Trump administration makes public thousands of files related to JFK assassination
About 2,200 files of over 63,000 pages posted to US National Archives but no narrative-changing revelations expected; some documents deal with CIA ploys against Cuba’s Castro
DALLAS — Unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy were released Tuesday evening.
About 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the website of the US National Archives and Records Administration. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination had previously been released.
US President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the release was coming, though he estimated it at about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
There is an intense interest in details related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
Kennedy scholars have said the documents that were still held by the archives were unlikely to contain any bombshell revelations or put to rest the rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination of the 35th US president.
An initial review of the papers did not show deviations from the central narrative.
The release is nonetheless likely to intrigue people who have long been fascinated with a dramatic period in history, with the assassination and with Kennedy himself.
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 on November 22, 1963.
One document with the heading “secret” was a typed account with handwritten notes of a 1964 interview by a Warren Commission researcher who questioned Lee Wigren, a CIA employee, about inconsistencies in material provided to the commission by the State Department and the CIA about marriages between Soviet women and American men.
Oswald was married to a Soviet woman, Marina Oswald, at the time of the shooting.
Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s support of communist forces in other countries.
The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point “that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime.”
“It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America,” the document reads.
One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called “Operation Mongoose,” or simply “the Cuban Project,” which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.
“It’s valuable to get all the documentation out, ideally in unredacted form,” Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard history professor whose books include “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917-56,” told Reuters in an email.
“But I don’t expect dramatic new revelations that alters in some fundamental way our grasp of the event,” he said.
Trump’s order
Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination
He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records.
The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s top health official.
He’s the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone Palestinian gunman from Jordan, who has acknowledged he was angry at Kennedy for supporting Israel, was solely responsible for his uncle’s assassination.
Kennedy Jr. declined to comment when contacted by Reuters on Tuesday.
November 22, 1963
When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.
But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor.
Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which US president Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy.
But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.
The JFK files
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during US president Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.
The National Archives says that the vast majority of its collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have already been released.
Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part. And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.
Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
What’s been learned
Some of the documents from previous releases have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban Embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On October 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September. The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.
