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      Inside the 24-Hour Scramble Among Top National Security Officials Over the J.F.K. Documents

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      President Trump’s national security team was stunned and forced to scramble after he announced on Monday that he would release 80,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with only 24 hours’ notice.Administration officials had been working on releasing the records since January, when Mr. Trump signed an executive order mandating it. But that process was still underway on Monday afternoon when Mr. Trump, during a visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, said the files would be made available the next day.By the time the files were made public on Tuesday evening, some of the country’s top national security officials had spent hours trying to assess any possible security hazards under extreme deadline pressure.John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had been emphasizing to senior administration officials that some documents had nothing to do with Mr. Kennedy and were developed decades after the assassination, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions. He wanted to make sure that other officials were fully aware of what the files contained and would not be caught off guard, but he was clear that he would not seek to impede any files from being released, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.Soon after Mr. Trump spoke on Monday afternoon, officials at the National Security Council quickly convened a call to map out a plan to take stock of which documents still needed to be unredacted. The release had to be coordinated with the National Archives and Records Administration. Some officials raised concerns about unintended consequences of rushing the release of the files, including the disclosure of sensitive personal information like the Social Security numbers of people who were still alive, the people said.Officials involved in the process of declassification said the number of files had expanded greatly over many decades because, with each investigation into Kennedy-related material, information that had nothing to do with the assassinated president has come under that umbrella. In some cases, that includes documents created decades after his death, according to one person with knowledge of the process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      J.F.K., Blown Away, What Else Do I Have to Say?

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      Why the newly released documents won’t put out the fire.On his third day in office in January, President Trump ordered the release of documents from the National Archives related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As Trump declared on the campaign trail, “It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the TRUTH.”The truth is that nothing in the archives is going to dispel the fog of hypothesis, rumor and speculation that swirls around these killings. The assassinations of the 1960s — President Kennedy’s in particular — remain the source and paradigm of modern conspiratorial thinking, a style of argument to which the current president is passionately committed. Whatever details emerge now are unlikely to settle the ongoing debates, which are less about what happened in Dallas in 1963 (or Memphis and Los Angeles five years later) than about the character of the American state and the nature of reality itself.Was Kennedy killed by the Mafia? By the C.I.A.? Was he an early, liberal victim of what modern conservatism has come to call the Deep State? A lot of people think so, and there may be unanswered questions hovering around his death. But there’s a thin line between skepticism and paranoia, between reasonable guesses and wild invention. The American imagination often gravitates to the far side of that line, and the Kennedy assassination was one of the shocks that pushed us over it.By 1963, we were already headed in that direction. Suspicion was part of the atmosphere of the Cold War years, when what Kennedy himself called the “twilight struggle” between the United States and the Soviet Union was accompanied by the rapid growth of the American security state, which rested equally on paperwork and secrecy. Through the years of McCarthy, Sputnik and the quiz show scandals, paranoia was in the air.Kennedy’s killing was almost immediately folded into a narrative structure that had already surfaced in popular culture as well as politics, a mode of storytelling that treated public events as the expressions of secret plots. Richard Condon’s Cold War thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” (published in 1959 and adapted by Hollywood in 1962) and Thomas Pynchon’s shaggy-dog experimental whodunit “V.” are among the best-known pre-assassination examples of this paranoid style in American fiction. (The phrase “paranoid style” comes from an influential essay on political conspiratorialism by the Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, originally delivered as a lecture shortly before the assassination and published in Harper’s in 1964.)That same year, the Warren Commission Report emphatically concluded that Oswald was the sole shooter and the only party responsible for Kennedy’s killing. Yet the report did anything but close the case. Through the years that followed, the commission was subjected to a steady stream of revisionism and rebuttal, carried out first by journalists and politicians and later, perhaps more decisively, by novelists and filmmakers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      C.I.A. Director Says U.S. Has Paused Intelligence Sharing With Ukraine

