Donald Trump releases remainder of JFK assassination files
The final batch of files surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy have been released under an executive order by US President Donald Trump.
unbranded – Newsworthy
The assassination of former President John F. Kennedy will take center stage at a House hearing on Tuesday, as a panel of witnesses testifies about the documents recently released on one of the most shocking moments in American history.
However, multiple people expected to speak on Tuesday, including filmmaker Oliver Stone, have been critical of investigations and long-held findings about the assassination. Stone’s 1991 film “JFK” faced harsh pushback from historians for its suggestions that Kennedy’s death was the result of high-level conspiracies.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., the chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said Sunday lawmakers will hear about the value of the flood of documents released by the National Archives earlier this month about the shooting.
Renewed attention on the assassination comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
Nothing in the files has changed the long-held findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in fatally shooting Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 while the then-president rode in a motorcade in Dallas.
The other witnesses in Tuesday’s hearing include author Jefferson Morley, the vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a non-profit that promotes access to historical government documents, and James DiEugenio, an author who has targeted investigations into Kennedy’s assassination. Stone wrote the foreword to DiEugenio’s book “The JFK Assassination.”
There may be even more information coming, as estimates said a total of 80,000 pages were expected to be published after a review by Justice Department lawyers.
The National Archives’ release page suggests more may be released as well: “As the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to this page.”
But Alice L. George, a historian whose books include “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy,” said government records were unlikely to resolve questions some still have.
“I think there may continue to be more record releases,” she said. “I seriously doubt that any will include great revelations. The Warren Commission report was done well, but it was done when many of the key players were alive. It’s much harder to find the truth when most of the people involved are dead.”
– Reuters
A lack of immediate bombshells doesn’t surprise some experts.
The National Archives collected the documents from other agencies ‒ like the CIA ‒ years ago, according to James Johnston, author of “Murder, Inc.: The CIA under John F. Kennedy.”
“If it was going to embarrass the agency or tell a different story, they wouldn’t have turned them over to the National Archives in the first place,” Johnston said.
Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard history professor whose books include “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917-56,” said in an email the new documents may help historians better understand the circumstances around the assassination.
“It’s valuable to get all the documentation out, ideally in unredacted form. But I don’t expect dramatic new revelations that alters in some fundamental way our grasp of the event,” he said.
– Joel Shannon and Josh Meyer
Looking to read the JFK files released earlier this month yourself? You can find them on the National Archives’ website here.
Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since Kennedy’s assassination. There are also photographs and sounds recordings, mostly from the 1960s.
– Marina Pitofsky
While an initial review of the papers didn’t contain any shocking revelations, the documents do offer a window into the climate of fear at the time surrounding U.S. relations with the Soviet Union shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nearly led to a nuclear war.
Many of the documents reflected the work by investigators to learn more about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union and track his movements in the months leading up to Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.
– Josh Meyer
Contributing: Reuters