Washington, Mar 18 (EFE) – The United States National Archives declassified on Tuesday unpublished files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), by order of President Donald Trump.
The National Archives, the custodian of documents related to Kennedy’s death, announced the declassification on its website.
Trump announced on Monday that 80,000 documents would be made public, but only 1,123 were listed on the National Archives website.
According to a statement from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the rest of the files have already been declassified, although they have not yet been published online and will be uploaded in the coming days.
It is still unknown whether the documents contain previously undisclosed details about the Kennedy assassination. Experts are now examining the files for new information.
Trump said Monday that all documents to be released would be complete and unredacted, unlike what has happened with other historical archives considered sensitive.
The declassification follows an executive order Trump signed days after returning to the White House, calling on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to find thousands of additional documents for release.
The order also seeks to make public the still-classified federal files on the 1968 assassinations of former Attorney General and former Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kennedy’s assassination has been officially attributed to a single individual, former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot the president from the window of a school bookstore as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald at Dallas police headquarters.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), Kennedy’s vice president who assumed the presidency after the assassination, investigated the event.
The Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that there was no evidence that other people were involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
Although this is the official version, numerous conspiracy theories have emerged over the decades.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself, the current US Secretary of Health and Human Services – John F. Kennedy’s nephew and Robert F. Kennedy’s son – has questioned the official version.
All documents related to the Kennedy assassination are part of a unique collection at the National Archives.
The files were supposed to be released in 2017, but during his first term (2017-2021), Trump decided to keep some of them secret for national security reasons.
According to the National Archives, the vast majority of the documents – some six million, including photographs and audio recordings – have already been released.
However, in mid-February, the FBI announced that it had found more than 2,400 new documents related to the Kennedy assassination and that the files would be transferred to the National Archives for declassification. EFE
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