Trump releases hundreds of pages on John F Kennedy assassination | Trump administration

The Trump administration on Tuesday launched hundreds of pages of recordsdata in regards to the assassination of John F Kennedy, the thirty fifth president who was shot useless in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.

“So folks have been ready a long time for this,” Donald Trump informed reporters on Monday whereas visiting the Kennedy Middle, “and I’ve instructed my folks which are accountable, numerous totally different folks, put collectively by [director of national intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, and that’s going to be launched tomorrow.”

Specialists doubted the brand new trove of knowledge will change the underlying information of the case, that Lee Harvey Oswald opened hearth at Kennedy from a window at a faculty e book deposit warehouse because the presidential motorcade handed by Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

The digital paperwork included PDFs of memos, together with one with the heading “secret” that was a typed account with handwritten notes of a 1964 interview by a Warren Fee researcher who questioned Lee Wigren, a CIA worker, about inconsistencies in materials offered to the fee by the state division and the CIA about marriages between Soviet girls and American males.

The paperwork additionally included references to varied conspiracy theories suggesting that Oswald left the Soviet Union in 1962 intent on assassinating the favored younger president.

Division of Protection paperwork from 1963 coated the chilly conflict of the early Nineteen Sixties and the US involvement in Latin America, making an attempt to thwart Cuban chief Fidel Castro’s assist of communist forces in different nations.

The paperwork counsel that Castro wouldn’t go as far as to impress a conflict with america or escalate to the purpose “that will significantly and instantly endanger the Castro regime”.

“It seems extra seemingly that Castro may intensify his assist of subversive forces in Latin America,” the doc reads.

Trump signed an order shortly after taking workplace in January associated to the discharge, prompting the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek out hundreds of recent paperwork associated to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

“President Trump is ushering in a brand new period of most transparency,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of nationwide intelligence, stated in a publish on X.

ABC Information reported that Trump’s announcement prompted an all-night scramble on the justice division.

John F Kennedy was killed throughout a motorcade by Dallas on 22 November 1963. Oswald was killed two days later by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub proprietor.

Ever since, Kennedy’s demise has been the topic of immense scholarship, cultural commentary and spiraling conspiracy theories.

Recordsdata have been launched earlier than, together with three releases in 2017, when Trump was first in energy. One doc launched then was a 1975 CIA memo that stated an intensive search of information confirmed Oswald was not in any approach linked to the intelligence company, as posited by quite a few authors and hobbyists.

Trump’s newest JFK recordsdata launch comes weeks after the demise at 93 of Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent who leapt onto Kennedy’s automotive, a second of historical past famously captured on movie by Abraham Zapruder, a house film fanatic.

Trump survived an assassination try of his personal in Pennsylvania final yr, throughout a marketing campaign occasion. In workplace, he has additionally promised to launch recordsdata on the assassinations of Kennedy’s brother, the US lawyer normal and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, and the civil rights chief Martin Luther King, each in 1968.

Robert F Kennedy’s son, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is now US well being secretary. He has voiced conspiracy theories, together with saying he thinks his father was in all probability killed by the CIA and his uncle, the president, definitely was.

King’s household has expressed the concern that real FBI makes an attempt to smear him will once more be dropped at the sunshine.

Final month, directed by Trump, the US justice division launched recordsdata about Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, convicted intercourse offender and Trump affiliate who killed himself in jail in New York in 2019. Aggressively touted and focused to rightwing social media influencers, the discharge proved a humid squib.

On Monday, Larry Sabato, the director of the Middle for Politics on the College of Virginia and the writer of a e book on Kennedy, informed Reuters: “Folks anticipating large issues are nearly sure to be upset” by the brand new recordsdata launch.

Reuters contributed reporting