kennedy and the cover-up of information relevant to
the investigation of the assassination.
In that capacity, I had a top-secret security clearance,
and during the major portion of my employment had access to
unredacted CIA records, requested for review from the CIA by
the Select Committee. Implicit in the focus of my work was the
issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any
operational connection between Oswald and the CIA. Ed Lopez and
I authored the report, ``The CIA, Oswald, and Mexico City.''
In the spring of 1978, among other things, I was looking
hard into back-channel communication methods used by the Mexico
City Station; the use of an impulse camera to photograph the
Cuban consulate in Mexico City; missing production from that
impulse camera, and from one of the photographic installations
that covered the Soviet embassy in Mexico City; and David Atlee
Phillips anti-Castro propaganda operations, including his
connections to stories about Oswald that rapidly appeared after
the assassination of John Kennedy.
In May 1978, the CIA assigned an officer working in an
undercover capacity to work with me and Mr. Lopez. That man was
George Joannides. When Joannides was introduced to the
investigation, we were told that he had no connection of any
kind with any aspect of the Kennedy case that we would be
investigating.
In addition to that, the CIA assured us that they had no
working relationship with an anti-Castro Cuban group known as
DRE. They had no relationship with the DRE when representatives
of that group had an encounter with Oswald in the summer of
1963, which they turned into quite a propaganda coup.
The DRE was responsible for the first-ever conspiracy
theory about the assassination when the day after the
assassination, they published in their newspapers the story
about Oswald's pro Castro activities in New Orleans, and
proposed that Castro was behind the assassination, a story that
is was picked up the next day by the Washington Post and the
Miami Herald. Thanks to the work of the Assassination Records
Review Board though, we now know that not only was DRE still a
CIA operation all the way through 1963 and all the way up to
April 1964, its controlling case officer, who oversaw the
activities of the DRE and directed the DRE's activities, was no
one other than George Joannides.
I believe we were close to some major discoveries in 1978,
and then the CIA ran an undercover operation against us. They
assigned us a man who knew exactly how to keep us from finding
what we were looking for, and he proceeded to do just that.
Reasonable inferences may be drawn about what they did not want
us to find from the substantial circumstantial evidence that
has come to light by our efforts and those of the Assassination
Records Review Board, and the journalist, Jefferson Morley.
I am a witness to these events. And as such, I have a civic
duty to testify. I wish I were just here--actually I wish I
were not here--but I wish I were just here to talk about a
cover-up, but I am not. I am here to talk about a CIA covert
operation, directed against the Select Committee on
Assassinations, that was illegal and a violation of the CIA's
charter, as well as being a felonious obstruction of a
congressional investigation. That operation was and continues
to be successful.
Despite our testimony, and by that, I mean mine, Ed
Lopez's, and G. Robert Blakey, and the clear record, no one has
ever done anything about it. I have copies of the sworn
testimony and exhibits of all three of us in D.C. district
court case number 17-CV-1433. I have those records with me if
any of the Members of this Task Force would like to see them.
The question for this Task Force is whether anyone in this
new generation of leaders has the backbone, the courage, the
gumption to try to do something even at this late date. It is
easy to admit and air the sins of our ancestors, it is much
harder to admit that we built their tombs and endorse their
actions by our inaction. I am here to testify again, which is
all that I can do. What will you do?
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Mr. Hardway.
I now recognize Judge Tunheim for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF JOHN TUNHEIM
SENIOR JUDGE
U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA
Judge Tunheim. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr.
Ranking Member. I appreciate this opportunity to speak today.
My name is John Tunheim. I am a Federal District Court
judge for the District of Minnesota. I am in my thirtieth year
as a Federal judge. I served as Chief Judge of our district
from 2015 until 2022, and as a member of the U.S. Judicial
Conference from 2020 to 2024. I was originally nominated by
President Clinton in 1995 after serving 10 years as the
Minnesota's Chief Deputy Attorney General.
I was Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board
during its entire existence from 1994 through 1998. The review
board was an independent Federal agency. Its five board members
were confirmed by the U.S. Senate after being nominated by
President Clinton.
Congress created the review board for the express purpose
of reviewing all of the still secret records of tragic
assassination of President John Kennedy, and declassifying as
much information as could be publicly released.
The impetus for the law which was enacted in October 1992
was Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. The President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 provided for a
five-member decision-making board which would make decisions on
agency-requested redactions of classified documents. We had
declassification authority. The first time, and maybe the only
time, an outside group had that authority.
The board members were, by law, to be recommended for
appointment by professional organizations--two national
historical associations, an archivist association, and the
American Bar Association. Besides me, the members included a
renowned provost from a major university, later university
president; two distinguished history professors; and a senior
archivist at Princeton. We were confirmed in 1994 and began our
work with no appropriation or offices. We worked out of the
National Archives for a time until I was able to secure some
funding from the White House to get us started before Congress
could provide an appropriation.
The Agency's presentation of records was seriously delayed
because of the delay in the appointments. We were ready to
begin review with our staff by early 1995. The statute did not
require us to reach any conclusions about prior investigations
or what happened on November 22. Rather, our task was to
conduct a wide-ranging search for records to create the largest
possible collection of assassination-related records as open to
the public as possible. The goal was to allow the interested
public to make up their own minds about what happened and based
on an open and transparent and complete record.
The congressional mandate, and this is important, it stated
that the records relating to the assassination would, quote,
``carry a presumption of immediate disclosure.'' And quote,
``only in the rarest of cases is there any legitimate need for
continued protection.'' This is Congress in 1992.
Congress defined the term assassination records broadly and
indicated that the review board could further define the term
``assassination record,'' which we did. So, in June 1995, our
definition was that any record that was reasonably related to
the assassination would be an assassination record subject to
the board's jurisdiction. And we included all records collected
by government agencies in conjunction with any investigation or
analysis of, or inquiry into, the assassination of President
Kennedy.
We developed detailed guidelines for agencies to follow.
And agencies did have the right to appeal our decisions
directly to the President. We were authorized to redact words.
We did not ever redact entire documents that the agency proved
by clear and convincing evidence, that was the standard, that
the harm of disclosure outweighed the public interest in the
document in four categories: national security, intelligence-
gathering methods, personal privacy, or methods of protecting
the President. That was it.
We held many public hearings, experts' conferences around
the country, in addition to our private meetings to discuss our
decision-making. We also tried to clarify unclear evidence
where we could. Digitalizing autopsy materials and analyzing
them and deposing the autopsy physicians. We also gathered
artifacts, including photographs and film and clothing and
other artifacts.
We have limited time to do our work, which was not enough
time. We were granted just 1 more year by Congress, so we had a
total of 3 years. We began to lose staff as we approached the
end of our mandate.
In all, the board issued over 27,000 individual rulings.
These were decisions on requests by agencies to protect
information. Most redacted information had release dates
attached to them. It made it easy for the researchers to
determine whether a redacted name appeared in different
locations so that they would know it was the same person.
There was further 33,000 consent releases, which
essentially means that the agency saw the handwriting on the
wall and released the documents directly since we were likely
to order release.
When we finished, there were nearly 5 million pages at the
National Archives. We made the decision early that we would not
protect any information directly related to the assassination
because of the high level of public interest.
By 2017, when the last records were to be released under
the Act, there were probably not more than 1,500 review board
redactions that were remaining. The Act was clear in stating
that despite the review board wrapping up its work in 1998, the
Act was to continue in effect, which meant that agencies had
the obligation to continue to present information.
Most of the redactions now in the documents are within
documents never shown to the review board but were transferred
to NARA at a later time. Agencies largely complied with the
mandate to present records to the review board. However, there
are many delays and denials with records that we specifically
requested. And there were many skirmishes along the way. It
does not take a rocket scientist to realize that agencies were
awaiting the end of our 3-year mandate.
The first 500 or so adverse disclosure decisions we made in
FBI records were appealed to the President. And the appeals
were dropped when White House counsel, former judge and
representative, Abner Mikva, told the FBI to drop the appeals
because President Clinton would deny all of them. FBI staff was
helpful to us, but I am now seeing records in the new releases
that were not disclosed to the review board.
The CIA was cooperative and processed many documents with
us, but we never received much of what we specifically asked
for. When asked, for example, for documents involving James
Angleton that we had not seen, I was told the documents were no
longer maintained as a collection. We received only three
memoranda that incorporated the agency's review of Angleton's
counterintelligence files. Not the files themselves, just the
review by someone else of the files. We were told that all the
other documents had been destroyed. I am now seeing a flood of
documents that clearly meet the definition of assassination
records involving Angleton and others that were not submitted
to us for review.
When CIA analysts would not tell us the details of their
secret operations, our response was, ``OK, we will release the
record in 10 days.'' We then heard the details and could make a
reasonable decision.
