Classified JFK Files Will Be Released Next Week as Required by Law Chas Danner - New York Magazine
go to original October 21, 2017

Front pages showing the news of JFK’s assassination (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Update: Who Killed JFK? The Great-Grandfather Whose Testimony Throws New Light on the 20th Century's Biggest Conspiracy (Independent)

Thousands of classified documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will apparently be released by the National Archives over the coming days, according to a tweet sent by President Trump on Saturday. The president said that he will “allow” the “long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” though he also prefaced the statement by saying it was “subject to the receipt of further information.” The documents are legally required to be made public by October 26, however, but there have been reports that Trump would block the release of some of the files at the request of his national security advisers, and the resulting media coverage may have prompted Trump’s tweet on Saturday. Whatever the reason, the president did not confirm that he would release all the files as required.

Earlier this week, the White House said that it was trying “to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public” by the 26th, which is the deadline Congress set by law in 1992. Politico reported on Friday that, according to Trump administration officials, the president would mostly likely block some of the information from becoming public. The issue with some of the files, according to Politico, is that a small number were created by the CIA in the 1990s and may expose intelligence and law enforcement operations, procedures, and personnel from that time period. Thus, some documents may ultimately be withheld or released with some of their contents redacted, at the request of national security officials.

All, or at least most of the JFK assassination-related files from the ‘60s and ‘70s are still expected to be released, including more than 3,000 never-before-seen files which detail events like assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City two months before killing Kennedy — during which he reportedly visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies.

The October 26 deadline was set by the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush after a resurgence of attention to conspiracy theories around the assassination following the release of Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. Most government documents related to the assassination were then released in the 1990’s, except for this last pile, which historians and conspiracy theorists have been eagerly awaiting for 25 years.

Read the rest at New York Magazine

Related: JFK Assassination: What Will the Secret Files Have to Say About the Conspiracy Theories? (ABC News)

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