Jim and Oliver Meet the Luna Commitee

Our Excellent Washington Adventure

Ana Paulina Luna , representative from Florida, decided to open up a sub committee formally called the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. She had the blessing of the Oversight Committee—of which the task force forms a sub--committee—and its chairman, Mr. James Comer.

Luna is the chairwoman. Robert Garcia of California is the ranking minority member. Other members include Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Eric Burlison of Missouri, Eli Crane of Arizona, Brandon Gill of Texas, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Dave Min of California and Jasmine Crockett of Texas.

On February 11^th, Luna sent out a press release declaring that the federal government has been concealing information for too long: “We have spent years seeking information on the assassination of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government secrets without success.” She said the time was overdue for trying to find satisfactory answers to these mysteries. The list of subjects she wants to explore are the JFK case, the murder of Dr. King, the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, the UFO phenomenon, the Epstein client list, origins of CV-19, and the 9/11 files.

Luna’s agenda partly coincided with the executive order issued by President Trump in January. That order was designed to declassify the final concealed records on the John Kennedy case, the King case and the RFK case. This writer would guess that Robert Kennedy Jr. had something to do with the addition of the last two cases to the Trump order.

In the light of Trump’s order--and realizing the attention it had gotten, since thousands of documents were already being processed--Luna decided to open her hearings with the JFK case. She invited Jefferson Morley. He lives in the area, and since he had been a member of the MSM for years, he is often asked to comment on JFK via TV and radio.

But she also realized that the name that would attract the most media attention to the opening hearing would be Oliver Stone. The problem was that Stone was not eager to make the five hour journey and possibly endure a hostile reception. So his first reaction was he would simply prepare a list of things Luna should try to retrieve, and also render some advice on dealing with the bureaucratic resistance. A phone call was scheduled for the end of March.

But what happened is that the call went well enough for Stone to change his mind. He decided to attend and invited me to go along. On rather short notice, we arranged to fly out early in the morning on Monday, March 31st. In fact, I had to wake up at 4:30 AM in order to make the early flight. Morley had recommended we stay at the Tabard Inn, which ended up being a rather questionable choice: small rooms with no phones. But it did have a nice bar and restaurant.

Jake Greenberg, a young attorney out of Chicago Law School, works for the committee. He arranged to meet us at the Sam Rayburn office building adjoining the Capitol. Luna was just elected in 2022, so her location was newer and larger but far away. Our first surprise was upon entering her office. I thought it would be us, Jake, her and Morley. Instead, it was packed. Morley was there; but including Luna there were three members of the committee on hand, the other two being Tim Burchett and Eric Burlison. When Jake, Oliver and myself turned up, it became a standing room only situation. There were about 11-12 people there. We ended up talking about what the hearing might turn out like, if there were likely any hostile members, and certain pieces of evidence we could present.

This preliminary meeting went on for about 90 minutes. Afterwards Oliver and I had dinner at the Tabard with Morley, his business manager, and his chief researcher. Oliver and I had some work to do that night. Because I decided I had to change my speech to a more general kind of approach, since—from this meeting—I determined it was likely to come across as too advanced. Oliver had not written his speech yet and we decided to meet the next morning, and I would consult with him on it.

I had lost my bag at the Dulles Airport. So I had to wake up early the next morning to retrieve it before meeting with Oliver. My sleeping pills were in the bag so I was just laying on my bed when I got an email from my trip partner. He said: Jim we don’t have to meet, I am writing my speech right now. I trusted that the Oscar winning writer would do a good job. Which he did.

So that night and the next morning, I began to rewrite my speech. I decided to focus on the general theme that the JFK murder had caused an erosion of the public’s trust in government. And because the media had been complicit in the cover up, people had lost faith in that institution also.

The next day, Oliver was in his room finishing up his speech as I was waiting down in the lounge area. I phoned him and he came down and we got an Uber over to the Capitol. Jake led us on a long walk to the room that Luna had specially reserved for the hearing, and it was a nice one. The minute Oliver got inside, the cameras started flashing right out of a paparazzi scene in a Fellini movie.

We moved over to our panel seats, and I noticed an unfamiliar personage to my left. I did not recognize his face or name, which was John Davisson . Davisson is a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. I asked Morley what he was doing there. And thus came my second surprise: he replied that the Democrats had invited him because of the controversy over the revealing of Social Security numbers in the just released documents. And that is what Mr. Davisson addressed almost right off the bat.