We had in our hands a small file on George Joannides that
disclosed nothing really so it was returned. We did not know
the details of his work at the time. We now know much more
about Joannides and his file should be immediately disclosed.
There is no reason anymore for protecting those files. Clearly,
we were misled. I actually wrote to President Biden asking that
he order the CIA to release the Joannides file and I never
received a response.
The Secret Service was very difficult. They were the only
agency that we were aware of that tried to reclassify
assassination records after we were in office. They attempted
to classify documents that had already been released publicly,
and fought us over 1963 threat sheets that were still in
process when we left office.
The Department of State was less than helpful, although
they released records in their possession. When we negotiated
with Russian officials over the Oswald files in Moscow, they
did not lift a finger to help us--not even allowing us access
to United States Embassy. When we tried to get access to
Belarusian records in Oswald, they did not help. When we
planned meetings with Mexican and Cuban officials, they stopped
us from direct contacts. The Act specifically required the
Department of State to help us find foreign records.
The National Archives was very helpful to us when we did
our work, a very dedicated staff member, Steven Tilley, was
instrumental in getting our work done. But since we left
office, I have been disappointed the Archives has not devoted
more personnel to the records. We had planned that the Archives
would continue our work to the extent possible. For the most
part, that has not happened and the agency has never been in
contact with me.
So, there are other files that should be released. We came
close to an agreement to copy the entire KGB file on Lee Harvey
Oswald that is maintained in Minsk, Belarus. Last-minute
disputes prevented the agreement from moving forward. Copies of
the files are in Moscow.
I just have a little bit more here.
We were particularly interested in the files of Walter
Sheridan, an investigator for Robert Kennedy. When we took
office, he removed the files from the Kennedy library where we
had access to them and gave them to NBC for safekeeping. I do
not think those files have been released.
The William Manchester taped interviews of Jacqueline and
Robert Kennedy are protected by a 1967 legal agreement, now
controlled by Caroline Kennedy. We encouraged her to release
the files, and she finally responded in August 1998 that she
would not agree to their release or even let us listen to the
recordings.
And out there somewhere are files on Jack Ruby. We cannot
find them other than the files maintained by the earlier
investigations. The final report of the board, a copy of which
I will give to Madam Chair today, we made 10 recommendations
that are relevant today still. I will not go through them all,
but they deal with the problems of excessive government
secrecy, which has plagued the public's understanding of the
Kennedy assassination for decades.
We strongly endorse the method selected for independent
declassification of executive branch records that was used in
our case but also detailed the problems inherent in the review
board's legislation. Most important to deal with massive
overclassification, we recommended a Federal classification
policy be developed that substantially one, limits the number
of those in government who can actually classify Federal
documents; two, restricts the number of categories by which
documents might be classified; three, reduces the time period
for which documents might be classified; four, encourages the
use of substitute language to immediately open material that
might otherwise be classified; and five, increases the
resources available to agencies and thereof declassifying
Federal records.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you very much. And just so everyone knows,
we are going to be following up on getting that file, the KGB
file in Minsk. I am interested in seeing that. And I think that
with peace talks right now it might be prime time for that, so
we will be following up on that.
Judge Tunheim. It stands about 5 feet high. It is a lot of
records.
Mrs. Luna. Well, we might have to bring you back out of
retirement and what you are currently doing and have you help
go through it.
With that, I would like to now recognize Mr. Horne for an
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS HORNE
FORMER STAFFER
ASSASSINATIONS RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
Mr. Horne. Chairwoman Luna, Ranking Member Garcia, and
Members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to
appear and testify today.
I served on the staff of the President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Review Board for the final 3 years of its
4-year lifespan, from August 1995 through September 1998. I was
hired as a senior analyst on the Military Records Team and was
promoted early in 1997 to head the Military Records Team,
serving as Chief Analyst for Military Records until the ARRB
shutdown on September 30, 1998.
During my time on the staff, in addition to securing the
declassification and public release of military records related
to Cuba and Vietnam policy, I was privileged to work
extensively in the medical evidence arena and to serve as the
Review Board's point man on issues related to the Zapruder film
of President Kennedy's assassination.
Although the Review Board was not empowered to
reinvestigate the assassination or generate conclusions or
findings of fact, the Board did choose to attempt to clarify
the record of certain aspects of the assassination by taking
the depositions of 10 persons who participated in or who were
present at the autopsy on President John F. Kennedy, and by
later taking one additional joint deposition of five of the
Dallas treating physicians.
I served as the principal research assistant to the Review
Board's general counsel, Jeremy Gunn, in preparing for and
conducting our 10 depositions of the participants and witnesses
to JFK's autopsy and was present at all 10 of those
depositions. The sworn testimony of our 10 deponents, as well
as numerous written interview reports of additional unsworn
medical witnesses, were all deposited in the National Archives
in the JFK Records Collection without comment or endorsement.
In subsequent years, I wrote a five-volume memoir about my
own personal conclusions regarding the medical evidence and
explained the substantial ways in which the work of the ARRB
staff significantly enhanced the totality of the medical
evidence and our understanding of how President Kennedy was
killed. Some outstanding questions were resolved, but many
other questions were raised by the information we gathered,
questions that remain unresolved today.
Now, this is the heart of my oral testimony here.
Many Americans remain troubled today by the many conflicts
within the JFK medical evidence and what they might mean, and
they remain unsatisfied with the official conclusions offered
up by both the Warren Commission in 1964 and the HSCA Forensic
Pathology Panel in 1979.
Based on my work as an analyst at the ARRB and as an
independent researcher, I have concluded that there are ample
reasons for the disquiet of so many of the American people, to
wit:
First, eight different sets of photographs known with
confidence to have been taken during the autopsy on JFK are not
in the official collection today and never have been.
Some autopsy photos in the official collection at the
National Archives are in gross disagreement with the head and
neck wounds universally observed on November 22, 1963, by the
treating physicians at Parkland Hospital, which they recorded
in precise detail in their treatment notes that day and in
their subsequent 1964 testimony.
At least two, and possibly three, JFK skull x-rays exposed
at Bethesda Naval Hospital are missing today and have never
been in the official collection.
The science of optical densitometry reveals that all three
surviving skull x-rays are not originals but, rather, are
altered copy films.
Two highly qualified and respected MDs who were granted
repeated access by the Kennedy family to the autopsy
photographs and x-rays in the deed-of-gift collection at the
Archives both agree that the extant JFK skull x-rays reveal
unambiguous and clear evidence of two head shots fired from in
front of the President, contrary to the findings of the Warren
Commission and the HSCA. The JFK skull x-rays actually reveal a
total of three head shots, one from behind and two from the
front.
The so-called Harper Fragment of skull bone, a crucial item
of evidence signed for by the President's military physician
and photographed and x-rayed by the FBI, has been missing since
late in 1963.
Many bullet fragments known to have been removed from
President Kennedy's body at Bethesda Naval Hospital were never
placed into the official record and are missing today.
The remains of President Kennedy's brain following its
examination were placed in a stainless steel container in 1963,
but the brain is missing today, as many people know already.
That stainless steel container and an original signed autopsy
report were among materials transferred from the Secret Service
to Senator Robert F. Kennedy in April 1965. Those materials and
others were not among the materials returned to the U.S.
Government by RFK on October 31, 1966, via a deed of gift to
the National Archives. The Kennedy family attorney, Burke
Marshall, told the HSCA that Robert F. Kennedy had made those
materials permanently inaccessible, without providing details.
The 14 brain photographs in the National Archives today
cannot be and are not photographs of John F. Kennedy's brain.
They have been impugned by the official photographer at the
brain examination and by one of the FBI agents present at JFK's
autopsy.
The chain of custody of President Kennedy's body prior to
the start of the autopsy shortly after 8 p.m. on November 22,
1963, clearly appears to have been broken, casting even more
doubt upon the reliability of the official autopsy report.
And finally, Navy pathologists arrived at four sets of
differing conclusions about President Kennedy's wounds and how
he died within the 2 weeks after his death. The official
autopsy report that is now in the National Archives represents
only the fourth and final set of conclusions. This fact,
perhaps more than any of the others above, is patently
unacceptable in the Nation that prides itself as the world's
greatest democracy.
Moving on to a new subject. The existing deed of gift dated
October 29, 1966, that sets severe restrictions upon who can
view the JFK autopsy materials and how they can be used, needs
to be reexamined and lifted. It has resulted in de facto
suppression of these materials. Only by having free and
unlimited access to the autopsy photographs and skull x-rays
can troubling and persistent questions about their authenticity
be definitively and finally resolved by qualified experts.
