Trump Releases 2,800 JFK Assassination Documents
President Donald Trump released nearly 3,000 previously secret documents on the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy, but hundreds were held back despite a law ordering they be made public.
Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas on November 23, 1963, allegedly by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. However, ever since the killing of the American president, conspiracy theories have swirled that others may have been involved, including the CIA, military officials and mafia figures.
After the controversial 1991 film, JFK, by Oliver Stone, the government a year later ordered all files relating to the assassination be released by the end of October 2017.
“The American public expects – and deserves – its government to provide as much access as possible to the President John F Kennedy assassination records so that the people may finally be fully informed about all aspects of this pivotal event,” Trump said in a statement on Thursday. “Therefore, I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted.”
Trump said, however, some US agencies had requested that some documents remain secret “because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns”. Those files will be reviewed, and information that allegedly affects national security blacked out before release.
“I have no choice today but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security,” he said.
Peter Kuznick, a professor of history at the American University in Washington, DC, noted more than 60 percent of the American public doesn’t believe the official story.
He said the 300 documents being held back would be the most revealing, but added there is still a lot to learn from the classified material that was finally released.
