Louis Stokes Quotes
One of the first things we found out was that the Warren Commission never pursued a conspiracy investigation.
Stokes, Louis. Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992: Hearings Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993.
This was the reason that the FBI withheld information from the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Director was concerned that some people might conclude that the FBI bore some of the responsibility for the assassination for losing track of him. The CIA also withheld information to the commission to cover some of their misdeeds.
There was no way of reopening the investigation into the assassination without the public finding out that the CIA and FBI both had deliberately misled the Warren Commission and the House Investigating Committee in the original investigation. Nixon and other politicians who likely knew of the scandal did not want the confidence of the public eroded in this important agencies, and that was probably his motivation for the turn down rather than trying to cover up facets about the assassination itself.
Most Americans do not believe the official explanation of the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone. However, Kerry was the first of very few high government officials who would express this opinion in public. The fact that Oswald himself was then assassinated in the Dallas Police Station denied any information from him. Then were many foul ups of the investigations that most analysts of the assassination believe were foul ups or cover-ups of other wrong doing. Examples were: Parts of Kennedy’s brain was missing and the autopsy notes were burned by the naval physician who did the autopsy before anyone could see them; the FBI and CIA both lied to the Warren Commission, President Johnson, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy; Both the FBI and the CIA had files on Oswald; the CIA had tried to assassinate Fidel Castro before including paying the Mafia to do it (The efforts were bungled and Castro found out about most; Oswald had w few weeks earlier tried to assassinate the right wing John Birch Society fanatic, General Edwin Walker and the CIA and FBI missed that.); Shortly before the assassination Walker and his fanatics printed and distributed a “Wanted for Treason” poster accusing President Kennedy of selling out America. (See {635732}.)
Disciplining agents for dereliction in the Oswald investigation would be seen as Early in 1962, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the Immigration & Naturalization Service all had files on Oswald but none of them shared the information with any of the other agencies. Before the Kennedy murder, the FBI had gathered evidence that Oswald may have been a deranged Marxist who supported the Cuban Revolution. The Central Intelligence Agency knew that Oswald was working at the Texas Book Depository. If the Secret Service had been privy to these agency’s files or even one of them, the Kennedy Assassination might have been prevented. Also, to J. Edgar Hoover’s later distress, the FBI did not follow up and locate Oswald when they learned their facts. He disciplined several agents. See {634531}. No one was more careful to “protect” the image of the FBI than Hoover. He used his powers to classify documents as “Secret” and did so for all the documentation of the FBI negligence and the discipline until 2000 when it became public.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston. The main reason for the secrecy was that the FBI had made some serious blunders in tracking Oswald before the assassination, and failed to apprehend him when he was involved in another attempted assassination, and no one thought this negated the single assassin theory so J. Edgar Hoover was able to keep the Bureau’s incompetence secret. However, the CIA, even with the secrecy lied to the Commission to cover up their blunder in having hired Mafia organized crime figures to assassinate Fidel Castro. The attempts failed but Castro threatened to retaliate, and this possibility was never discussed by the Warren Commission as they did not have the information much less the public. Because of the secrecy, many people have been suspicious of the lone assassin conclusion that the commission had reached as they assumed venality rather than incompetence.
Louis Stokes was an American attorney, civil rights pioneer and politician. He served 15 terms in the United States House of Representatives – representing the east side of Cleveland – and was the first African American congressman elected in the state of Ohio. He was one of the Cold War-era chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, headed the Congressional Black Caucus, and was the first African American on the House Appropriations Committee.
