DO “FILES” HAVE CREDENCE ANYMORE ?
by JAMES A. MARPLES
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I have read numerous news articles pertaining to the Jeffrey Epstein files. Personally, I have gotten sick of the word “files” in recent years. Do “files” in the traditional-sense even exist anymore? When I was growing-up in the late 1960’s and early ’70s, I could clearly visualize a literal metal file-cabinet with paper folders containing a file or dossier. I even had a file-box myself for school-subjects.
Whether it is “The JFK Files”; “the Amelia Earhart files”; “the O.J. Simpson files”; “the Bill Cosby files”; or “the Jeffrey Epstein files”; — I have grown sick of the word ‘Files’, since so many agencies and entities such as the FBI, CIA, even sheriffs’ offices purport to have files on nearly each of us. At least, the 1970s TV-show “The Rockford Files” had James Garner’s voice on an answering machine saying: “Leave a Message and I’ll get back to you.” I’d trust him. But, today’s so-called “files” can be redacted/photoshopped/erased/ destroyed by a simple keystroke on a computer-keyboard. Furthermore, the old conventional ways of preserving records via paper was replaced largely by microfiche, and now flimsy e-mails and photos are now manipulated by “deepfakes”. What is real? What is not? Statutes of limitations are often ignored.
I understand classified data being withheld for national-security. But held back for 50, 60, 75 or 100 years or more? Granted, some modes of how we gather “intelligence” may involve the seedy testimony of informants such as prostitutes, mobsters, or double-agents. However, some methods aren’t secret anymore. Furthermore, I want accusers to report alleged crimes promptly; with contemporaneous eyewitness accounts. That, would go a long way toward extinguishing foolhardy conspiracy-theories that are even too bizarre for “The Twilight Zone”. Truth, is the best disinfectant.
