President Trump released a cache of unedited confidential documents on Tuesday in connection with the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, but experts say it’s unlikely that the document will end speculation about the infamous killing.
Trump told reporters Monday during his visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts that the new release would be around 80,000 pages, but he did not provide any additional information about what will be included in the file.
“People have been waiting for this for decades,” Trump said. “It’s going to be very interesting.”
The release was published on the National Archives website around 4pm Pacific Time and consisted of 1,123 PDF documents, including handwritten and input reports. Some documents are blurry to read and difficult to read, perhaps due to aging and quality of copying.
A rough review of the release did not challenge and bring great revelation to the established fact that Kennedy was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald during his trip in an open-top convertible through Dallas. However, the momentum of the vast documents takes quite a bit of time to look into the historians.
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, said in a statement it was “the most positive news about declassifying JFK files since the 1990s.” The nonprofit foundation maintains a public database of government records regarding the assassination of Kennedy.
“These long-term records shed new light on JFK’s distrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plot, Oswald’s surveillance in Mexico City, and the CIA propaganda business involving Oswald,” he said. Morley pointed out that the record does not include any of the 2,400 new FBI files discovered last month.
Timothy Naphtali, a historian at Columbia University’s Faculty of International Public Affairs, told The New York Times that he believes many documents have been categorized to protect the CIA intelligence collection methods, not because of the inflammatory information about the assassination.
Despite the lack of significant new revelations revealed, the documents contain a lot of fascinating information about the investigation that followed the assassination.
One report describes an investigation into Oswald’s connection with the KGB. Oswald lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962, and many conspiracy theorists assume that he was acting on behalf of the Soviets.
In the document, US Professor EB Smith said that his longtime Russian friend, KGB member Slava Nikonov, reviewed the “five thick volumes” that the agency had at Oswald, “I am confident that Oswald is not an agent controlled by the KGB.”
Also in the file is a note from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who is concerned that the fact that Oswald was murdered two days after the assassination will “convince the public that Oswald is a real assassin.” The memo was dictated on November 24, 1963, the day Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, the owner of the Dallas Nightclub, while being transported to police.
The records are just a few of the millions of pages of assassination-related documents held by the National Archives, most of which are already open to the public.
Even sixty years after Kennedy’s death, researchers and the public remain fascinated by the assassination and the events surrounding it. And the possibility that the document uncovers important new information about one of the most shocking murders of the 20th century is fascinating for scholars and conspiracy theorists.
“When this young, charming charismatic president is at the peak of his power (top of his game), it’s a Shakespeare moment in American politics.
“The distrust of Kennedy’s life being so sudden and seemingly meaningless is just one thing that’s just being with you.
On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was in an open-top convertible with Texas Governor John B. Connally Jr. and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy with Connally’s wife Nelly.
The crowd lined up the street and waved to Kennedy as they drove. As the Motorcade was passing through the Texas School Book depository, a shooting was heard at the Plaza.
Kennedy was hit in the neck and head and was declared dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Connally was shot in the back, but he recovered.
Authorities arrested workers in the book building called Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and Marxist sympathizer who at one point tried to become citizens of the Soviet Union. Oswald was killed by Ruby on a PART Walk that aired on live television.
The government concluded that both men acted alone, but theories about death have grown for over half a century. The killings have produced multiple conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the CIA. This included the second gunman in a grassy hill nearby, or even the Cuban or Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who played a role in the shooting.
A Gallup poll released in 2023 showed that the majority of Americans continued to believe that Oswald acted not alone, but worked with others in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
One reason other theories continue is that the government narratives in which Oswald acted alone are explanations and stories that are dissatisfied with the public, Shaw said.
“These other alternative papers create at least more complicated and interesting stories,” Shaw said.
The broad conspiracy theory urged Congress to pass a 1992 law mandating the 1992 law that would allow documents related to Kennedy’s assassination to be released within 25 years, except for those who could harm national security. Trump released several documents in 2017, but agreed to delay disclosure for others. Former President Biden did the same during his term.
However, after taking office for a second term, Trump signed an executive order mandating that required the release of all government records related to Kennedy’s assassination. He also mandated that Kennedy’s brothers, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Pastor Martin Luther King Jr., records of the assassination.
Shaw said even the release of the document would endure debates over Kennedy’s death.
“The story won’t end,” he said. “The debate continues about the people behind John F. Kennedy’s murder. There’s always a sense that these are official documents. What else could there be?”
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