In my concluding paragraph, I wish to make a short
statement about the Zapruder film of the assassination. Studies
in Hollywood of the individual film frames--that is, state-of-
the-art digital scans of extremely high resolution--appear to
show the use of visual effects, that is, animation or artwork,
to crudely and blatantly alter the image content in some key
frames. To state the problem simply, the digitized Zapruder
film studied by professionals in Hollywood does not show the
massive exit wound in the rear of the head seen at Parkland
Hospital and by many witnesses at Bethesda during the autopsy
because it has been blacked out, and yet the film does appear
to show head wounds not seen at Parkland Hospital.
We now know that rather than spending the entire weekend
following the assassination in Chicago at the LIFE printing
plant, as was originally claimed, the Zapruder film actually
spent most of the weekend in the custody of the CIA in
Washington, DC, and at Kodak's main research and development
laboratory in Rochester, New York.
The attitude of one National Archives official, expressed
in writing circa 2009, was that they, quote, ``do not ever
intend to take the film out of the freezer again,'' end quote.
This decision should be overturned, and the so-called purported
original film should be made available for appropriate
inspection by qualified film professionals from the motion
picture industry and academia--and by that, I mean film
schools--so that questions of authenticity can be definitively
resolved.
I have provided many additional details in my written
testimony, and I request that they be included in the
Congressional Record. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Mr. Horne. And they will.
Ms. Coe, if you can please provide opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ALEXIS COE
PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN
SENIOR FELLOW, NEW AMERICA
Ms. Coe. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ranking Member Garcia.
It is an honor to address the Committee today.
Historians are time travelers. I was just in 1947 when John
F. Kennedy was in his first term in the House. And now I find
myself here, speaking to people who sit where he once sat,
doing the kind of work he once did.
During JFK's 11 years in Congress, he questioned
everything, not to impress but to understand. And he listened.
He changed. And that took courage. Not the kind that earned him
a Purple Heart in World War II. Political courage is slower. It
is quieter. And it has the power to reshape a country.
His public service deepened from there. He wrote a Pulitzer
Prize-winning book, established the Peace Corps. He governed in
the crucible of the cold war, civil rights, and the space race.
He made mistakes, and he learned from them. The Bay of Pigs
taught him restraint, the value of failure, the strength in
stepping back. And Americans noticed. By 1963, his approval
rating peaked at 82 percent.
None of that was inevitable. He chose discipline over
drama, substance over show.
And do not get me wrong; Jack Kennedy understood the power
of media. He courted the press. He worked the spotlight. He
shaped the moment. But only after he had done the work, after
he had earned it.
And that is why his name endures as a standard of
greatness. The JFK Library's Profiles in Courage Award carries
that legacy forward. It has honored George H.W. Bush, the
heroes of 9/11, and just last month, Mike Pence, for what
history always notices: putting country first when it matters
most.
Of course, JFK was not perfect. I have never studied a
saint, and I have not met one either. I see history's boldface
names on their best days and on their worst. But complexity is
not a liability unless you are cherry-picking with an agenda,
which brings me to today's hearing.
The title uses charged words: obstruction, obfuscation,
deception. But in the 132 days since the JFK assassination
records were released, not even conspiracy theorists can claim
that it upended the Warren Commission.
There is something unprecedented in these files, that is
true: unredacted Social Security numbers and private
information of living Americans. I have never seen anything
like it. And given that most quality control has been fired,
like the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee, I am
afraid it will become the new normal.
But as far as the files, no hidden truths. No real
disclosures. No shocking revelations. This was not history
disrupted; it was history remastered, a 60th anniversary re-
release with better resolution, the same ending.
And surely this resonates with a Congress that vigilantly
protects its own records. You have preserved the right to
classify your office's documents as private property. They will
never be public if you do not want them to.
I hope we can talk about public trust today and what
happens and how this appears to fit into a larger pattern. The
Kennedy Center is no longer bipartisan. The Rose Garden has
been stripped of its historic character. USAID was gutted.
Taken together, it is hard not to see this as an attempt to
reduce a consequential leader to a grotesque spectacle, his
legacy defined by how he died and not what he did.
On November 22, 1963, America lost John F. Kennedy, and
with him, a sense of possibility. That is how I think of the
Archives too. They are crammed with untold stories, ones we
truly do not know about. What an opportunity for the
President--by default, our historian in chief--and by great
good luck in office as America approaches its 250th
anniversary. But instead, tragedy begets tragedy.
In 1953, JFK entered the Senate. A year later, his
colleagues censured Joseph McCarthy. Kennedy rose as McCarthy
fell, a reminder that Americans tire of reckless spectacle,
division, demagogues. They seek substance, accountability, and
authentic commitment to the public good.
I began by saying that historians are time travelers. We
study the past to understand the present. And these records
make me wonder how this moment will be remembered. When future
historians ask whether we met it with the courage it demanded,
how will they answer? JFK understood how much depends on that.
The real question is, do we?
Thank you.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you.
I would like to now recognize the gentleman from Arizona,
Mr. Biggs, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I thank the
witnesses on the panel for being here today.
So, I have questions, I think, for most of you, and I need
a quick response, if I can. But, first, I will ask ultimately
of all of you the question, why? Why did this move the way it
did?
So, Dr. Curtis, you observed the back of President
Kennedy's head. You saw an exit wound. And you said that it did
not align with the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in
shooting President Kennedy. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Curtis. I wish I could hear you.
Mr. Biggs. Oh, I am sorry. I will speak up. I will try to
be louder.
You indicated that you had no doubt that the wound that you
observed to the back of President Kennedy's head was an exit
gunshot wound. Is that fair?
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. And you concluded, after review, that it did not
align--his wound did not align with the theory that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone in shooting President Kennedy. Is that true?
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. And I guess you struggle to this day to
understand the Warren Commission's theory about the President's
shooter and how it seems to have discord with what you actually
observed that day. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
Mr. Hardway, so, you have indicated that you essentially
were the subject of a covert operation as you served on the
House Select Committee on Assassinations. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Hardway. The CIA called it a covert assignment.
Mr. Biggs. And that was from--and I cannot get his--I
cannot--Mr. Joannides?
Mr. Hardway. Joannides, yes.
Mr. Biggs. Joannides. And you have called on the release of
Mr. Joannides' file to the public. Is that fair to say?
Mr. Hardway. That is fair.
Mr. Biggs. And so, I would actually echo that call as well
to the Chair, that we see if we can get Mr. Joannides' file
released.
And I would like to continue on--I only have two and a half
minutes. But I have to get to the ultimate question: Why? Why,
why did the CIA intervene with Mr. Hardway's review? Why were
documents altered? Why was the Zapruder film removed and not
brought back in its original documented form? Why?
And so that is what I am going to ask you. If you can
answer that, you would probably solve what Ms. Coe referred to
as trust. There is a massive amount of skepticism about our
Federal Government, and I think you can directly trace it back
to this event.
And so, I want to know why. And I think that is what all of
America wants to know. We can kind of get a feeling for what
happened. But we all want to know why it happened the way it
did. Why was there this mastering, this control of all of this
operation?
So, I am going to start with you, Mr. Horne, and then go
down to each one of you. And then I have a list of documents
that I think need to be released, Madam Chair.
Mr. Horne?
Mr. Horne. There is so much medical evidence that is
tainted or missing or destroyed.
Mr. Biggs. But why did that happen?
Mr. Horne. Or altered. There is no reason to have
confidence in the autopsy report. Those things--I am going to
get there, sir.
Mr. Biggs. OK.
Mr. Horne. Those things would not have happened if a lone
nut had killed the President. If a lone nut killed the
President, there is no reason to do all those things, to
destroy x-rays, to possibly alter autopsy photos--although that
has not yet been determined. It is a question that remains
outstanding--to alter the existing skull x-rays.
So, you do not do those things. And you do not change the
autopsy conclusions four different times within 2 weeks after
the President's death if a lone nut killed the President.
So, it is clear to me that the government--these are my
conclusions after years of study. It is clear to me that the
government was trying to manage what story it could sell to the
American people. That is what was going on. And that is why the
autopsy conclusions change four times in the first 2 weeks.
Have I come close to answering your question or not?
Mr. Biggs. Yes, Mr. Horne, you have. I do not have time to
ask and get a response from all of you because my time has
expired.
But I would say, I took some notes on what they were
saying, Madam Chair----
Mr. Burchett. Chairlady, would it be all right if I yield
half my time to Representative Biggs? Would that be OK with the
Ranking Member?
Mrs. Luna. Yup. That is fine.
Mr. Burchett. All right.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
So, then----
Mr. Burchett. That is two and a half minutes.
Mr. Biggs. I needed the math. Thank you.
And so, we will just go down to Judge Tunheim.
