Experts are examining the thousands of pages released, but it is unlikely the new documents will contain any earth-shattering revelations
Thousands of previously classified pages relating to the assassination of US President John F Kennedy have been released on the orders of Donald Trump.
More than 1,100 files consisting of over 31,000 pages were posted on the website of the US National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday.
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 have previously been released.
Larry J Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said he had a team that started going through the documents but it may be some time before their full significance becomes clear.
“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he said.
John F. Kennedy limousine JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass Altitude film entertainment Film still Provided by Rob.Deacon@ddapr.com
As JFK’s motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. (Photo: Rob.Deacon@ddapr.com)
Trump announced the release on Monday while visiting the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.
Trump ended up holding some files back because of what he called the potential harm to national security.
The National Archives said on its website that in accordance with the president’s directive, the release would encompass “all records previously withheld for classification.”
Researchers have estimated that 3,000 or so files had not been released, either in whole or in part. And last month the FBI said it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Kennedy was killed on 22 November, 1963, on a visit to Dallas.
As his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building.
The limousine carrying the fatally wounded president was pictured racing toward the hospital seconds after he was shot (AP Photo/Justin Newman, File)
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 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.
Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
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.
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 Oct. 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.
Many who have studied what’s been released so far by the government say the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations from the newly released documents, but there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.