An executive order declassifying records related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy is signed by President Donald J. Trump.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to release the remaining documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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The order also orders the release of documents related to the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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The order requires the Director of National Intelligence to develop a plan for release of the JFK documents within 15 days and gives them 45 days to make a plan to release documents on the other two.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to release the remaining documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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The order also orders the release of documents related to the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
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The order requires the Director of National Intelligence to develop a plan for release of the JFK documents within 15 days and gives them 45 days to make a plan to release documents on the other two.
WashingtonPresident Donald Trump on Thursday authorized the release of the remaining classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in downtown Dallas, fulfilling a campaign pledge.
The records pertaining to the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy must also be made public, according to the executive order signed Thursday.
When will the JFK files be released?
We know:
The Trump-signed directive requires the Director of National Intelligence to provide a plan for the “full and complete” release of documents within 15 days, rather than making such records immediately available.
According to the ruling, the director has forty-five days to examine Robert F. Kennedy and King’s archives and provide a release strategy.
Trump has previously ordered the release of records.
What is unknown to us:
The executive order does not specify when the additional records would be made public, but it does provide a strict timetable for developing a plan to do so.
Additionally unclear are the contents of the remaining documents and the degree of redaction that will be included in them.
There are still a few thousand records that need to be declassified, according to the Associated Press. According to experts, there won’t be any shocking new information in those documents.
What they’re saying:
Historians and conspiracy theorists will be pleased with the final documents’ publication, but the former president’s grandson referred to the action as a “political prop.”
“A tragedy that didn’t have to happen, the fact is far more depressing than the myth. On social media site X, Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson, stated, “Not part of an inevitable grand scheme.” JFK is being used as a political prop by declassification, even if he isn’t present to defend himself. It’s not heroic in any way.
Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late senator, told reporters the order was a “great move” on the president’s part. According to him, the action would result in “more transparency” and demonstrates that Trump is “keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people about everything.” According to Fox News, Kennedy has demanded answers on the murders of his father and uncle.
After the executive order was signed, Trump gave the pen he used to an aide, who was instructed to send it to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In a social media message, King’s family expressed their want to examine the documents together before they were made public.
“For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years,” the family stated. “We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992
Under the 1992 John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, President Trump issued an order during his first term directing the records’ release.
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act was passed by Congress in 1992. Unless the president specifies an exception, the measure required the archives to release all information gathered on the assassination—roughly 5 million pages of material—within 25 years.
Trump pledged to declassify and make all of the gathered materials publicly available with just minor redactions.
Rather, during his first tenure, several thousand records were suppressed. The president declared in 2018 that the public interest was exceeded by the possibility that the remaining records might jeopardize foreign policy, law enforcement, or national security.
In 2021, President Joe Biden published a new set of documents. In 2022 and 2023, documents were also made public.
What has already been released?
The national archives have disclosed almost 5 million pages of material pertaining to the Kennedy assassination to date.
Among the records are letters sent by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover just hours after Lee Harvey Oswald was assassinated in Dallas, requesting that the government issue a statement to persuade the public that Oswald was responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy.
(Source Caption) Here, on November 22, twenty-four-year-old former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald is seen following his arrest. In the altercation with the officers who took him into custody, he sustained a gash on his forehead and a blacked left eye. As a self-declared Marxist, Oswald has been
It was published hours after Oswald was murdered in the Dallas police station basement by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, and two days after the president was assassinated.
Other government officials’ theories about the assassination are revealed in other sources.
According to Richard Helms’ 1975 deposition, President Lyndon B. Johnson thought the shooting was retaliatory and that Kennedy was responsible for the South Vietnamese president’s murder a few weeks before his own.
379570 24: Following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office as President of the United States. (Image courtesy of Newsmakers/National Archive)
Additional documents include material from the KGB, the former Soviet intelligence agency, that connected Johnson to the killing, allegations of odd calls to international media outlets, and preparations to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
There are further rumors that Oswald visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City and that the United States and Mexico made agreements for the United States to keep a watchful eye on the embassies.
On November 22, 1963, Texas Governor John Connally, US President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and others grin at the throng along their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas. As his car passed, the President was assassinated a few minutes later.
Dallas, Texas – Nov. 22, 1963
On November 22, 1963, when his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had set up shop from a sixth-floor sniper’s perch, Kennedy was shot and killed in downtown Dallas. Oswald was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a jail transfer two days after Kennedy was slain.
In 1964, the Warren Commission came to the conclusion that Oswald fired three rounds from a window in the depository on his own. This conclusion has been questioned by many Americans. After concluding its own investigation in 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”
Only a few months separated the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy five years later.
(Source Caption) One of the final photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taken at a big rally in Memphis on April 3, 1968, when he declared he would not abandon his preparations for a large-scale protest on April 8.
Memphis, Tennessee – April 4, 1968
On April 4, 1968, King was outside a motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when gunfire broke out. Marches and other peaceful demonstrations were to be led by the civil rights activist, who had been in town to support striking sanitation workers. Less than an hour later, he passed away in a hospital.
James Earl Ray entered a guilty plea to King’s murder. Later on, he rejected that defense and insisted on his innocence until his passing.
In order to gather evidence against King, the FBI bugged his hotel rooms, wiretapped his phone lines, and employed informants, according to papers made public over the years.
The 1968 California Primary: Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination This image shows Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) and his wife, Ethel Kennedy, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, just before he was shot and killed on June 5, 1968, while running for president.
Los Angeles, California – June 6, 1968
On June 6, 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after giving a victory address.
Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed the New York senator, who had just won the Democratic presidential primary in California.
Sirhan is incarcerated for life after being found guilty of first-degree murder.
The White House, the National Archives, FOX News, and the Associated Press are the sources of the information in this article.
