Ridge Runner Chronicles: What the Latest Declassified JFK Files Reveal

By Editor | July 15, 2025 |

By Bill Hoagland

For me, the most significant national event in my lifetime was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I still remember where I was when I first heard that he had been shot. Over the years, I have become an amateur historian about the assassination but despite my interest, I have never had closure about his death; there are still too many loose ends about what really happened. So when I heard that the last 5,612 classified files regarding the assassination were being declassified this past March, I was encouraged. But it did not take me long to realize that much of the information in those 5,612 files, consisting of over 80,000 pages and written in terms I did not fully appreciate, would be a waste of time for me to read on my own. I would be better off finding a book that could make sense of what those files really mean.

Two weeks ago, I found such a book. It is entitled “Kill Kennedy–The Secret Files They Never Wanted You to See”, by Cecil Hawthorne and published on June 15, 2025. If you doubt that there was and still is an ongoing attempt to hide these files, here is a direct quote from an internal CIA memo in 2017, rendered shortly before all of the JFK documents were supposed to have been produced and now included in the 2025 release. “Full compliance with JFK Act not feasible. Exposure of Cold War asset structure and liaison partnerships deemed reputationally corrosive. Recommend indefinite redaction under Section 5(b)”. This memo reads like so many of the other recently released files, filled with phrases that have a special meaning within the CIA, such as “atmospheric preparation”, “narrative denial buffers” and “plausibility control corridors”. Those of us not in the “deep state” need an interpreter to understand what is really being said.

Overall, these newly released files show that even before the JFK assassination, there was a “deep state” within our government–a group of non-elected people making the most significant decisions affecting us all without input from elected officials. (The theme of the book is that Kennedy intended to get rid of the “deep state” and that is probably why he was assassinated.) Let me mention one example in the book of the “deep state” trying to act on its own. This example, known as “Operation Northwoods”, was a plan concocted by the CIA to justify an invasion of Cuba after the failure of the Bay of Pigs disaster. The plan was to fake an attack by Cuba on our ships, airplanes and a few of our cities (Miami and Washington D.C.). It even included conducting funeral services for nonexistent American victims. The purpose was to get the American people worked up enough to support an all-out invasion of Cuba. But here is the real kicker on this nut-job plan: all five of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Generals Decker, LeMay, Shoup, Lemnitzer and Admiral Anderson—signed off on the recommendation and submitted it on March 13, 1962 to Secretary of Defense McNamara for approval. McNamara refused to submit it to JFK and shortly thereafter, General Lemnitzer, who was then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was “demoted” and reassigned to become Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO.

Doesn’t this nut-job plan to justify an invasion with phony facts sound vaguely familiar? Could it be that the same folks in the CIA who came up with the idea for “Operation Northwoods” scored big two years later with the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, when it was alleged that North Viet Nam, without provocation, attacked our spy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, thereby justifying our massive involvement in Viet Nam?

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ν Bill Hoagland has practiced law in Alton for more than 50 years, but he has spent more than 70 years hunting, fishing and generally being in the great outdoors. His wife, Annie, shares his love of the outdoor life. Much of their spare time is spent on their farm in Calhoun County. Bill can be reached at [email protected].

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