JFK director Oliver Stone calls for reinvestigation of Kennedy’s assassination

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, whose 1991 film JFK portrayed President John F Kennedy’s assassination as the work of a shadowy government conspiracy, has called for a new congressional investigation of the killing during a hearing that aired conspiracy theories about it.

The freewheeling hearing of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, where partisan grievances were aired, followed last month’s release of thousands of pages of government documents related to the assassination.

The task force’s Republican chairwoman opened the proceedings by questioning the Warren Commission investigation’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in fatally shooting Kennedy as his motorcade finished a parade route in central Dallas on November 22 1963.

Scholars say the files that President Donald Trump ordered to be released showed nothing undercutting the conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy.

Many documents were previously released but contained newly removed redactions, including Social Security numbers, angering people whose personal information was disclosed.

Stone’s JFK was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won two.

It grossed more than 200 million dollars but was also dogged by questions about its historical accuracy.

Stone told the committee that he believes decades of delays in releasing unredacted records had prevented “clarity” about who killed JFK.

He also said a new investigation “outside all political considerations” should begin “at the scene of the crime” and re-examine all of the evidence from the day of the assassination.

Scholars and historians have concluded that there is strong evidence that Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine, acted alone in killing Kennedy.

“Can we return to a world where we can trust our government to level with us, the people for which this government exists?” Stone said.

“This is our democracy. This is our presidency. It belongs to us.”

The task force’s chairwoman, Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, said she thinks the federal government under previous administrations had engaged in “stonewalling”.

The task force also heard from a witness called by Democrats who criticised the Trump administration’s handling of the recent JFK document release.

John Davisson, senior counsel for the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, called it “hurried” and suggested that the National Archives and Records Administration “simply ignored” procedures for protecting people’s privacy.

The task force’s Democrats followed up on his comments by criticising the Trump administration over a variety of other issues.

“What I find funny about this hearing is that the Republicans are here relitigating whether CIA agents lied 60 years ago,” said Representative Jasmine Crockett, whose Texas district includes part of Dallas.

Ms Crockett suggested that Congress should instead delve deeper into revelations that top national security officials discussed sensitive attack plans over a messaging app and mistakenly added a journalist to the group chat.

The last formal congressional investigation of Kennedy’s assassination took three years and ended in 1978, when a House committee issued a report concluding that the Soviet Union, Cuba, organised crime, the CIA and the FBI were not involved, but Kennedy “probably was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”.

In 1976, a Senate committee said it had not uncovered enough evidence “to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy”.

The Warren Commission, appointed by Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B Johnson, concluded that Oswald fired on Kennedy’s motorcade from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked.

Police arrested Oswald within 90 minutes, and two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast on live television.

For Tuesday’s hearing, the task force also invited Jefferson Morley and James DiEugenio, who have written books arguing for conspiracies behind the assassination.

Morley is editor of the JFK Facts blog and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination.