Botulism pills, the Mob and JFK
Trump frustrated by CIA’s continued secrecy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Like much else surrounding investigations of the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy, Thursday’s release of 2,800 records from the JFK files was anything but smooth. It came together only at the last minute, with White House lawyers still fielding late-arriving requests for additional redactions in the morning and an irritated President Donald Trump continuing to resist signing off on the request, according to White House officials.
The tale of the final hours before the congressionally mandated 25-year release deadline adds a new chapter to the story of Trump’s troubled relationship with his spy agencies.
The president earlier in the week had tweeted to tease the release of the documents, heightening the sense of drama on a subject that has sparked the imaginations of conspiracy theorists for decades. Under a 1992 law, all of the records related to the assassination were to be made public unless explicitly withheld by the president.
Just before the release Thursday, Trump wrote in a memo he had “no choice” but to agree to requests from the CIA and FBI to keep thousands of documents secret because of the possibility that releasing the information could still harm national security.
Late last week, Trump received his first official briefing on the release. Trump made it clear he was unsatisfied with the pace of declassification.
Trump’s tweets, an official said, were meant as a signal to the intelligence community to take seriously his threats to release the documents in their entirety.
According to White House officials, Trump accepted that some of the records contained references to sensitive sources and methods used by the intelligence community and law enforcement and that declassification could harm American foreign policy interests. But after having the scope of the redactions presented to him, Trump told aides he did not believe them to be in the spirit of the law.
Trump’s aides presented him with an alternative to acquiescing to agency requests: He could temporarily allow the redactions while ordering the agencies to launch a new comprehensive examination of the records still withheld or redacted. Trump accepted the suggestion, ordering that agencies be “extremely circumspect” about keeping the remaining documents secret at the end of a 180-day assessment.
“The American public expects — and deserves — its government to provide as much access as possible to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records so that the people may finally be fully informed about all aspects of this pivotal event,” Trump wrote.