Welcome to JFKFacts’ new (hopefully) weekly newsletter which will bring you a roundup of recent posts on the site and news from JFK-related publications and events, as well as what’s interesting to us (and you, we hope) in Freedom of Information, secrecy and national security.

First, we had a weekend hit from Ryan Carter, our deejay for the Ultimate JFK Assassination Playlist on Spotify, about the Nas the Rapper, Hip-Hop Icon Wants to 'Figure Out Who Killed JFK',

JFK Facts revealed recently declassified documents from Finland’s intelligence service SUPO. Our Helsinki correspondent Rami Smatt investigated SUPO’s file on then-20 year old Lee Harvey Oswald’s transit through Finland to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1959. In The Finland File: How Did Oswald Get to the Soviet Union? Rami translates and unpacks the Finnish file, which only adds to the mystery of how, indeed, did Oswald get to Finland? Along the way, he found what Oswald’s companion on the train from Finland to Moscow remembered about the young Marine, later the alleged assassin of the president.

Rami joined our paid subscribers on Thursday night (at 3 a.m. Helsinki time) to discuss the article’s findings with Jeff Morley and answer questions.

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On a break from reality, Chad Nagle wrote about a little-known spaghetti western, “The Price of Power” (1969), an Italian reenactment of the JFK assassination taking place in the 1880s, conflating it with the actual 1880s assassination of President James Garfield. Chad’s JFK Cinema: Assassination Conspiracy as Spaghetti Western takes you deep into a film you may not ever see (or want to see) “Il Prezzo del Potere,” starring Van Johnson as the president.

Chad also wrote on Kash Patel’s proposed “24/7” declassification office that, should he be confirmed as FBI director, could release the records about the JFK assassination that are still withheld after 63 years. As Patel said: “I want JFK, I want the 9/11 files, I want this, I want that.”

Also, on this week’s podcast, Jeff talked with Aaron Good, author and podcaster of American Exception (and author of the book with that name), to talk about how the JFK assassination fits into the broader story of empire and covert power in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In other news in the New Year, JFK Facts reposted Michael Isikoff’s scoop from SpyTalk on the pre-Trump inaugural resignation of Jay Bratt, the Justice Department official who had a “key role in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president.” Bratt had authorized the search of Mar-a-Lago for illicitly removed classified records and apparently feared that incoming DOJ appointees would swiftly retaliate against him, according to Isikoff.

In the week of tributes to the late President Jimmy Carter, the National Security Archive highlighted its Jimmy Carter: A Declassified Obituary, published in December. This “Briefing Book” present nine documents showing a sample of hundreds of documents between Carter and his top advisers archived at the Carter presidential library that have been declassified over the years. The National Security Archive is presenting them now, as they write, “to give some insight into Carter’s personality, his relationship with top aides, and his approach to foreign policy.”

This week Jeff is teaching his online course on the OSWALD FILE starting Wednesday January 15. The four week class uses the CIA’s pre-assassination file on Lee Harvey Oswald as a way of understanding the events that lead to November 22. Sign up at MorleyCourses.com,

See you next week!

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