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      The C.I.A. director John Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that intelligence sharing with Ukraine had been paused alongside military aid to pressure its government to cooperate with the Trump administration’s plans to end the country’s war with Russia.Speaking on Fox Business, Mr. Ratcliffe applauded the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement on Tuesday praising President Trump and insisting that he supported peace with Russia. Mr. Ratcliffe said he thought intelligence sharing would resume.“President Zelensky put out a statement that said, ‘I am ready for peace and I want President Donald Trump’s leadership to bring about that peace,’” Mr. Ratcliffe said. “And so I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen, I think will go away, and I think we’ll work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine as we have, to push back on the aggression that’s there.”On Tuesday, after Mr. Trump ordered a halt to military assistance, officials differed on whether the United States was continuing to share intelligence. One official said all intelligence that was not directly related to the protection of Ukrainian troops had been put on hold. Another official said that exception covered most intelligence sharing, and information still was flowing to Ukrainian forces.Mr. Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that Mr. Trump asked for a pause on intelligence sharing. And his comments suggest that the C.I.A. put at least some of its intelligence sharing with Ukraine on hold for a short time.Trump administration officials have said the pauses were a warning to the Ukrainians of the consequences if they did not cooperate with Mr. Trump’s peace plan. The details of those plans remain unclear. Mr. Trump has spoken approvingly of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and his aides have endorsed elements of the country’s ideas for ending the war.But European countries are trying to develop their own plan that could win over both Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky. More

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      Sept. 11 Plea Deal Includes Lifetime Gag Order on C.I.A. Torture Secrets

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      The clause is included in a disputed plea agreement between a Pentagon official and the man accused of planning the attacks that killed 3,000 people.Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the prisoner at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, has agreed to never disclose secret aspects of his torture by the C.I.A. if he is allowed to plead guilty rather than face a death-penalty trial.The clause was included in the latest portions of his deal to be unsealed at a federal appeals court in Washington. A three-judge panel is considering whether former Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III lawfully withdrew from a plea agreement with Mr. Mohammed in the capital case against five men who are accused of conspiring in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000.The C.I.A. has never taken a public position on whether it supports the deal, and the agency declined to comment on Friday. But the latest disclosure makes clear that Mr. Mohammed would not be allowed to publicly identify people, places and other details from his time in the agency’s secret prisons overseas from 2003 to 2006.It has been publicly known for years that Mr. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times by the C.I.A. It has also been revealed that waterboarding was done by a three-person interrogation team led by Bruce Jessen and James E. Mitchell, two former contract psychologists for the agency. Details of Mr. Mohammed’s violent treatment, including rectal abuse, have emerged in court filings and leaks.But the agency has protected the names of other people who worked in the “black site” prisons, notably medical staff, guards and other intelligence agency employees. That includes the people who questioned Mr. Mohammed hundreds of times as he was shuttled between prisons in Afghanistan, Poland and other locations, which the C.I.A. has not acknowledged as former black sites.Now, a recently unredacted paragraph in Mr. Mohammed’s 20-page settlement says he agreed not to disclose “any form, in any manner, or by any means” information about his “capture, detention, confinement of himself or others” while in U.S. custody.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Considers Kennedy’s Daughter-in-Law for C.I.A. Deputy Director

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      Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raised alarms for publishing a book about her work at the agency without going through a review process.President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law to serve as the deputy director at the C.I.A., according to four people briefed on the matter.Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, 44, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to Mr. Kennedy’s son, met with Mr. Trump last week to discuss the job, the people said. The position does not require Senate confirmation, unlike the director job.Mr. Kennedy, who is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is among those encouraging Mr. Trump to hire her, according to two people close to the Trump transition team. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.In an interview in 2023, Mr. Kennedy said it was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the C.I.A. was involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963.Ms. Fox Kennedy, who served as her father-in-law’s campaign manager, has raised alarms within the agency and among some lawmakers, in part because she published a book about her time in the C.I.A. in 2019 — while Mr. Trump was president — without going through the lengthy government review process required to check that classified information is not made public.Some former officials questioned details in the book about Ms. Fox Kennedy’s meetings in Pakistan with Islamic extremists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant

