Thursday, October 26th 2017 (WASHINGTON) – By late Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump had not yet made good on his promise and the law compelling him to release the final cache of 3,100 classified government files dealing with John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
At around 6 p.m. Trump finally ordered the release of 2,800 files, while others will be withheld. According to reports, the White House cited national security, law enforcement and foreign policy concerns in blocking the release of some 300 files.
Trump ordered a 180-day review of the documents to determine whether the classification is still justified.
It was widely anticipated that the National Archives would have the green light to publish the files by 8 a.m. ET, but as the hours passed, it appeared that Trump caved to the pressure he was reportedly getting from his intelligence chiefs urging him to keep the remaining information private.
Under the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, President Trump has until Thursday, October 26, 2017 to publicly disclose “in full” the remaining 3,100 government files that were withheld from public release 25 years ago.
Only if the president certifies that declassification would damage U.S. national security, military, intelligence, law enforcement or foreign relations, could the disclosure be further postponed.
By 1:30 p.m., John McAdams, a historian and author of ‘JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy,’ said that full disclosure was still an open issue for the National Archives.
“As of midday, things are in a state of confusion with the documents not having been made available and apparently considerable back and forth in Washington about what would be made available and when,” McAdams noted.
Donald Trump raised expectations last week when he tweeted, “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”
On Wednesday afternoon, he tweeted again that he would be releasing the files on Thursday.
The first tweet left open the possibility that he could be persuaded not to fully release the files.
Nearly 54 years after President Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA reportedly still has concerns about certain information being made public.
Despite having new cause for conspiracies after the delayed release of the files, very few experts are expecting a smoking gun to appear in the final document dump.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half Century,” threw cold water on those who are hoping to find evidence of a broader government conspiracy or perhaps a second gunman on the grassy knoll.
“If you’re looking long-term, we’ll never find any document that really points us in the direction of anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald,” Sabato told BBC News on Thursday. “That may be because Lee Harvey Oswald was the only assassin. It may also be because key documents were destroyed in the 60s and particularly the 1970s when Congress took up where the Warren Commission stopped.”
WHAT’S IN THE FILES?
The release of the files is certain to set off a frenzy of reading in newsrooms, living rooms, universities, and even under tin foil hats, but it will take time to sort through the more than 3,000 files likely comprising tens of thousands of pages of documents and media.
Those files will be added to the National Archives’ current collection of more than 5 million pages of records, including photographs, video and audio recordings, a collection that takes up approximately 2,000 cubic feet of Archive floor space.
One of the most anticipated accounts that historians and JFK specialists are waiting for is information about the so-called Mexico City trip. In October 1963 the CIA was tipped off that an individual identified as Lee Harvey Oswald contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City with the intent of getting a visa to travel to Cuba.
The fact was identified in final Warren Commission report in 1964 and the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations report.
Thomas Whalen, a Boston University professor and author of “JFK and His Enemies: A Portrait of Power,” said he hopes the documents will fill in some of the details of that trip, and any outside connections Oswald may have had.
“The big question,” Whalen said, “is what was Oswald doing in Mexico City in the weeks leading up to the assassination? He apparently met with Soviet and Cuban officials, so what did the CIA know, in detail, about these conversations?”
Generally, access to this information and other previously classified facts about the Kennedy assassination have remained under wraps for two central reasons: possible harm to national security and embarrassment.
Whalen explained that President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers were fearful that if the assassination traced back to the Soviet Union or Cuba it would lead to “World War III situation,” just as a similar political assassination tipped off World War I.
“So the stakes were quite high here to keep that notion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone,” Whalen noted.
It is also likely that there could be additional information in the new files showing the CIA, FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies failed to act or share information or that they engaged in any range of incompetent or negligent activities, beyond what is already known.
“The agencies themselves typically resist declassification,” McAdams said. “If there’s… a risk to their own reputation, like the document reveals confusion and cluelessness on the part of bureaucrats, they’ll resist making it public.
Pointing to more recent examples of September 11, 2001 and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Whalen noted, “Never underestimate vast bureaucracies and their ability to screw up.”
THE DECISION TO DECLASSIFY
As the delayed release of the files indicates, it is not an easy decision for a president to decide to declassify documents. And while it is atypical for a president to take the step, it does happen.
In 2016 on his way out of office, President Barack Obama ordered the declassification of a redacted chapter in the original 9/11 report dealing with the foreign financing of the terrorists and the role of Saudi Arabia. That step was largely opposed by his directors of national intelligence and the CIA.
President George H.W. Bush signed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act in response to a wave of public demand for information following the release of Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK.”
At the time, the district judge in charge of the Assassination Records Review Board determined that after nearly three decades, there was still information that was too sensitive to release. That is the information contained in the remaining JFK files.
Ultimately, Trump does not have a choice in the matter of declassifying at least some of the material.
“His hands are tied,” Whalen said. “He is answering to congressional law. This is the law of the land.”
Of course, Trump does have some leeway in terms of withholding materials that could compromise national security or be incriminating.
McAdams suggested that there may still be reluctance, a half-century after the fact, to release information dealing with the CIA’s operations in Mexico at the time of Oswald’s trip.
“One thing I think there is clear evidence of in the documents is that Mexican security agencies in 1963 were in bed with the U.S. CIA,” he explained, a fact that was “explosive” in 1963 and still potentially embarrassing to the Mexican government decades later.
At a time when relations with Mexico are increasingly challenged by Donald Trump’s immigration priorities, it could still not be the right time to release information that could be embarrassing or threaten an important ally and neighbor.
NEW FILES WILL NOT QUELL OLD CONSPIRACY THEORIES
According to a poll taken on the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination, the majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill the president.
Gallup found that 61 percent of Americans do not believe the official government conclusion that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.
In the volumes of material on Kennedy’s life and death, as well as the life of Oswald and his murder by Jack Ruby only days after the assassination, there are still many unanswered questions. There are popular theories about what happened and a large cast of characters alleged to be part of one or another plot or cover-up.
Most experts believe that this new information will not resolve those questions or quiet the conspiracies. In fact, it will probably raise more questions.
It is significant, though, after half a century that Americans are still irresistibly compelled to understand what happened on November 22, 1963, the day, it has been said, America lost its innocence.
“It seems like Kennedy was part of a golden era, that you could actually trust your leaders,” Whalen explained, before the erosion in Americans’ faith in the government during Vietnam and Watergate, Iran Contra and the rest.
For those who were alive to remember Kennedy, they look on that time wistfully, he continued. “That’s why I think they’re still clamoring for answers.”
