Cuba next target
NEWLY- RELEASED documents on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy reveal US agents chasing tips in the days after the killing and covert efforts to up-end Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba.
The US National Archive released 2800 never-beforeseen documents, but hundreds of others were held back after the FBI and CIA appealed for them not to be released publicly pending further review.
“I have no choice,” US President Donald Trump said in a memo yesterday, citing “potentially irreversible harm” to national security if he were to allow all records to come out now.
He placed those files under a six-month review while letting the bulk of them come out, racing a deadline to honour a law mandating their release.
The released documents show federal agents madly chasing after tips, however thin, in the days after Mr Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, and juggling rumours and leads worldwide.
The materials also cast a wide net over varied activities of the Kennedy administration, such as its covert efforts to disrupt Castro. In a September 14, 1962, meeting disclosed in the files, for example, a group of Mr Kennedy’s senior aides, including brother Robert, the Attorney-General, discussed a range of options against Castro’s communist government.
The meeting was told the CIA would look into the possibility of sabotaging aeroplane parts that were to be shipped to Cuba from Canada.
President Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, cautioned that sensitive ideas like sabotage would have to be considered in more detail on a case-by-case basis.
Officials say Mr Trump will impress upon federal agencies that “only in the rarest cases” should JFK files stay secret after the six-month review.
Despite having months to prepare for disclosures that have been set on the calendar for 25 years, Mr Trump’s decision came down to a last-minute debate with intelligence agencies — a tussle the President then prolonged by calling for still more review.
In the meantime, experts will be poring through a mountain of minutiae in search of significant revelations.
No blockbusters were expected in the files but they give historians a chance to answer lingering questions, put some unfounded conspiracy theories to rest.