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      Israeli forces had been steadily closing in on Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, for weeks before he was cornered and killed in a ruined house in the Gaza Strip.At the end, the fearsome militant leader who had helped unleash a vicious war seemed barely a threat.In video captured by an Israeli drone, a man sat alone, badly wounded and caked in dust amid the ruins of a building in the Gaza Strip, wrapped in a kaffiyeh and staring directly into the camera. The man, Israeli officials say, was Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas.The stare-down lasted some 20 seconds, then the man limply but defiantly hurled a broken piece of wood toward the drone. Not long afterward, officials say, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, and a tank shell flattened part of the building.So ended the long hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men. It began hours after the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that Mr. Sinwar helped orchestrate, and concluded amid the destruction of a Rafah neighborhood resembling so many parts of Gaza, leveled by the Israeli military in the year since.The manhunt involved Israeli commandos and spies, as well as a special unit established inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and at the Central Intelligence Agency. It used a sophisticated electronic surveillance dragnet and ground-penetrating radar provided by the United States.New details about Mr. Sinwar’s movements over the past year have emerged since his death, including the fact that Israeli intelligence officers had seen mounting evidence since August that Mr. Sinwar, or possibly other top Hamas leaders, might be in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Slotkin and Rogers Attack Each Other’s Records in Michigan Senate Debate

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      A debate between Representative Elissa Slotkin, the Democrat running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and former Representative Mike Rogers, her Republican opponent, turned bitter on Tuesday night as the candidates sought to disqualify each other with attacks over their voting records in the House.Ms. Slotkin, a third-term lawmaker, hit Mr. Rogers, who retired in 2015 after 14 years in the House, for his stance on abortion, pointing to his dozens of votes in favor of legislation that would have banned the procedure or restricted access to it.“Do not trust him,” Ms. Slotkin said, calling Mr. Rogers “unilaterally pro-life” and warning voters not to believe his promise that he would not jeopardize Michigan’s constitutionally guaranteed right to an abortion.Mr. Rogers sought to tie Ms. Slotkin to Biden administration policies he said had been bad for Michigan, including supporting emissions standards that would require two-thirds of new cars sold to be electric vehicles by 2032.“My opponent has multiple times supported E.V. mandates, trying to pick the cars that our companies have to build and the cars that you’re going to have to buy,” Mr. Rogers said.The back-and-forth highlighted the increasingly hostile tone of the race between Ms. Slotkin and Mr. Rogers, one of the few Senate races considered a tossup in the upcoming election, in which control of the chamber is up for grabs. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is retiring, has held the seat since 2001, and the party must hold it to have a chance of winning its uphill battle to hang onto the majority. Recent polls have shown Ms. Slotkin with a slight edge in the contest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Hezbollah Threat Loomed, Israel Built Up Its Spy Agencies

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      In the immediate days after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, Israeli intelligence officials feared a pre-emptive strike was imminent from another longtime enemy, Hezbollah. They frantically prepared to stop it with plans to strike and kill Hassan Nasrallah, the powerful Hezbollah leader who the Israelis knew would be in a bunker in Beirut.But when Israel informed the White House of its plans, alarmed administration officials discounted the imminent Hezbollah strike. President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told him that killing Mr. Nasrallah would set off a regional war and asked him to hold his fire, current and former senior American and Israeli officials said.On Saturday, Israel announced that it had killed Mr. Nasrallah after warplanes dropped more than 80 bombs on four apartment buildings in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah leader of more than three decades had gone to meet his top lieutenants. Mr. Biden was not informed ahead of time, aggravating the White House.Smoke rose over buildings in Beirut after Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesBut the more salient outcome for both Israel and the United States was how successfully Israeli intelligence had pinpointed Mr. Nasrallah’s location and penetrated Hezbollah’s inner circle. In a matter of weeks, Israel has decimated the senior and midlevel ranks of Hezbollah and left the group reeling.That success is a direct result of the country’s decision to devote far more intelligence resources in targeting Hezbollah after its 2006 war with the Iran-backed terrorist group. It was a defining moment for Israeli intelligence. The Israeli army and the intelligence agencies failed to score a decisive victory in that 34-day conflict, which ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and allowed Hezbollah, despite heavy losses, to regroup and prepare for the next war with Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More