Mr. Tunheim. Yes. I think it is an interesting question you
pose as to why. I mean, I think that, clearly, if you look at
the history of all this, there were cover-ups by both the FBI
and the CIA, perhaps other organizations in part because they
had a lot of contact with Oswald in advance of the
assassination, and there is no evidence that they alerted the
Secret Service to the erratic behavior of Oswald. Oswald was in
New Orleans. There was CIA contact with him then when he was a
volunteer for this Fair Play for Cuba Committee. I mean, they
knew all about his visit to Mexico City. Both the FBI and the
CIA knew about it. The FBI was following him in Dallas because
he was a suspect in another shooting.
All of this suggests that they had a lot of contact with
him ahead of time, and the--I do not know what that suggests
other than the fact that they wanted to cover that up, the fact
that they knew a lot about him ahead of time and did not do
much about it.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
And, Mr. Hardway, do you subscribe to that as part of the
explanation as well as the not a lone gunman-theory of Mr.
Horne?
Mr. Hardway. I have no opinion on Mr. Horne's because I do
not know anything about the medical evidence.
Mr. Biggs. OK.
Mr. Hardway. In regard to why the CIA would go to the
length of running an operation against us, they obviously had
something that they were very desperate about hiding. And I go
into that in my written statement. To do it, you have to get
into the weeds of the details. But basically, just to summarize
it, they were using Oswald operationally in Mexico City.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
And since I am going to be out of time--that two and a half
minutes. Let me just go real quick. I ask that we obtain a copy
of Mr. Hardway's report--at least I do not have it--regarding
Oswald in Mexico. Release the Joannides file, the JFK files in
Belarus and Moscow, the files on Jack Ruby, and also the
Manchester interview of Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
And also, Madam Chair, finally----
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs [continuing]. The Zapruder film.
Mrs. Luna. We will be taking a look at that.
And then also referencing the Joannides file, so everyone
is tracking, we are actively trying to track that down. I
believe that that is the one outstanding document that the CIA
will not be able to find. So, isn't that interesting?
I would like to now recognize Mr. Garcia for 5 minutes.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Coe, I wanted to start--thank you. I know you are an
experienced historian. You have written a biography, of course,
of President Kennedy. You know, for me, I am always
interested--I am a big believer in the notion that the FBI and
the CIA, particularly in earlier versions, have been and over-
classified an enormous amount of information, not just on the
topic of President Kennedy's assassination but just throughout
the government. And there is a lot, I think, to criticize those
agencies, and a lot that the American public should be
concerned with in the way they have influenced and tried to
influence American policy in world events throughout the
decades. I think that part is clear.
I also think it is important--before taking this job, I was
a long-time educator, was on the faculty, done an enormous
amount of research. For me, following facts and ensuring that
we are sticking to facts is really important, even as we seek
to gain more clarity about historical events. And so, I
appreciate that.
As it relates to the March 18 release of documents, which I
think has brought, certainly, more color and more information
to the historical record, you had said earlier in your
testimony that there was not necessarily, you know, an enormous
amount of new information, but there certainly was some
additional kind of color to what we already know.
Do you want to talk about that and what as far as how
important was that declassification of additional records to
the broader picture of President Kennedy?
Ms. Coe. Thank you. And thank you for this time and these
questions.
I have to say that I am a little bit concerned about the
way certain theories represented as facts on the panel, and
that there is a lot of demand for more information, which is
always good, but it is based on the pretense that what has been
found has radically changed everything. And I do not see that
as true. I think we are still finding things. I am not
convinced that some of the details were not already out there.
There have been leaks. There has been access.
So, I do think that this idea of a grand conspiracy--I do
think that--and I am glad that we can all agree that there was
incredible overreach in the mid-20th century and for some time.
And there is--there are wonderful books on Hoover that give
greater color to that and background that have made
contributions. And, in particular, I think last year or the
year before there was a biography called ``G-Man'' by a
professor named Beverly Gage, and that was excellent.
What I find to be an interesting disconnect here is that
there is so much concern about cover-ups with the CIA when it
comes to Kennedy, and I do not see that same concern being
translated to Martin Luther King and to his records. It feels
like Hoover 2.0.
And in that case, in the case of MLK, we do know that there
is actually a historical precedent. The FBI mounted illegal
surveillance. There was character assassination.
Mr. Garcia. And, Ms. Coe--and I think just to, for time,
and just so you know, there also is a lot of interest, I know,
from Members of the Committee on both sides of the aisle on
what you are discussing.
I want to go to, before I go to Judge Tunheim, because I
also am in a similar place where I feel that, you know, my
researcher brain is very much--I agree. I do not know that the
release of the documents presented any sort of groundbreaking
new information. Certainly, added color and more--rounded out
kind of what we already know. But I do, I want to just caution
us in not using what was released as a kind of jumping-off
point to additional conspiracies, right?
Now, I think there are valuable questions, and I respect
Members of this Committee that are looking to get certain
questions answered, that there is a lot of concern in the
public. There is public interest in this. I mean, there is no
question in that. So, I do, I respect that. But I also value
that we stick to what we know. Certainly going--if there are
questions that lead us in a different direction, we will follow
those, but I think that is really important.
Judge Tunheim, I just also want to ask you just, similar to
what I asked Ms. Coe, do you think that this release of the
records that just happened has added any substantial new
information to what we already know?
Mr. Tunheim. You know, I think any release of records gives
you more color, more pieces of the puzzle, so to speak. And I
think this has been a very interesting--I have not had a chance
to look through a lot of the materials, but a lot of the
materials that have redactions in were materials we never saw.
So, they were not shown to us before. So, I think that is
significant, that there are documents being released there.
I do not see any answers, any new answers to any of the old
questions here. But it is filling out the record more.
And I would like to see a time when everything has been
released, unredacted. It is 60-some years since the
assassination. The assassination was closer to World War I than
we are to the assassination. Let us release the materials. And
that is my plea here, is just get everything out. Let people
decide what they want.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you.
And with that, I yield back.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Rep. Garcia.
The Chair would now like to recognize Mr. Burchett for 5
minutes.
Mr. Burchett. Thank you, Chairlady.
Dr. Curtis, what happened when the Warren Commission called
you to testify about what you knew about the JFK wounds? Dr.
Curtis?
Dr. Curtis. Could you say that again?
Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir. I am sorry. I have got hearing aids
too, so do not worry about it, brother.
What happened when the Warren Commission called you to
testify about what you knew about JFK's wounds?
Dr. Curtis. Well, the Warren Commission has not called me
to testify at all.
Mr. Burchett. Not at all?
Dr. Curtis. Huh-uh.
Mr. Burchett. OK.
Dr. Curtis. I did not use up all my time, and I would like
to make some additional comments regarding----
Mrs. Luna. Sir, you have the time that you need, so please
proceed.
Dr. Curtis. OK. Well, let me know when I can do it.
Mrs. Luna. Well, now, sir. I believe Mr. Burchett has a
line of questions for you, so you are free to talk to Mr.
Burchett.
Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir.
Can you explain what condition--when President Kennedy
arrived in the emergency room, what was his condition at that
point?
Dr. Curtis. He had already died.
Mr. Burchett. OK. How many wounds did you observe on
President Kennedy?
Dr. Curtis. How many wounds? President Kennedy had a wound
to, of course, the big wound to his head.
Mr. Burchett. Right.
Dr. Curtis. But he also had a wound to his throat. And I
have got a little diagram here. I can point that out, how that
worked, if you would like me to.
Mr. Burchett. And that would not have been a single bullet
wound, though, right? They talk about this magical bullet that
traveled. That would have been more than one bullet, you think?
Dr. Curtis. Magic bullet was not--did not strike the
President at all.
Mr. Burchett. OK. That was a clean bullet. I saw the
picture.
Oh. Yes. Please show the diagram.
Dr. Curtis. OK. The bullets that were fired--the blue
bullet was the bullet that arrived first. And you can see it
started from--probably from the railroad trestle, which is to
the southwest, and came up and first struck President Kennedy
before he got out from under the tree that prevented the window
shooter from shooting. And we know that because of the Zapruder
film showed President Kennedy holding his throat in real
distress when the Zapruder film started.
And he had already been shot, and that wound to his throat
would have killed him. It did kill him because we know from the
tracheostomy that we had to do that the bullet to his throat
obstructed the trachea. And so, he had taken his last breath
before that.
Also, the bullet that struck President Kennedy in the
temple killed him also because it just removed about a third of
his brain. And the part of the brain that it removed was in the
posterior part of the brain, and that is the area of the brain
that controls the parasympathetic and the autonomic nervous
system.
And so, the two bullets that came from the window, one
struck Connally. And the only thing that it did--it went in
Connally's shoulder, went through his chest, came out of his
chest, into his left wrist, into his left leg. And that
indicates that the bullet was coming from the north going
southwest. And that bullet was only for Governor Connally.
