USU chief assails secrecy of 9/11

WASHINGTON — Unnecessary secrecy with documents about the John F. Kennedy assassination fueled wild and untrue conspiracy theories — and new secrecy about the 9/11 attacks may do the same, Utah State University President Kermit L. Hall warned National Archives officials Friday.

He cautioned that if the government is not more open, "We will end up manufacturing a history that is littered with conspiracy (theories), littered with half-explanations, and one that goes to the very integrity of the American government."

Hall is considered an expert on the JFK assassination, which marks its 40th anniversary next Saturday. He was on a five-member commission created by Congress in the mid-1990s to sift through 4.5 million documents about it and publicly release as much as possible. He says 99.8 percent was released.

He spoke about it Friday in a public lecture at National Archives headquarters, where most of his audience were archivists who often decide what should be released to the public. Hall was also making the rounds with national news media for interviews.

As an example of what he said were early mistakes with secrecy, Hall showed a Dec. 16, 1963, FBI document as it was originally released through the Freedom of Information Act. It was entirely blacked out, except for the date and place.

"If you're a researcher and you look at this document, what do you conclude? You immediately conclude that the explanation for the murder of John F. Kennedy is behind those redactions," he said.

However, when his commission forced the release of that entire document unedited, the world learned that it was innocuous. "It deals with a cocktail party that was held at Bethany College in Wheeling, W.Va.," he said.

Some organizers of the American Communist Party were touring there to disclaim any ties to the assassination — and do some recruiting. Hall said the FBI didn't want to release it because it revealed that five of the 10 people in attendance were FBI operatives, showing how deeply the FBI had infiltrated the Communist Party.

In another once-heavily censored document, FBI informants wrote how Soviet KGB agents in America had concluded that Lyndon Johnson must be behind the murder. Hall said the main reason it wasn't released at first was not its conclusions — which he said were wrong-headed — but that it showed deep U.S. infiltration of the KGB.