CNN
–
The Trump administration on Tuesday released thousands of records regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, whom he said had previously been classified.
Many of the files related to the JFK assassination have already been disclosed, including a tranche of 13,000 documents released during the Biden administration. However, many of the documents released Tuesday had been previously edited.
“People have been waiting for decades,” Trump said Monday, looking at 80,000 pages of records related to Kennedy’s assassination. Soon after he took office, he signed an executive order directing the release of thousands of files related to the assassination of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The document was posted on the National Archives website Tuesday night. It may take some time for researchers who have studied JFK assassination to pass through the 1,123 newly submitted documents. This is only identified without a record number and description.
However, one man who has already seen many records has not shown that the file contains bombs.
Tom Samork was the deputy director of the Assassination Record Review Board, a government panel formed in the 1990s to study records related to the assassination. He and a team of dozens of people revisited most of the documents for publication between 1994 and 1998.
From what he reviewed, nothing changes the current conclusion of Kennedy’s assassination. That means that the lonely gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for his death.
“The collection of records we reviewed, most of which have been released. Some are all or partially classified. If that’s what we’re talking about, there’s no smoking gun.”
“If there was something cut at the core of the assassination, the judges would have released it in the mid-’90s, so there’s a sense of what the record is,” he continued.
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement that the records include “around 80,000 pages of records that were classified before being published without editing.”
There is additional document, she said, “Records that are withheld for court seals or for the secret of a great juice and subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code must be sealed prior to release.”
The National Archives is working with the Department of Justice to promote the engraving of these records, she added.
University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabbat wrote “Kennedy’s Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and the Enduring Legacy of John F. Kennedy.”
“We’re just saying we learn things,” Sabath said. “But it may not be about Kennedy’s assassination and those who are hoping to crack the case in 61 years’ time.
Kennedy’s assassination has long promoted conspiracy theory. That’s part of the reason why the Samork-led judgement committee was created. This is to assess whether records related to the assassination can be made public.
Samoluk admitted that he has never seen all the records that could potentially be released.
For example, last month, the FBI said it had discovered around 2,400 new records related to the JFK assassination from a new record search following Trump’s executive order.
There could also be other records not released in addition to the additional institutions, Samolk would constitute a bucket of new documents previously invisible by his committee, Samolk said.
He then stated on November 22, 1963 there was still a point of interest in the remaining records that would help fill the gap in existing knowledge, including information from the CIA related to Oswald’s move prior to the assassination.
In 2023, the National Archives concluded a review of classified documents related to the assassination, with 99% of the records being published, CNN previously reported.
President Joe Biden then released a memo certifying that the archivists had completed the review, confirming that the remaining documents allowed to be declassified have been made public – in time for a previously set deadline.
Despite past pledges from the president, including Trump, there are still documents in the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department that refused to be released to release these records. The justification of classified documents mainly arises from efforts to protect the identity of confidential sources that are still alive or may be alive.
During Trump’s first term, he agreed not to release a full tranche of records relating to Kennedy’s assassination, at the request of the National Security Agency. But Trump on the 2024 campaign trail said he will release the rest of the documents.
Fix: This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Tom Samoluk’s name.
