Trump keeps some JFK files a secret
Blocks some assassination records’ release, thousands of others posted online
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump blocked the release of hundreds of records on the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy, bending to CIA and FBI appeals, while the National Archives came out Thursday night with a hefty cache of others.
“I have no choice,” Trump said in a memo, citing “potentially irreversible harm” to national security if he were to allow all records out now. He was placing those files under a sixmonth review while letting 2,800 others come out, racing a deadline to honour a 1992 law mandating their release.
Later in the evening, the Archives posted online the documents approved for release.
Despite having months to prepare for disclosures that have been set on the calendar for 25 years, 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.
White House officials said the FBI and CIA made the most requests within the government to withhold some information.
No blockbusters had been expected in the last trove of secret files regarding Kennedy’s assassination Nov. 22, 1963, given a statement months ago by the Archives that it assumed the records, then under preparation, would be “tangential” to what’s known about the killing.
Researchers were frustrated by the uncertainty that surrounded the release for much of the day.
“The government has had 25 years with a known end-date to prepare #JFKfiles for release,” University of Virginia historian Larry Sabato tweeted in the afternoon. “Deadline is here. Chaos.”
Whatever details are released, they’re not expected to answer the question whether anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination.
The Warren Commission in 1964 reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved.
But other interpretations, some more creative than others, have persisted.