'JFK' director Oliver Stone calls on Congress to reopen investigation into Kennedy assassination
Filmmaker Oliver Stone urged legislators in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to reopen the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and reassess everything from the crime scene to the courtroom, including the rifle and bullets used, fingerprints and the autopsy.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order since returning to the Oval Office in January to release the long-concealed materials about the assassination of Kennedy and records on the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The 80,000 pages of JFK files were released March 18, giving experts and conspiracy theorists a trove of material to prove or disprove how Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963.
In his opening statements Tuesday, Stone, whose 1991 film "JFK" examined the investigation into Kennedy's assassination, raised an issue with the CIA's handling of files he requested to see regarding the assassination.
"Although mandated by law from the Central Intelligence Agency, which operated and still operates as a taxpayer-funded intelligence agency that arrogantly considered itself outside our laws," Stone said, "they say things like, ‘We will get back to you on that,’ and they never do.
"Nothing of importance has been revealed by the CIA in all these years," he continued, adding other records show illegal criminal activities in every facet of U.S. foreign policy in nearly every country on Earth. "Just to begin, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, South America, the Middle East. We could write a whole separate history of our country from the viewpoint of the countries, yet we do not know and are not allowed to know anything about the CIA's true history of the United States, which is almost, I believe, the real story."
He then called for the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., to reopen the investigation into Kennedy’s assassination, picking up what the Warren Commission failed to do.
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The Warren Commission, after an investigation, found no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald or Oswald's assassin, Jack Ruby, were part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to kill the president. It said at the time that one bullet that struck Kennedy passed through him and struck Texas Gov. John Connally, hitting his back, thigh, chest and wrist.
Critics of the commission’s findings call it the "magic bullet theory."
"I ask the committee to reopen what the Warren Commission failed miserably to complete," Stone said. "I ask you in good faith, outside all political considerations, to reinvestigate the assassination of this President Kennedy, from the scene of the crime to the courtroom … which never happened, but which means the chain of custody on the rifle, the bullets, the fingerprints, the autopsy that defies belief, and that if it were a murder, we'd have given to the poorest man dying in a gutter.
"Let us reinvestigate the fingerprints of intelligence all over Lee Harvey Oswald, from 1959 to 1960 – his violent death in 1963 — and, most importantly, this CIA, whose muddy footprints are all over this case, a true interrogation."
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Stone spoke about Deputy CIA Director James Angleton, who, before he died, talked about Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and others he referred to as the "Grand Masters."
"He did say, ‘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 soon,’" Stone said. "This is our democracy. This is our presidency. It belongs to us. Treat us with respect."
Stone said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter in January that Trump deserved "praise" for the order to release the JFK assassination files.
Despite pleas to open the investigation, the FBI notes on its website that after conducting some 25,000 interviews and running down tens of thousands of investigative leads, "the FBI found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone."
Oswald was killed shortly after the Kennedy assassination.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.