U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will release approximately 80,000 pages of unredacted classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
According to The New York Times, Trump made the announcement during a visit to The Kennedy Center in Washington on Monday, stating, “Everything will be revealed” about Kennedy’s assassination. He added, “I ordered the release of all remaining records on the JFK assassination to several people under the direction of Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence. We have a tremendous amount of paper—you’ve got a lot of reading.” Trump emphasized his intention for full transparency, saying, “I don’t believe we are going to redact anything. I said just don’t redact. People have been waiting for decades for this. It’s going to be very interesting.”
The decision follows an executive order Trump signed on January 23, shortly after his inauguration, to declassify the remaining federal records related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The three high-profile killings of the 1960s remain subjects of extensive speculation and conspiracy theories, fueling countless books and films.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested as the gunman but was shot and killed two days later while being transferred from Dallas Police Headquarters to a county jail. The lack of a trial and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Oswald’s death have led to decades of speculation, with theories ranging from political conspiracy to foreign involvement, including alleged ties to the Soviet Union. Similarly, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
In 2023, the U.S. National Archives stated that 99% of the JFK assassination files had already been made public. However, in February, the FBI revealed it had discovered an additional 2,400 documents related to the case, further renewing public interest.
Ji-Sun Choi aurinko@donga.com