The other bullet that came out was this other one here.
That would have been the magic bullet. That is the one that
went in the President's back. And the Warren Commission then
wanted to choose that bullet to be the magic bullet which went
through the top of his head.
Now, the--that is essentially what I wanted to say.
Mr. Burchett. OK. And that was how many bullets, did you
say? Three or four?
Dr. Curtis. That were fired?
Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir.
Dr. Curtis. Four.
Mr. Burchett. OK. And that was a bolt action, Italian
carbine that the magic bullet came from?
Dr. Curtis. Well, two of the bullets came from the front.
Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I know, but they were
trying to tell us Lee Harvey Oswald was the only one.
Dr. Curtis. Only bullets that came from the window were two
bullets and--three bullets came from the window. One hit the
curb, the other hit Connally. And the other one went in the
President's back. And that is well documented.
Mr. Burchett. Yes, sir. Thank you.
And I yield no time.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you.
The Chair would like to now recognize Mr. Burlison for 5
minutes.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Hardway, it is clear that you faced firsthand the
obstruction by the CIA. Would that be accurate to say? In your
investigations.
Mr. Hardway. Yes.
Mr. Burlison. And specifically, they used methods like use
of sealed envelopes, redactions that violated the 1977
Memorandum of Understanding. My question really is about what
seems to be evident is that they were very much obstructing any
information about Oswald's interactions in Mexico City. Is that
accurate?
Mr. Hardway. That is correct.
Mr. Burlison. Why do you think that is?
Mr. Hardway. I believe that we can draw reasonable
inferences from the evidence that is of record and that is very
persuasive and clearly of record that are facts and not
theories that clearly point to the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald
was being used in an operation in Mexico City in September 1963
and early October 1963.
The nature of the operation was a dangle and a propaganda
operation designed to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee. It was designed and ran by George Joannides, under
the supervision of David Atlee Phillips, who had been leading
the CIA's anti-FPCC efforts since 1958. And it was a very
successful operation. The Cuban consulate had just recently
opened. The operation allowed them to observe, from a distance,
the interactions and reactions of the--not just the Cuban
consulate but the Soviet embassy to Oswald's presenting
himself. And it also went a real long way to discrediting the
FPCC.
In addition to that, you can see the exact same pattern of
operation was conducted using Oswald in New Orleans in August
1963 in which he encountered the DRE, also encountered student
groups. It is almost the exact--it is a shadow of what they
then did in Mexico City.
Now, the fact that, in my opinion, the fact that they ran
Oswald operationally in Mexico City does not mean necessarily,
or even inferentially, that they were involved in the actual
assassination. It is entirely possible that on November 22, two
of the most surprised men in the world were David Atlee
Phillips and George Joannides.
And consequently, the one does not necessarily lead to the
other in any way, shape, or form. But stop and think about it.
If they were running an operation in which the accused shooter
was involved as an asset, either witting or unwitting, think
about the motivation for cover-up. It had to be something
extraordinary that they were covering up in order to violate
their charter and in spite of the Houston Agreement that agrees
not to prosecute CIA officers for crimes committed in the
furtherance of their duties in the United States, in spite of
that, they feloniously obstructed a congressional
investigation.
There had to be something significant that they were
covering up. And what that significance was, and basically,
David Robarge, the CIA historian, has in a backhanded way
admitted that in things he has written, was the use of Oswald
in an operation in Mexico City.
Mr. Burlison. So, you think that it was--if you had to be
pressed on it--it sounds like there is two scenarios. One is
that Oswald--I mean, both scenarios, Oswald had some
involvement in connection with the CIA. But in one scenario, he
is being directed by individuals in the CIA to commit the
assassination, and then the other scenario is that he did it
and they just flubbed. They did not pick up on the fact that he
was planning this assassination.
Mr. Hardway. I do not think we can draw any inference from
the evidence on any of that. As to whether or not he was being
directed in the assassination, I do not think that David
Phillips and George Joannides were directing him in the
assassination. I do not think they would have been using him in
Mexico if they did.
Mr. Burlison. Some of the documentation indicates recently,
from the 2017 release, that he was not alone when he went to
Mexico City.
Mr. Hardway. I cannot say that he was not alone, from the
research we did in Mexico City. What we could not rule out was
that he was imitated, or that another person was there
pretending to be Oswald, or that some of the telephone
conversations that were recorded on the taps at Russian and
Cuban facilities were actually Oswald speaking. In fact, it is
pretty clear that some of the calls that claimed to be Oswald
were not Oswald.
Mr. Burlison. Wow. Thank you.
My time has expired.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you.
The Chair would like to now recognize Mr. Crane for 5
minutes.
Mr. Crane. Thank you, Ms. Chairwoman. Thank you guys for
coming today.
I want to start with you, Dr. Curtis. As a dental surgeon
who was present in the hospital room the day President Kennedy
was shot, you were able to observe his wounds and maybe some of
his medical records. Is that correct?
Can you not hear me, Dr. Curtis?
Dr. Curtis. I am sorry, I could not hear what you said.
Mr. Crane. So, you were there in the emergency room the day
that the President was brought in?
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Mr. Crane. How old were you, sir?
Dr. Curtis. How old was I?
Mr. Crane. Yes.
Dr. Curtis. 26.
Mr. Crane. 26? And what did you observe when they brought
the President in?
Dr. Curtis. The President was already in the room before I
arrived. And what I observed about him, that he had probably
already deceased.
Mr. Crane. Since you were a dental surgeon, why did they
bring you into the operation room?
Dr. Curtis. That is one thing that Arlen Specter asked me,
``What is a dentist doing operating on the President?'' Then I
had to qualify myself. The training that I have encompassed
those particular procedures, and that is a simple procedure and
I did it well, and I just knew how to do it. There was nobody
else there to do it, and I did it because Dr. Carrico asked me
to do it.
Mr. Crane. Can you tell us about the wounds that you
observed on the President and how they differ from what came
out in some of the reporting?
Dr. Curtis. The wounds on the President were to his throat
and to his head and to his back. The wound to his throat would
have killed him. The wound to his head definitely would have
killed him. The wound to his back would not have killed him.
Mr. Crane. Did the wounds to his throat and his head look
like completely separate wounds?
Dr. Curtis. They were two separate wounds. One--let me show
it to you.
The blue wound was sent from the railroad trestle all the
way over to kill him right here, and that went to his throat.
And the way that killed him is that it obstructed the trachea
and he could not breathe. So, he would have been dead before he
reached the hospital just simply because of that wound.
The other wound that he had to his head would have killed
him instantly because it removed about a third of his brain.
Mr. Crane. Thank you.
Mr. Hardway, I want to move to you next. You talked about
the obstruction of a Federal investigation that you, yourself,
witnessed. You were on the House Select Committee for
Assassination. Is that correct?
Mr. Hardway. Yes, sir.
Mr. Crane. What year would that have been?
Mr. Hardway. 1977 and 1978. The obstruction occurred
entirely in 1978.
Mr. Crane. What was your role in that investigation?
Mr. Hardway. My role was a researcher, with primary
responsibility for researching Lee Harvey Oswald's activities
in Mexico City and the CIA response to that.
Mr. Crane. We have heard about some of the administrative
roadblocks that the CIA put up for you. Did you have any direct
verbal communication with anybody at the CIA?
Mr. Hardway. Oh, yes. Frequently.
Mr. Crane. Can you tell us about some of those conversation
and how it might have been conceived as obstruction?
Mr. Hardway. Well, when we first started, we had unlimited
unexpurgated access. We had two clerks assigned to us. We had
our office at the CIA. Pretty much went to work out there every
morning. We would ask for a file, they would go get it, we
would review it. It was unredacted and given to us in its
original state.
After they brought George Joannides in, he began slowly
tightening down the process. We were no longer working with two
clerks who went and got us our files. We had to file formally,
request, through him, to get the files, and we started
experiencing significant delays in the files that we would get.
We started noticing that the files we would get would have
obvious things missing from them. Then he went so far as to
actually start putting parts of the files in envelopes and
leaving them in the files so that what we would get is we would
sign that we would have seen the files, but we were not allowed
to open the stuff that he had placed in envelopes.
That came back to haunt us later in dealing with the final
report and some of the things we were trying to get out of
them. When they would tell the chairman of the committee, he
has seen that, here is where he signed for the file. And I
would have to explain to Chairman Stokes that, no, that was not
in the file when I saw it because that was what I was looking
for and it was not there. It must have been in one of the
envelopes. And so, he eventually just shut us down.
It culminated on one file that I really wanted to see. When
it was presented to me, Mr. Joannides showed up, himself, to
give it to me. He was actually bouncing on his toes. He was--
him and Scott Breckinridge brought the file to me at the CIA,
called me back out there to see it. It had not just been
redacted; it had been retyped with the redactions in white
space as it had been retyped. It was a report on a debriefing
of a certain person.
