Journalist on JFK Files Release: ‘Just Going to be More Conspiracy'

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is among the most studied events in modern American history. And over the last half century there is arguably no one who has followed the events more closely than Hugh Aynesworth.

Aynesworth, 86, is a celebrated journalist — a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — who was in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, and went on to break several major stories about the ensuing investigation over the decades that followed.

“I’ll bet it is going to shut down the Internet. Massive,” Aynesworth said about Thursday’s impending release of the remaining classified JFK assassination files that have been maintained for decades by the National Archives.

Aynesworth, who is semi-retired and lives in Dallas following a career as a newsman with ABC News, Newsweek, The Dallas Morning News and several other prominent organizations, predicts that the classified files, while significant, will not point to some previously unreported conspiracy like a second gunman.

“Everywhere I’ve worked for over the last half-century I’ve had to run down conspiracy stories,” Aynesworth said. “So, a lot of [the newly released information] is going to be very interesting. And it will cause a lot more books and television series. But it is, I don’t think there’s going to be any bombshell. [There is] just going to be more conspiracy.”

A wealth of information – approximately 10 percent of the records generated as a part of the official government investigation of the Kennedy assassination – will be released on Thursday, 25 years after Congress acted to authorize their release with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

Hugh Aynesworth is the only journalist who was at all four of the significant scenes surrounding the assassination in Dallas: he was in Dealey Plaza when the President was shot, at the Oak Cliff crime scene where Lee Harvey Oswald reportedly shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, inside of the Texas Theater when police officers apprehended Oswald and inside the room at the Dallas Police Department when Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald.

Over the years, and many subsequent investigative reports, Aynesworth is sure of two things – that Oswald was the lone assassin and that several federal agencies covered up what they knew when during the ensuing investigation.

“It was sort of a ‘Save your butt’ thing for the FBI, the CIA and, to some extent, the Dallas Police,” Aynesworth said about what he believes was an effort to obscure the official record. “However, had the Dallas Police or the Secret Service been told what the CIA knew that assassination could not have happened.”

For instance, previously released documents proved that the CIA was aware that in the weeks prior to the assassination Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico City, where he made multiple attempts to obtain a visa at the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy. During that time, Oswald apparently had direct contact with a KGB assassin. But the CIA did not alert anyone to their knowledge until after the assassination of the President.

“[The document release] will hurt some of the agencies. They falsified evidence,” Aynesworth said. “The CIA knew he was trying to get to Russia or Cuba. They fudged things in Mexico City.”