Previously classified JFK documents have been released to the public after an order from President Trump.
President Trump ordered the declassification of more than 63,000 pages of previously unseen files relating to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Many of the files were released without redaction, and had previously been used to fuel conspiracy theories about the death of the former president. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted 2,200 files containing the documents to its official website, joining 6 million pages of previously released records, photographs, videos and sound recordings relating to the assassination. President Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas while in the back of a convertible, at the age of 46.
Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said it may take time for all of the records to be fully reviewed, but that they would be carefully examined by experts across the field. Sabato is the author of “The Kennedy Half-Century” and is a renowned expert on the former president. “We have a lot of work to do,” Sabato said. “People are just going to have to accept that.”
President Trump announced the release of the files Wednesday afternoon, while visiting the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a Washington, DC-based organization that Trump has taken a particular interest in during his second term. “We have a tremendous amount of paper,” Trump said. “You’ve got a lot of reading.” Trump had previously said that releasing files relating to Kennedy’s death was a goal of his administration.
According to researchers, there were likely over 3,500 files that were still unreleased regarding the assassination prior to Trump’s order. The FBI announced as recently as last month that they had discovered roughly 2,400 new files as well. The release will encompass “all records previously withheld for classification”, according to the National Archives. The release does not include the recently discovered files, nor does it include about 500 IRS files that remain classified.
While much of the content in the documents is unclear, nothing so far, has changed the previously established findings of the circumstances or manner of Kennedy’s death, and does not disprove that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible. It’s also unclear whether all or some of the files will end up being significant, and the goal of the release was to end “rampant overclassification of trivial information”, according to Jefferson Morley, whoserves as the vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the JFK assassination.
The documents do provide significant insight into some of the most sensitive operations of the Central Intelligence Agency over the last 60 years and contain both handwritten notes and faded typewritten text surrounding the event itself and the aftermath, which saw Oswald killed two days later, on November 24th, 1963. One of the documents, dated November 20th, 1991, discusses Oswald’s past relationship with the Soviet Union, his marriage to his Russian ex-wife, and alleged poor marksmanship. The documents confirm that a KGB official had reviewed the files to determine whether or not Oswald had any connection to the KGB.