I exploded. I acted like a very angry 24-year-old and had
choice words for both of them and stormed out of the office and
went back to the headquarters.
I, subsequently, thanks to Judge Tunheim's work, saw the
memorandum to the record that Mr. Breckinridge wrote. And the
memorandum for the record says that the file was shown to me
and, quote, ``no objections were recorded,'' close quote.
Notice the way, see, you have to watch what the CIA says.
He did not say that I did not make any, which is what everyone
infers from what he said. What he said was none were recorded,
and that is because he made the record.
Mr. Crane. Thank you. I yield back.
Mrs. Luna. The Chair would now like to recognize
Representative Mace.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your
leadership on this Committee.
For decades, elements in our government have engaged in an
extensive cover-up to subvert the will of Congress and to keep
the American public in the dark relating to the assassination
of John F. Kennedy. No matter how ugly it is or how
inconvenient it is to elites, organized crime, or deep state
bureaucrats, the American people deserve the truth, and they
can handle the truth.
While the American public still may be in the dark, poll
after poll made clear the cover-up has failed. Approximately
two-thirds of Americans still do not buy the official narrative
from our government that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Cover-
ups and a failure to be transparent has rightfully bred
distrust, so much distrust nearly 40 percent of Americans
believe the U.S. Government was involved in the assassination
of JFK. Let that sink in--nearly 40 percent.
This Task Force, working alongside President Trump, is
working to use sunshine as a disinfectant and give the American
people the pure, unvarnished truth they deserve.
Mr. Hardway--thank you for being here, to all of our
witnesses today--you worked for the House Select Committee on
Assassinations which investigated the assassination of JFK. You
had firsthand interactions with the CIA as you worked to get
the truth. Based on what you witnessed, do you believe the CIA
engaged in a concerted effort to cover up certain facts related
to the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. Hardway. Yes.
Ms. Mace. Do you believe the efforts to obstruct
congressional investigations into the assassination of
President Kennedy by the CIA you have described violated
Federal law?
Mr. Hardway. People more expert in Federal criminal law
than I am have expressed that opinion to me and have expressed
that opinion under oath.
Ms. Mace. Based on what you know, what relationship, if
any, did the CIA have with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the
assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. Hardway. Based upon the circumstantial evidence of
record--and it is overwhelming--they had an either used him as
either a witting or an unwitting agent of influence.
Ms. Mace. Seems that way, doesn't it?
Do you believe there is evidence to suggest the CIA was
using Lee Harvey Oswald in active intelligence operations
shortly before the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. Hardway. Yes.
Ms. Mace. Dr. Curtis.
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Ms. Mace. Good afternoon, sir.
Dr. Curtis. Good afternoon.
Ms. Mace. You were one of the physicians who treated
President Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital after he was
shot. You were better situated than almost anyone to see
President Kennedy's physical condition when he arrived at the
hospital, and yet you have said, ``I cannot reconcile my
knowledge of what I saw with the findings of the government,''
is what you said at the time.
Dr. Curtis. Yes.
Ms. Mace. In your medical opinion, what do you attribute as
the cause of President Kennedy's wounds?
Dr. Curtis. The cause of his death?
Mr. Mace. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Curtis. The two bullets that were fired from the front
caused his death. And either one of them would have, the blue
and the green----
Ms. Mace. Yes, sir.
Dr. Curtis [continuing]. Bullets.
Ms. Mace. And in your medical, you know, in your opinion,
how does this differ from the findings of the government as to
the cause of the wounds to the President? How did this differ?
Dr. Curtis. Could you say that again? I am sorry.
Ms. Mace. How are your findings, that you saw, of his
condition when he died--how are your findings different from
the government?
How did what the government said happened to JFK, how did
your medical findings of his death--how are they different?
Dr. Curtis. The government wanted the President to have
died from the window--from the bullets fired from the window
because that would have caused Harvey Oswald to have done it.
And they went to great lengths to make those two bullets do the
job. Those two bullets did not do the job. One went in the
President's back, and the other went into Governor Connally.
So, those two bullets did not do anything to kill President
Kennedy.
Ms. Mace. OK. My last question, Dr. Curtis. You ready? Are
the wounds you observed consistent with the government's
conclusion Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?
Dr. Curtis. No.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, sir.
We thank all of our witnesses who are here today.
Chairwoman, thank you, and I yield back.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you, Representative Mace.
I now recognize myself for probably more than 5 minutes,
so.
My first question goes to Judge Tunheim. Why did you tell
President Biden that the CIA had deliberately misled your board
about the Joannides file?
Mr. Tunheim. I did that because the CIA misled us. I mean,
we had asked--I mean, we are picking up names all along, and
people were telling us about other people to ask about. And we
have been after the Joannides file for a while, and what we got
was something very small. It looked like just a personnel file.
You know, what he got paid and, you know, when he separated and
that sort of thing.
And the staff looked at it and thought it was not
significant and sent it back. In retrospect, we should not have
done that. We should have asked for more. But they were told,
the staff was told, that was all they had on Joannides, which
is clearly incorrect.
So, that is why I had said that we had been deliberately
misled by the CIA as to the nature of the Joannides files that
were there. And I think the files likely are still there and
can be released and should be released.
Mrs. Luna. Yes. I would like to actually note for the
public that is tuning in that we have been in talks with
Director Ratcliffe. And although he has been supportive, there
has, in my opinion, been an orchestrated effort previously to
hide this information. And so, they are, while actively
searching for it, also having issues locating it. So, we are
trying on our end.
But you are correct, sir, in that observation. And I thank
you for being here today to testify to that.
My next question is actually for Dr. Curtis. Was there
anyone specifically on the Warren Commission that made the
attempted effort or that you felt you were being pressured to
either be silenced on what you saw and/or bullied and/or
threatened into not speaking the truth?
Dr. Curtis. I was never pressured to be silent. But I did
have action with Arlen Specter that was not good.
Mrs. Luna. What happened, sir?
Dr. Curtis. He did a deposition for me and had not told me
about it ahead of time.
The nurse leaned in the operating room that morning and
said, the Warren Commission is in town. If you have time, go
down and talk to them. So, I finished my cases and went down
and talked to Arlen Specter.
He was friendly and nice and was very well-groomed, in a
beautiful suit, shiny shoes. And I had my hair all messed up,
in a scrub suit, dirty shoes. So, it was definitely top down.
And he was friendly and nice.
And then started asking me biographical questions that made
it obvious to me that he knew the answers to the question
before he asked it. And so, that made me wonder, why on Earth
does he know all that about me?
Then he said, ``What did you see about the exit wound?''
Well, there was not one.
``Really?''
No, there was not one.
And then, so, he asked me three or four more times about
the exit wound. And the last time he asked me is, ``Dr. Curtis,
every other doctor has suggested and testified that there was
an exit wound. And you did not see it?''
No, I did not.
And so, during this--the visit I had with him was maybe
about 20 to 30 minutes. And during that time, he made me feel
that I had a reason for being in the trauma room, to be sure
the President died.
Now, I had a wife and two babies at home that were
completely dependent on me. If I lost my residency, it would be
terribly, a big problem for me. So, he gave me--he said, ``OK,
now, I need you to wait right here for a little bit before we
do your deposition.'' And I said, deposition? He said, ``Yes,
you are having your deposition today.'' And I said, well, I did
not know that. He said, ``Well, I sent you a letter.'' Which I
did not get. He said, ``Do you want a lawyer?'' And I said, do
I need a lawyer? He said, ``Fella, you are the only one in this
room that knows if you need a lawyer. Do you want me to get you
one?'' I said, I do not think so.
But he asked me over and over again about the exit wound.
Then we got in on the--he got the committee together, nobody
that I had ever seen before, sitting behind the table, and put
me on a high stool, uncomfortably. And I remember my foot kept
slipping off that bottom rung. And then started asking me
questions.
He never did bring up the exit wound. He never did say a
thing about it. Till at the last, he said, ``Dr. Curtis, did
you see anything that was like a puncture or an opening in the
trachea? Or the throat?'' And I said no. And he said, but then
I thought, well, the blood was right over that, so I could not
have seen it. So, I said, but that does not mean it was not
there.
Thank you for Dr. Curtis. That is what he wanted.
Mrs. Luna. Would it be fair to say that other doctors that
you worked with that were in the room that day that were
responding to President Kennedy's wounds had the same
observations as you? Yes or no.
Dr. Curtis. There were only two of us that saw the throat
before the tracheostomy was done.
Mrs. Luna. OK.
Dr. Curtis. Is that the answer?
