In an open letter to the current man occupying the Oval Office, Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron at AlterNet wrote how the Secret Service has repeatedly failed to disclose everything it knows about JFK’s death on November 22, 1963.

First, it withheld records from the Warren Commission, the official investigation authorized by Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson.

The agency charged with protecting the president also sat on documents that could have aided subsequent probes into the killing. Those investigations included the Rockefeller Commission, the Senate Church Committee, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the Assassination Records Review Board.

In the case of the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ probe, lawmakers said two leaders of organized crime, Carlos Marcello, whose operation covered Louisiana and Texas, and Santo Trafficante of Tampa, Florida, might have been responsible for the murder.

But the committee “couldn’t be more definitive” because “once again, the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, and Naval Intelligence withheld crucial information from them,” Hartmann and Waldron wrote.

Congress in 1992 passed the JFK Records Act (pdf) that was supposed to mandate release of all information on the shooting.

The records could also shed light on the reports that many of the agents had gotten drunk the night before the assassination at a club owned by an associate of Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s killer.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Dear Mr. President, It's Time to Obey the Law: Release the JFK Secret Service Records and End Other Needless Secrecy (by Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron, AlterNet)

11 Secret Documents Americans Deserve to See (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

Why is the FBI Still Hiding Information about the Assassination of Martin Luther King? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)