Trump releases more than 2,000 new JFK assassination files: What we know

The administration of US President Donald Trump declassified thousands of documents related to the 1963 murder of former president John F. Kennedy (JFK), whose death has fueled at least six decades of conspiracy theories.

What we currently know is as follows:

What number of documents were made public?

The US National Archives and Records Administration’s website hosted 2, 182 PDF documents that totaled 63,400 pages on Tuesday evening. Two rounds of the documents, a few hours apart, were released.

All records previously withheld for classification are available online or in person, according to the National Archives. Many of the documents had typewritten or handwritten signatures.

On January 23, Trump announced that all documents relating to the deaths of JFK, his younger brother, Senator Robert F Kennedy (RFK), and Martin Luther King, Jr., an activist for civil rights, would be declassified.

Trump made the announcement at the Kennedy Center on Monday that the documents would be made immediately. Released pages were anticipated to number at least 80 000.

It might take months for conspiracy theorists and historians to go over the new documents and understand what they contain.

JFK was killed when?

JFK, a Democrat, served as president of the United States from January 1961 until his death on November 22, 1963.

Along with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas governor John Connally, Connally’s wife Nelly Connally, Connally was shot dead while riding his motorcade through Dallas, Texas. Governor Connally was also hurt in the attack.

His vice president Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as president after JFK’s death. Johnson commissioned an investigation into the assassination under the direction of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, a former marine turned communist activist, was ruled out by the Warren Commission as the sole perpetrator of the killing.

Why did JFK’s death spark a conspiracy?

Oswald was acting alone, out of the control of other domestic or international actors, according to the Warren Commission’s findings.

However, Kennedy’s murder at the height of the Cold War has always sparked speculation. According to a Gallup poll in November 2023, two-thirds of Americans now think Oswald acted with complices. The findings of the investigation have been doubted even more by the fact that several documents related to the assassination have been kept secret for decades.

“I’m just a patsy,” I say! Oswald was filmed saying something in a videotape of his arrest at the Dallas police headquarters. This is what Oswald claims was a scapegoat, according to many who disagree with the official narrative.

Oswald was shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby as he was being transported from police headquarters to county jail two days after JFK’s death. Further bolstering the conspiracy was the lack of a trial, which allowed Oswald to reveal the identities of those he was working with or for.

A single 6. 5 millimeter bullet, according to the Warren Commission, claimed the lives of JFK and Governor Connally. Many people believe that two adult men’s bodies could have been the target of one bullet.

A second shot apparently struck JFK’s skull in the grisly footage that was captured by clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder. Before ABC News aired this frame of the video in 1975, it was not made public for many years.

Are the Kennedy files in their entirety available?

No, but the majority of them did.

According to Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for documents relating to the assassination, there were nearly 3,500 still redacted documents with the archives prior to Tuesday’s releases, according to The Associated Press. On Tuesday, there were a little over 2,000 releases.

However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced last month that it had discovered 2,400 new assassination records. None of the recently discovered documents were included in the trove of files released on Tuesday, according to Morley.

Under pressure from the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency, Trump released 2,800 files regarding JFK’s death in his first year in office, but he did not release hundreds of others that were pending review. Former President Joe Biden made approximately 17, 000 more documents available in 2023.

Source: Aljazeera