Mrs. Luna. Whatever you would like to share with Congress,
sir.
Dr. Curtis. So, I saw it, and I do not--there was no exit
wounds. That is what Arlen Specter wanted, was an exit wound,
because the magic bullet had to exit the throat to go into
Governor Connally, which could not have happened. The magic
bullet would have had to make three fine 90-degree turns to do
what it did. It was coming down from the window, would have had
to turn right angle to be horizontal through the neck, would
have had to turn right again to go over to wherever Governor
Connally was. Would have to turn right again to go into
Governor Connally. That does not work.
Mrs. Luna. Yes, I can speak for myself. I do not believe in
the magic bullet theory.
Dr. Curtis. Do not do that.
Mrs. Luna. No, I do not, sir.
My next question is for Mr. Douglas Horne. To your
knowledge, did even the Dallas Police Department or the FBI
subject Lee Harvey Oswald to a paraffin test to determine
whether he had fired the gun on November 22, 1963?
Mr. Horne. I am going from memory, but I believe the FBI
did, and he tested negative for firing a rifle.
Mrs. Luna. So, he----
Mr. Horne. The paraffin test on his face shows he did not
fire a bolt-action rifle, especially not a lousy rifle like the
Mannlicher-Carcano, which was an 1894 design or something.
Mrs. Luna. What is the status of the record interview the
author William Manchester conducted with Jacqueline Kennedy.
Mr. Horne?
Mr. Horne. Well, my understanding is that--well, first of
all, the Kennedy family liked William Manchester initially,
because he had written a campaign book in 1960 about the
campaign. So, they said, ``OK, why don't you write the book
about the death of Jack, about the death of President
Kennedy?'' When the book was reviewed by Jacqueline and Robert
F. Kennedy, apparently Robert F. Kennedy had many objections.
And so, the Kennedy family sued Mr. Manchester when the books
were in galley form, and they required that he take out certain
portions of the text. So, the lawsuit, what the lawsuit did,
was it said, the portions of the text that you removed will be
sequestered until 2067. And the interviews you did with
Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy will be sequestered,
withheld until 2067. So, that was the result of that lawsuit.
And so, what we read today when we read Manchester's book is a
sanitized or redacted version of his book. And we do not know
what was removed until 2067. That is just very unfortunate. And
I know Chairman Tunheim really made an effort to get Caroline
Kennedy to agree to lift that court seal and she did not want
to.
Mrs. Luna. Also, to your knowledge, which autopsy photos
are missing?
Mr. Horne. OK, I would be glad to answer that question. I
have a list here and it is reasonably succinct, so bear with
me.
Mrs. Luna. Well, you have me and Garcia here, so I think we
are at your disposal.
Mr. Horne. Here we go, here we go. I mentioned eight sets
that I know with confidence from studying the evidence as an
analyst are missing. First, an overhead wide shot of JFK's body
taken from the stepladder, taken by John Stringer, the Navy
photographer. He testified under oath to that.
Second, a large bruise atop the right lung, taken from
inside the interior of the chest after the lungs were removed.
So, this is a large blood clot up above where the apical
portion of the lung was. And that has been testified to by both
Dr. Humes and Stringer that they took those photographs. So,
they are not in the record.
Third, an entrance wound in the lower right of the skull,
with the scalp reflected, taken from outside the skull. And
next, that same entrance wound in the lower right of the skull
with the photo taken from inside the cranium after the brain
was removed. So, what is the issue with these two photos being
missing is they would have determined definitively where was
the entrance wound in the back of the head.
Mrs. Luna. Well, that would have been one of the Harper
frag----
Mr. Horne. No.
Mrs. Luna. Separate.
Mr. Horne. No, separate issue.
Mrs. Luna. OK.
Mr. Horne. The condition of the back of the--here is
another missing photo--the condition of the back of the head
after embalming and reconstruction was completed, which still
showed an exit defect that could not be closed. The witness
that claims that was Saundra Spencer, a Navy photographer's
mate, who our general counsel, Jeremy Gunn, considered our most
reliable medical witness. And so, what she did was she
developed color negatives, and then prints of the President's
body. Postmortem photographs, but she said, when we deposed
her, she said, ``Oh, these pictures in the Archives are
horrible. We see open body cavities and a lot of blood, and the
President looks really bad.'' She said, the photographs that I
developed, he had been cleaned up, the head had been
reconstructed, but there was still a hole in the back of the
head, even after the head was reconstructed.
Mrs. Luna. So, you have witness testimony that the Archives
photographs do not reflect what----
Mr. Horne. Yes, yes. She testified under oath to that fact.
Another missing photograph is a series, is that Robert
Knudsen was a White House social photographer. He was involved
with developing photography the weekend after the assassination
by the President's military physician, Dr. Burkley. So, Knudsen
testified to the HSCA that'' I developed a black and white film
pack, negatives, black and white negatives, showing numerous
probes in the President's body.'' And, of course, probes are
important because they determine bullet tracks, where the
bullets go in, where they come out, if they come out. And he
remembered developing them and holding them up to the light in
a darkroom after they were developed. And he remembered seeing
probes in the body in this black and white film pack. And in
the official autopsy collection, there was no black and white
film pack used in photographs of the body. They are 4 by 5-inch
duplex film. They are not black and white film packs. And there
are no photographs of probes in the body in the official
collection.
And one of the people we interviewed was Dr. Karnei who was
a resident at Bethesda, and when we told him, Jeremy Gunn and
I, when we told him that there were no photographs of probes in
the body in the official autopsy photo collection, he became
physically agitated and his face turned bright pink. And he
said, ``I came in and out of the morgue many times as the
resident on duty that night, but I saw flashbulbs going off
when there were probes in the body. And you are telling me
there is no photos in the collection?'' We said, that is right.
So, two more that are missing and that concludes my answer.
Black and white prints were seen by numerous people showing
a large exit defect in the rear of JFK's head. So, Mr. Knudsen,
the White House photographer, Navy Chief Knudsen, showed such
photos to another White House photographer, Joe O'Donnell, the
week after the President died, black and white prints showing a
big exit wound in the back of the head. There are no such
photos in the collection, but Joe O'Donnell said there were and
another witness that saw those photos was Navy Corpsman Dennis
David. And he was shown those photographs by the Bethesda Naval
hospital audio visual department head, Lieutenant Commander
Pitzer.
The last type of photo that is missing, black and white
prints of an entry wound high on the forehead up here, not in
the temple, but high in the forehead, before the right eye.
Black and white prints showing that were shown by Mr. Knudsen,
by Chief Knudsen to Mr. O'Donnell. They were also seen by
Dennis David when the Lieutenant Commander Pitzer showed him
autopsy photographs. And a third witness surfaced in the year
2010, Quentin Schwinn, who lives in Cleveland. And he, during a
Federal job interview believe it or not, during a Federal job
interview with an intelligence agency when he was at the
Rochester Institute of Technology, majoring in photography, he
was shown a color positive transparency showing an entry wound
high on the forehead of JFK. So, that is my kind of lengthy
answer on which photographers am I confident are missing.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you very much. And then real quickly,
because my last line of questioning is for Mr. Bolden.
What is the evidence that you refer to about an
interruption of chain of custody of President Kennedy's body
prior to the start of the autopsy shortly after 8 p.m.
Mr. Horne. Right. Because of this venue and this format, I
will have to give you a streamlined answer. I am sure everyone
will appreciate that. We know for a fact that the motorcade
from Andrews Air Force Base with a bronze Dallas casket in it
arrived in front of Bethesda at 6:55 p.m. Remember that time.
That is documented by the Secret Service report of Agent Clint
Hill, and by newspapers reporters. But the review board
obtained an extremely important document written by a Marine
Corps noncommissioned officer, Sergeant Boijin, of the United
States Marine Corps. He led a team of Marines from the Marine
barracks in Washington, DC. to provide physical security at the
autopsy. This was not the honor guard in dress uniforms, these
were Marines from the Marine barracks to provide physical
security.
He wrote a report of what happened that night and he wrote,
in his report, dated November 26, 1963, he wrote that--and he
is only talking about what happened with the President, because
that was his job was to guard the President's body during the
autopsy--he wrote that the casket arrived at 18:35 hours. 18:35
hours, that is 6:35 p.m., 20 minutes before the motorcade from
Andrews arrived. And there is a considerable amount of
evidence, a wide range of evidence that the President's body
really arrived by helicopter before the motorcade from Andrews.
That is the broken chain of custody. And the issue here, it is
a very important one, a very important issue, the issue here is
if Sergeant Boijin's report is correct, and he authenticated
that to the review board staff. He authenticated that to me
with a written letter and with a telephone interview. If his
report is correct, then what was happening with the President's
body between 6:35 p.m. and 8 o'clock when the autopsy of record
started? That is almost an hour and a half. And the simple
answer, the streamlined answer, appears to be that many metal
fragments were removed from President Kennedy's body before the
autopsy of record began. We have witnesses for this.
