Trump administration releases new JFK assassination records
Many of the files related to the JFK assassination have already been disclosed, including a tranche of 13,000 documents released during the Biden administration. Many of the documents released Tuesday had been previously redacted, however.
Trump said on Monday that 'people have been waiting for decades' to see the 80,000 pages of records related to Kennedy's assassination. Soon after taking office, he signed an executive order directing the public release of thousands of files related to the assassinations of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The documents were posted to the website of the National Archives Tuesday evening. It may take some time before researchers who have studied the JFK assassination can go through the newly posted 1,123 documents, which were identified only by record numbers and no descriptions.
But there's no indication the files will contain any bombshells, according to one man who's seen many of the records already.
Tom Samulok was a deputy director of Assassination Records Review Board, a government panel formed in the 1990s to study records related to the assassination. He and a team of dozens re-examined troves of documents for public release between 1994 and 1998.
From what he reviewed, there isn't anything to change the current conclusion of Kennedy's assassination: that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for his death.
'The collection of records that we reviewed, the vast majority of which were released — some were kept classified in whole or in part — if that's what we're talking about, then there is no smoking gun,' he told CNN in a phone interview.
'If there had been anything that cut to the core of the assassination, the Review Board would have released it in the mid-'90s. So there is a sense of what the records are,' he went on.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement that the records contain 'approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified records that will be published with no redactions.'
There are additional documents, she said, that are 'withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, must be unsealed before release.'
The National Archives is working with the Justice Department to expedite the unsealing of those records, she added.
Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who wrote 'The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy,' warned that the public could be disappointed in the lack of revelations.
'I'm just telling you that we will learn things,' Sabato said. 'But it may not be about the Kennedy assassination and people who are expecting, you know, to crack the case after 61 years, are going to be bitterly disappointed.'
Kennedy's assassination has long fueled conspiracy theories, some of which Trump has given voice to himself. That is part of why the Review Board that Samulok helped lead was created — to assess whether records related to the assassination could be made public.
Samulok acknowledged he hasn't seen all of the records that could potentially be released.
For example, last month the FBI said it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the JFK assassination from a new records search following Trump's executive order.
There could also be other records at additional agencies that also haven't been released, Samulok said, that would make up a new bucket of documents previously unseen by his commission.
And he said there could still be points of interest in the remaining records that would help fill in gaps of existing knowledge, including information from the CIA related to Oswald's movements ahead of the November 22, 1963, assassination.
In 2023, the National Archives concluded its review of the classified documents related to the assassination, with 99% of the records having been made publicly available, CNN has previously reported.
President Joe Biden then released a memo certifying that the archivist had completed the review and affirmed the remaining documents authorized to be declassified had been released to the public — meeting a previously set deadline.
Despite past pledges from presidents, including Trump, to release those records, the CIA, Pentagon and State Department still have documents they've refused to release. The justification for those documents remaining classified largely stems from efforts to protect the identities of confidential sources who are still alive, or might be alive, and protecting methods.
During Trump's first term, he agreed not to release the full tranche of records related to Kennedy's assassination at the request of national security agencies. But Trump on the 2024 campaign trail said he would release the remaining documents.
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