Researchers are awaiting a drop of approximately 80,000 pages related to the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy.
President Donald Trump announced during a tour of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on March 17 that long-awaited files, amounting to approximately 80,000 pages relating to the assassination of the former president, are set for release.
“While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate,” Trump told reporters. “We are tomorrow announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files. People have been waiting for decades for this.”
Researchers and the public will soon have access to thousands of files previously hidden from view, with no summary included in the document dump.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said. “So, it’s a lot of stuff, and you'll make your own determination.”
Previous iterations of declassification resulted in files released with heavy redactions, something the president said would not occur with the upcoming disclosure.
“I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything,“ Trump said. ”I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact.'”
The president repeatedly promised on the campaign trail last year that he would release the classified documents.
“I’m a man of my word,” Trump said. “It’s going to be very interesting.”
He signed an executive order Jan. 23 directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to provide a full disclosure plan by Feb. 7.
“I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest, and the release of these records is long overdue,” Trump wrote in the order.
A law passed by Congress, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, ordered the release of all government records related to the incident by Oct. 26, 2017.
Trump allowed a partial release after intelligence agency officials advised him not to provide the documents in full, and President Joe Biden twice delayed the release.
Since Kennedy was killed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, speculation has persisted about what the government knows, and the slow pace of revelations has only heightened suspicions, according to those calling for declassification.
“A nation that does not trust its people is a nation that is afraid of its people,” nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wrote, thanking Trump for his full declassification order. “A government that withholds information is inherently fearful of its citizens’ ability to make informed decisions and participate actively in democracy.”
Some critics of the secrecy said the implications are troubling and could cause a loss of confidence in the federal government.
“Whenever people want to conceal something, it’s because they’re hiding something,” true crime researcher and author John Leake told The Epoch Times. “They don’t like to share information because it contains something that someone in power doesn’t want released.”
He called the delay “puzzling.”
The official narrative, as detailed by the Warren Commission report—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—describes the killing as the work of lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
More than 5 million documents related to the investigation are housed in the National Archives, with an estimated 5,000 pages never before seen by the public.