Mrs. Luna. Those would be the bullet fragments, correct.
Mr. Horne. Yes. Tom Robinson of Gawler's Funeral Home saw a
vial full of 10 tiny fragments, which he saw picked out of
President Kennedy's brain. They were never placed in the
record.
Dennis David, HM-1 Corpsman Dennis David, typed a receipt
for a Federal agent of four large bullet fragments. He thought
it would be mass, larger than one bullet and less mass than two
bullets. Somewhere between one and two bullets, four large
fragments. He typed the receipt. He was allowed to handle the
fragments by the Federal agent. We would not do that today. And
the agent took the receipt, the typewriter ribbon and the
fragments and they were never introduced in the record.
We also have two witnesses, to make a long story short, we
have two witnesses to surgery on the cranium to get this
evidence out. And Dr. Humes, the chief pathologist, said under
oath to Arlen Specter, Dr. Humes said, under oath, that I never
had to perform a craniotomy, I never had to saw the skull open
to get the brain out.
And when Dr. Fink arrived late for the autopsy--he was the
outsider, the Army guy who arrived at 8:30--Humes told Dr.
Fink, no sawing of the skull was necessary.
So, the end of my response here is that we have two
witnesses, X-ray technician, Ed Reed, under oath to the review
board, and Tom Robinson to both the House Committee and the
review board, Tom Robinson told the same account to both the
HSCA and to us that he saw Dr. Hume saw the skull open.
So, I think bullet fragments were removed from the
President's body before the autopsy of record began and that is
why we should have no confidence whatsoever in the autopsy.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you very much.
My next question is for you, Mr. Bolden.
Mr. Bolden, can you hear me?
Mr. Bolden. Yes, I can.
Mrs. Luna. OK, sir. Thank you for sticking with us so long.
I know it has been kind of long. But if you can, real quick,
what did he observe about the Secret Service investigation of
President Kennedy's assassination.
Mr. Bolden. It was one of the greatest cover-ups of a
crime. Now, the Secret Service initiated so many cover-ups. No.
1, the number of bullet fragments that were found in the car.
Harry Gagline (ph), on November the 26, looked at the car, the
assassination automobile, and he found two cartridges laying on
the front floor, floorboard. They were very damaged. And he
also observed a bullet hole in the windshield. And he was told
not to let the FBI know about any of this and to get the car to
Michigan somewhere where they could put a new windshield in and
clean the car up.
Now, the biggest thing that I was talking about was the
violations of constitutional rights that followed, especially
in my case, simply because I would not be quiet. I was framed,
I was arrested. They attempted to declare me insane.
And I was put in Springfield, Missouri, forced to take
drugs, mind-boggling drugs. Now, that stemmed from the fact
that on the 18 of November 1964, I was called to Washington,
DC, and they told me they were going to give me another name,
change my identity, and that I would become another individual.
And that, in fact, did happen. And I think that they were
setting me up for assassination myself. I think that that was
what was going on. Because when they sent me to the
penitentiary, they made it clear that it was a case of my being
so agitated about the assassination that I would not keep
quiet.
And so, they gave me two trials. They had two convicts that
I had arrested. And they put me on trial twice in 1 month. And
that was never heard. They kidnapped me out of Washington, DC,
a violation of my constitutional rights. Denied me an attorney,
simply because they said I was not a team player. I would not
keep my mouth shut.
And so, when they did that to me, they sent me to
Springfield and put me in a camp there where I was threatened
by one of the inmates. And they used that as an excuse that on
July the 7, 1967 two guards came to the camp and got me and
took me to what they call 2-1 east. And they undressed me, got
me naked, threw me in a cell.
And the next thing I know, they were forcing medication on
me. The guard came by, he says, we have medication. Told him, I
said, I have not been before a court. No court has said that I
was insane. You are supposed to take me to the court. But they
did not do that. They forced me into take these drugs. One of
them knocked me out. I fell on the floor. I had to go into the
hospital to have it looked at. And this is how they treated me.
Now, I was kidnapped out of Washington, DC, brought to
Chicago. Denied an attorney by the United States Attorney. I
was then not given any food on that night, which was May the
18, 1964. They did not let me eat anything because they kept
talking about I was not a team player and I did not keep my
mouth shut.
And this is how they control the cover-up, agents became
afraid. They did not want to talk. And there were so many
cover-ups, Chief Rowley put out a memo that said any agent that
gave information other than the information that he would
provide would be censored severely.
Well, when they found out that I wanted to go to the Warren
Commission, who was investigating the case appointed by
President Johnson, I asked to go testify to the Warren
Commission about what the Secret Service was doing and the type
of protection that President Kennedy was receiving. And so,
they brought me to Washington, DC, denied me an attorney, every
constitutional right was violated, and forced me to take
medical drugs, stripped me naked, removed me to such prisons.
Now, here I was, an ex-Secret Service agent. They locked me up
with people who I might have put in jail myself. I was
threatened by these people. And it really affected me and my
wife, Barbara Bolden, who stuck with me throughout this ordeal.
And to anybody who is listening, if you have a good wife,
like Barbara was, keep her. Keep her, because that is--the
scripture says a double band is not easily broke and they were
talking about people like my dear wife who passed away in 2005.
So, I just want people to know that constitutional rights
when I was on trial on July the 12, the jury was debating
whether or not on a verdict. The judge called the jury forward
and told the jury, ``In my opinion, Bolden is guilty on all the
counts in the indictment,'' which was three counts. That jury
did not find me guilty.
So, the judge set another trial for 2 weeks later. For 2
weeks now, a second trial. And we asked for a new judge. The
judge himself, in violation Federal procedure, heard the motion
himself. And the law says that if a complainant files a motion
for a change of judge, that the judge who the complaint is
against, shall not make the decision as to the prejudicial
action.
So, here I am now. It took me 90 years, 90 years for him to
look into it. It broke my heart, because America is supposed to
be the leader in constitutional rights. It is supposed to be a
leader in democracy. Yet, I felt so abandoned by the system.
But I am glad I did. And I would do it again, because the
American people need to know the truth. And the truth will set
you free.
Mrs. Luna. Well, thank you, Mr. Bolden. And again, thank
you for your----
Mr. Nixon. Madam Chairman.
Mrs. Luna. Yes.
Mr. Bolden. Madam Chairwoman, I am Tyler Nixon. I am
counsel for Mr. Bolden. And I can just give a minute of
clarification here.
Mr. Bolden was in fact prosecuted on what--I have delved
into this case very deeply, this was one of the most rigged--
you want to talk about weaponization of the judicial system and
justice system. This man was railroaded. He had a judge, as he
said, who told the jury that he believed that he was guilty. He
set a new trial. And the two accusing witnesses were two men
that he had arrested previously as counterfeiters. And the main
witness who purportedly, you know, out of the goodness of his
heart went to be head of the Secret Service, Maurice Martineau,
to report the supposed solicitation of a bribe, which was the
accusation, admitted in his trial about 2 months, 4 months
later that he perjured himself in Mr. Bolden's trial.
Mrs. Luna. Yes, Mr. Nixon. We actually would be happy to
collect all the information off record. But just due to the
process----
Mr. Nixon. Sure.
Mrs. Luna [continuing]. As you are not a stated witness, we
just have to be careful.
Mr. Nixon. Yes.
Mrs. Luna. So, I will say, at least I speak for myself, I
do the not believe that Mr. Bolden was actually guilty of a
crime. I do believe that he was falsely, if you will, framed.
And so, on behalf of the U.S. Government, we would like to
apologize to him and his family, because obviously that is not
how we are supposed to treat people in this country. And so,
you have our sympathy, as well as our apology, for the
treatment of that. But we will be happy to follow up on that,
because as stated, we would like to collect and make sure that
this does not happen to future individuals. And that requires
changing of laws and also putting protections in place.
But I would like to thank all of you. We have gone way over
our time today, but the fact that you all travelled in and were
willing to come testify, especially you, Dr. Curtis. Mr.
Bolden, Judge Tunheim, Mr. Hardway, Mr. Horne, and Ms. Coe,
thank you so much for coming here today.
If you do have any other information you would like to
submit to the Task Force, we will happily accept that. And we
will be following up on some of these suggestions that you have
all made today.
And with that, and without objection, all Members will have
5 legislative days in which to submit materials and additional
written questions for the witnesses, which will be forwarded to
the witnesses for their responses as well. If you would like to
submit anything else are the record, we would be happily
accepting of that.
If there is no further business, without objection, the
Task Force stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:46 p.m., the Task Force was adjourned.]
[all]