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November 28, 2009

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Editorial: Opening up the assassination files

Friday, Oct. 2, 1998 | 11:20 a.m.

The Assassination Records Review Board found 60,000 government documents but still had to fight some government agencies to get the documents. In its report to President Clinton, the board said the government "needlessly and wastefully classified and then withheld from public access countless important records that did not require such treatment."

Receiving pointed criticism was the Secret Service. Just two years after the board was set up, the board said the Secret Service destroyed "protective intelligence files" about "threats to President Kennedy in the Dallas area," JFK's travels shortly before the assassination and the actions of a pro-Fidel Castro group that Lee Harvey Oswald was aligned with.

No matter how much solid evidence is presented that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, conspiracy theorists will be bolstered by any government stonewalling. Failing to turn over relevant materials will only heighten their suspicions, not quell them.

Government agencies should know better. Hopefully agencies at all levels of government will learn a lesson from this, realizing that it is always better to be more open with its citizens, even when that information might prove to be embarrassing.

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