Stone Claims Key Support on Opening J.F.K. Files

Oliver Stone, director of the controversial film “JFK,” said Wednesday that key members of Congress support his request to open still-secret government files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Stone said that Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), who chaired a special House committee that investigated the assassination, both said that they would sponsor legislation to make the files public with only minor privacy safeguards.

“This is a great day and it gives me an enormous sense of optimism,” Stone said. “Boren is all gung-ho. He is fully supportive and said he would run it though the Senate. Stokes is saying to me that it’s a go.”

Legislation to declassify the files of the House committee is being prepared under Stokes’ direction, the director added.

Other than the occasional blacking out of an undercover agent’s name, Boren said, virtually all the secret material relating to the assassination can be made public. He said a panel of historians could be named to review documents in cases where public release is under dispute.

“JFK,” nominated for eight Academy Awards, puts forth what Stone calls an “alternative scenario” to the Kennedy assassination that challenges official conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The film theorizes that Kennedy was murdered in an ambush arranged by elements of the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

At the end of the movie, a printed message informs viewers that volumes of assassination-related documents are locked up and inaccessible to researchers.

Boren predicted the documents would do little to change the current official conclusions about the assassination. Stone is withholding judgment.

“If the documents show there was nothing, I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong,” he said.

Stone said that he also met with former FBI and CIA Director William H. Webster and former CIA Director William E. Colby. They both support the idea of making the files on the Kennedy case available for public inspection, he said.

Stone, who was accompanied by a film crew and a retinue of public relations aides as he made his rounds on Capitol Hill, also met with Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. An aide said that Hamilton has favored opening the Kennedy files for more than a year, long before “JFK” was first shown.

‘JFK’ DEBATE: Stone, writers discuss film before New York audience. F8