Margot Williams

United States

Research Editor at The Intercept

Researcher, reporter, factchecker, librarian. @TheIntercept & @ICIJorg New at Mastodon: @[email protected]

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Articles

Week in Review: De Gaulle on the Killing, and a New Series on JFK in the Movies

2 weeks ago | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

This week JFK Facts delved into a story that emerged from newly released JFK files about Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s comments to French President Charles de Gaulle in 1963 — and what de Gaulle thought of the assassination of his friend and rival John F. Kennedy. The gist: RFK told de Gaulle the killing was a coup d'état, and de Gaulle shared that sentiment.
Week in Review: Gripping Testimony at the JFK Hearing on Capitol Hill

3 weeks ago | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

Over a holiday week that commemorates the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces, JFK Facts highlighted the testimony of living witnesses to the death and investigations into the assassination of Commander in Chief and President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The hearing was held on May 20 before the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R.-Fla.).
Week in Review: The Second JFK Hearing

1 month ago | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

Jeff Morley’s obituary for the JFK researcher and musicologist Dan Storper who passed away on May 22 at age 74 appeared earlier today. Two days before Dan’s passing, the second hearing of the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, was held on Capitol Hill. There was revealing, historic, and at times, emotional testimony from five men who are living witnesses to the events of the assassination of President John F.
Emergence of cellular nematic order is a conserved feature of gastrulation in animal embryos

1 month ago | biorxiv.org | Xin Li |Robert J. Huebner |Margot Williams |Jessica Sawyer

AbstractCells undergo dramatic morphological changes during embryogenesis, yet how these changes affect the formation of ordered tissues remains elusive. Here, we show that a phase transition leading to the formation of a nematic liquid crystal state during gastrulation in the development of embryos of fish, frogs, and fruit flies occurs by a common mechanism despite substantial differences between these evolutionarily distant animals.
RFK Assassination Documents Released

2 months ago | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

On April 18, documents relating to the June 4, 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles were made available on the National Archives web site. The release was announced in a joint statement from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the murdered senator and candidate for president in 1968.
WORLD EXCLUSIVE: The CIA's Pre-Assassination File on Lee Harvey Oswald

2 months ago | jfkfacts.substack.com | Jefferson Morley |Margot Williams

Perhaps the single most significant new document to emerge from the new JFK assassination files in the past two years is the material that CIA counterintelligence officers compiled on Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Yes, the newly declassified 1961 memo that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote to JFK about reorganizing the CIA exposed deep divisions between the White House and the clandestine service that persisted to the end of JFK’s presidency.
JFK Facts Week in Review: The Documents Are Finally Released

Mar 23, 2025 | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

It’s not an exaggeration to state that this week was one of the best in decades for JFK assassination researchers. It was a marathon that must have been as chaotic for the National Archives staffers who spent days and nights declassifying and scanning documents as it has been for people in the JFK research community and the media, first awaiting their release and then speed-reading through them.
JFK Week in Review: Sitting Here in Limbo, Waiting for the Release of JFK Documents

Feb 23, 2025 | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

A photograph from Warren Commission exhibits shows the open limousine that carried President and Mrs. Kennedy through downtown Dallas. Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie, sat in front of them. (Credit: National Archives, RG 272)As we anticipate the (no-longer forbidden) fruits of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 23 Execut…
JFK Week in Review: Alex Jones, New Orleans, and Trump's proposed CIA director

Jan 19, 2025 | jfkfacts.substack.com | Margot Williams

The confirmation hearing on a new Trump-era director of the Central Intelligence Agency was among the first in the new 119th Congress. In the run-up to former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s confirmation hearing for head of the CIA, Chad Nagle’s Where Does Trump’s CIA Pick Stand on the JFK Files? laid out the nominee’s background and the issues related to his confirmation. Among them are the declassification of files relating to the JFK assassination.
Google Alerts to the Past

Jan 12, 2025 | margotwilliams.substack.com | Margot Williams

I have some — well, many — Google Alerts set up to follow topics in Google News. I regularly go into my Alerts page to manage, i.e., delete alerts that no longer interest me. But what I don’t do, unfortunately, is manage those longstanding old alerts for news I want to follow every day. Resolved: I need to do this to comply with my 2025 New Year resolutions to make my email feed more manageable. The problem I can fix with my alert query is to perfect the search itself to be more specific.