President Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified government documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, which have fueled conspiracy theories for decades.
The executive order the president signed Thursday also aims to declassify remaining federal records related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The order is one of a series of executive actions taken by President Trump in his first week in office. Second term.
“Even though it has been more than 50 years since the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. has not been made available to the public,” the official said. order said.
“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest that all records related to these assassinations be finally released without delay,” he added.
“Everything will become clear,” Trump told reporters.
“That's a big deal,” he said. added when he signed the purchase order.
During his re-election campaign, Trump promised to release the final batch of still-classified documents surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, which has gripped the public for decades. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately heeded pleas from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.
President Trump has nominated President Kennedy's nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be Secretary of Health in the new administration. Kennedy, whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while running for president in 1968, was not convinced that a lone gunman was responsible for the 1963 assassination of his uncle, John F. Kennedy. He said he did not.
The order directs the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to develop a plan to declassify the remaining John F. Kennedy records within 15 days and two others within 45 days. . It wasn't clear when the record would actually be released.
President Trump handed the pen he used to sign the order to an aide and instructed him to give it to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
talk to NBC News, Kennedy Jr. said, “I'm grateful to President Trump,” adding: “I think this is a great move because they need more transparency in our government. And he's keeping his promise to have the government tell the American people the truth about everything.” .”
Meanwhile, Kennedy's grandson Jack Schlossberg blasted Trump's latest executive order to X as a “political prop.””.
“The truth is much sadder than the myth. – A tragedy that didn’t need to happen. It's not part of an inevitable grand plan. Declassification is to use JFK as a political prop when he's not here to fight back. There's nothing heroic about it.'' Schlossberg Said.
Of the millions of government records related to John F. Kennedy's assassination, only a few thousand have yet to be fully declassified. And while many who have studied what has been released so far say the public should not expect any earth-shattering revelations, there remains keen interest in details about the assassination and the events surrounding it. has been received.
“There's always the possibility that something will slip through and become the tip of a larger iceberg that will be revealed,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century.” “That's what researchers are looking for. Now, there's a good chance we won't find it, but it could be there.”
On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed in downtown Dallas as his motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository building. That's because 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was stationed at a sniper stand on the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was murdered, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald while being transported to prison.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be kept in a single collection at the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of more than 5 million records was required to be made public by 2017, unless there are exceptions specified by the president.
During his first term, President Trump boasted that he would authorize the release of all remaining records relating to the presidential assassination, but ultimately withheld some due to potential harm to national security. It happened. The files have continued to be released under President Joe Biden's administration, but some remain unseen.
Sabato, who trains student researchers to scrutinize documents, said most researchers believe that “approximately” 3,000 records have not yet been released in whole or in part, many of which originate from the CIA. He said he agrees that.
Documents released over the past few years detail how intelligence agencies operated at the time, including Oswald's visits to Soviet and Cuban embassies during a visit to Mexico City in the weeks before his assassination. It also includes CIA cables and memos discussing the matter. The former Marine defected to the Soviet Union before returning to Texas.
However, there are still some documents in the collection that researchers believe the president cannot release. About 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to disclosure requirements in 2017. And researchers point out that the documents have also been destroyed for decades.