My first reaction on this was similar to a friend of mine, Al Rossi. Well if the JFK Records Collection Act had been followed—as it should have back in 2017—this likely would not have happened.

But it was my second observation which kind of jarred me. To my knowledge, no Democrat was in Luna’s office the day before. And as we proceeded, it became apparent to me as to why. It was really the Republicans on the panel who asked the most pertinent questions, and seemed more interested in the facts of the case and the object of full disclosure. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas lawyer, seemed to be kind of hostile. Raja Krishnamoorthi appeared to be using the hearing to score political points against President Trump. Neither of these representatives stayed for the entire hearing. In fact, I don’t think they were around for even half the time. A third Democrat, the ranking member Robert Garcia, pressed Morley about presenting what he termed direct evidence against the CIA to fill in Jeff’s thesis. The thought passed through my mind: what direct evidence would the Agency leave behind in a covert operation? They were masters at disguising their roles in such ops.

As I said, those who stayed the longest and asked the best and more pointed questions were the Republicans. The longer I thought about this, the more puzzling the apparent paradox became. And for the most obvious reasons. John F. Kennedy was a liberal Democrat. All the Democrats who showed at the hearing were from minority groups. JFK was the first American president to author an affirmative action executive order. In fact he signed two of them. Most historians consider him the last Democrat to helm the FDR New Deal Democratic coalition; before President Johnson drove it over a cliff with his escalation of the Vietnam War. I thought: aren’t you people aware of all this? Afterwards, I figuratively kicked myself for not bringing it up—but being my first congressional hearing, I think I can be excused for it.

I am really at a loss to explain this reversal. To take it further, JFK sent a great amount of aid to India during the Chinese incursion into that country, which was going on at about the same time as the Missile Crisis. Krishnamoorthi is Indian. One of the great Indian leaders, Nehru, loved Kennedy and was greatly bereaved upon his death. So why did the Democrats display so little interest in how he was eliminated and what his death did to the body politic and social fabric of both the USA and the Democratic Party?

If I had to take a guess, and I label this as such, I think it was because they looked at the hearing as a continuance of the Trump vendetta against the FBI. I did mention this FBI issue in relation to the Kennedy case at least twice in my opening comments. And I concluded with the comment that the FBI and CIA should not have the last word on the Kennedy case.

But to me, the upside for the Democrats should have been seen as much more valuable than the Kash Patel v. James Comey angle. But either they did not see it, or they did not think it was doable. I think of it as a lost opportunity for them.

As per the hearing itself, I was satisfied with the results and I think some information got out there in public that has not been aired in such a venue before. Morley introduced the entire Oswald file at the CIA, which had been misrepresented by them. He showed how the Agency had lied and who did the lying about Oswald. Stone talked about how he had been here back in 1992 hoping everything would have been declassified by 1998, the end of the Assassination Records Review Board’s existence--but it was not. He closed with a wonderful quote from James Angleton. Referring to his cohorts in the Agency, the spy chief said, “If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon.”

I tried to bring out some evidentiary problems that had been ignored or discounted in previous inquiries e.g. the chain of custody of Commission Exhibit 399, and the 42 witnesses who saw a gaping, raggedy edged wound in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. After the hearing there was a press gaggle with the three witnesses, which many thought was even more interesting than the hearing itself.

Stone did something I did not know he was going to do. He called for an opening of a new investigation into the JFK case. This was largely based on the evidentiary problems—dealing with chain of custody matters—with issues like the rifle, CE 399, and the alleged fingerprints on the rifle. This made headlines the next day, along with congresswoman Boebert mistaking Oliver for Roger Stone.

After the hearing, people like Matt Crumpton who attended, Oliver and myself, and Morley made the rounds of some TV talks shows like News Nation and Fox. There were many stories in the press about the hearing, and these appeared in some MSM venues like ABC news. And if one looks at You Tube, many people posted either the whole hearing or parts of it. It has gotten well over a million total views in just four days. So I think this was a win for our side, of which we do not have very many.

Let us all pay attention to what happens next with this sub-committee and Ms. Luna.

Right now, it’s the only game in town.