John F. Kennedy, via White House archives.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Jack Ruby, who would shoot and kill Lee Harvey Oswald, told an FBI informant to “watch the fireworks” just hours before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to newly released JFK files.

The interaction between Ruby and FBI informant Bob Vanderslice wasn’t relayed to the FBI until March 1977, nearly 14 years after Kennedy was shot, the Independent reports. 

“The informant stated that on the morning of the assassination, Ruby contacted him and asked if he would ‘like to watch the fireworks’,” the FBI record stated.

“He was with Jack Ruby and standing at the corner of the Postal Annex Building facing the Texas School Book Depository Building, at the time of the shooting.

“Immediately after the shooting, Ruby left and headed toward the area of the Dallas Morning News Building, without saying anything to him.”

Ruby died in jail in 1967.

Martin Luther King Jr.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Tune into 910AM the Superstation at 11 a.m Friday for a discussion on the release of files on civil rights killings. 

The long-awaited release of secret John F. Kennedy assassination files has prompted a push for the FBI to release secret or redacted files on killings during the civil rights era.

Students from Highstown High School in New Jersey lobbied Congress to make the files public.

“This issue is not as prominent within the mainstream media, but it should be,” one of the students, senior Zabir Rahman, told the Clarion Ledger. “The families of the victims of these atrocious crimes deserve justice if they can get it and some measure of closure.” 

The students used the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992 as a model for what they called the “Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2017,” which would create an independent review board to coordinate the release of classified records on civil rights killings.

Many of the killings are detailed in FBI files that remain largely redacted. They include the KKK’s 1964 killing of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and the 1959 lynching of Mack Charles Parker.

FBI records on the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. also contain redactions.

Activists also are calling on redacted files relating to the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X.

Civil rights lawyers said the largely secret files make it difficult to solve cold cases.

The measure to release the files was introduced in March by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, and is under consideration by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

So far the bill has received bipartisan support. Also backing the bill is Cynthia Deitle, a former FBI special agent who ran the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Cold Case Division.

“The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2017 is a crucial piece of legislation that must be passed by Congress and signed by President Trump,” she Deitle in a statement. “We as a society can no longer wait for vital records housed within the FBI to stay within their exclusive control. The federal government needs to release the records to researchers, academics, journalists and others who are devoted to finding the truth as to what happened to thousands of individuals who were murdered as a result of racially-motivated homicides. We have the ability, with passage of this act, to rewrite history and bring justice long delayed.”

Steve Neavling

Although Clint Hill was one of the closest witnesses to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the former Secret Service agent said he would never divulge the harrowing account publicly, especially not in a book, the Marin Independent Journal reports.

Hill, who is now 82 and lives in Tiburon, Calif., said he changed his mind after all of these years when he was assured any book he worked on would not include gossip.

After all, he had quite a compelling story to tell: As Jackie Kennedy’s guard, he is widely known for climbing into the president’s car just after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.

Hill, who has written two New York Times best-sellers with co-author Lisa McCubbin, is to receive a Lifetime of Civic Leadership award from the Concord-based JFK University’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership on Friday.

Their most recent book, “Five Days in November,” hit book stores in November.

“I’m glad we did (the books), because it provides information to people that is quite persuasive about what happened that day,” Hill said.

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Read JFKFacts.org