Why does the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy remain important?

Because the main official findings and procedures have been tarnished if not discredited — as evident from four million pages of formerly confidential documents and two thousand books on the topic.

The revelations taint our government and watchdog institutions. Most news outlets, for example, have stubbornly failed to pursue logical follow-up investigations probing the guilty parties and their institutions. Congress has failed to enforce its own JFK Act of 1992, which required that all relevant documents be declassified. The CIA and National Archives are withholding documents, supposedly until 2017 but there is no guarantee that documents would be released even then.

For those who know or suspect the truth, these failures inspire cynicism, apathy, fear or greed in ways that undermine democracy and sound public policies. The economy, elections, law enforcement, war and taxes are each affected by the cover-up, as readily shown.

That was the gist of my remarks helping open this year’s major conference about the 50th anniversary of the Warren Commission report. The commission led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren pinned the murder’s blame exclusively on Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone gunman who fired at the presidential motorcade from the rear.

Rare among mainstream news organizations, C-SPAN has covered recent developments in-depth. C-SPAN, for example, this month cablecast my remarks and those of more than a half-dozen other speakers at the conference organized by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), a non-partisan non-profit founded in 1984. A photo shows the opening at right.

Links to the C-SPAN videos are below, along with links to 18 previous segments in our Justice Integrity Project “Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination.” Our guide lists the most significant research materials in books, videos, documents, reports, events and research archives. The catalogs display serious work regardless of viewpoint. Other columns by our Project offer interpretation and extensive sourcing.

In a similar serious manner, AARC presented a conference entitled, “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures.”

Nearly 50 speakers and more than 200 attendees convened at the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, MD from Sept. 26-28, 2014. Following editing, C-SPAN has been cablecasting highlights during recent Sundays, with materials archived for view on demand for free as part of the cable industry-funded network’s ongoing public service.

The speakers at the AARC conference drew on their expertise in such varied fields as military intelligence, national security, history, medicine, and acoustical engineering.

These experts, most with decades of research experience and advanced degrees, cited evidence that the Warren report could not have been correct in casting all blame on Oswald because, among many other reasons, Kennedy was killed by a shot from the front.

Speakers focused heavily on motives for killers and their oft-unwitting accomplices. As a result, major security lapses occurred at the crucial time and place in Dallas, with no Secret Service, city or count police deployed in the killing zone of downtown Dealey Plaza.

Kennedy’s approximate location at his death is shown on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza with an “X” in my photo. Oswald’s alleged “sniper’s nest” described by the Warren Commission was near the top of the Texas Book Depository at JFK’s rear.

But the book building’s sixth floor was nearly three times the distance from the “X” as the picket fence visible on the so-called Grassy Knoll. Most witnesses identified the knoll or fence area as a source of gunfire — evidence the commission ignored or dismissed as “not credible” for the most part.

The commission led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren ostensibly was to conduct a fair investigation. Revelations since then have indicated its major purpose was to pin the blame solely on Oswald without examining evidence linking him to military intelligence, the FBI, organized crime, Cuban exiles in web that potentially led to the highest levels of government involving both parties and important private sector supporters.

Space does not permit treatment of those allegations and their evidence in detail here. This column’s main focus is to recap why our Project’s ongoing investigations of corrupt current activities in public affairs leads back to the JFK killing and aftermath. That focus necessarily reveals the extreme reluctance of mainstream media to examine evidence seriously.

C-SPAN and a very few other outlets (most notably the Boston Globe this year) are rare exceptions that illustrate the remarkable longevity of the cover-up.