Trump to release classified JFK files
Documents aren’t likely to alter story of assassination
WASHINGTON — Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the political whodunit remains fodder for hordes of conspiracy theorists, including armchair historians, professional scholars and even President Donald Trump.
Until now, Trump’s signature contribution was promoting an unsubstantiated tabloid story linking the 1963 assassination to Cuban emigre Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s fiercest opponent in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
But as president, Trump is the only person who can block the scheduled release of the last batch of secret government documents about the JFK assassination.
On Saturday, Trump pulled the curtain back slightly, revealing on Twitter that “subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”
Under a law signed 25 years ago by then President George H.W. Bush, himself a figure in the
events of Nov. 22, 1963, Trump has until Oct. 26 to act. If he does not, some 50,000 documents go public.
What they might reveal is anyone’s guess.
Other than Trump’s tweet, the White House has remained silent about the president’s intentions. A White House official speaking on background told the Chronicle last week that he is “working closely” with the National Archives “to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public” while “protecting national security.”
Trump’s caveat, “subject to the receipt of further information,” worries advocates of full disclosure. No conspiracy here
Among those pressing for full release is sometime Trump confidante and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone, who wrote a book in 2013 pointing the finger at Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Texas Democrat who replaced JFK in the White House.
Stone claims he has information that the CIA is urging Trump to delay the release of at least some of the documents for another 25 years. “They must reflect badly on the CIA even though virtually everyone involved is long dead,” he said in a statement on his website.
The CIA is neither confirming nor denying Stone’s claims.
“CIA continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously-unreleased CIA information,” CIA spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said in an email.
The FBI referred questions to the White House.
Also pressing for full public disclosure is a bipartisan group of lawmakers organizing a resolution urging Trump to reject any claims for continued secrecy.
The resolution is the result of rumors that the release of at least some of the documents is being opposed by the FBI, the CIA or other government agencies that supported the official conclusion that Kennedy was not the victim of any conspiracy. Rather, the agencies insist, it was the work of lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. ‘Blank spaces in history’
Among those signing the resolution are Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, one of the top Democrats on the panel.
“Americans deserve a full picture of what happened that fateful day in November 1963,” Grassley said in a statement. “Shining a light on neverbefore-seen government records is essential to filling in these blank spaces in our history.”
So far no Texas lawmakers have signed on, including Cruz, who was dragged into the historical saga in a 2016 National Enquirer story purporting to have photographic evidence from “secret U.S. government files” showing the elder Cruz and Oswald together in New Orleans shortly before the assassination.
As Cruz suspended his presidential campaign two weeks later, he blasted the Enquirer story as “tabloid trash” and vilified Trump for promoting it on television.
“I admit yes, my dad killed JFK,” Cruz added sarcastically. “He is secretly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his back yard.”
Ironically, it is Cruz who might have planted the seeds of the widely debunked Enquirer article two years earlier. That was in a 2014 interview with University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.
In the interview, which Sabato used in a book, Cruz effectively put his father at the scene of the crime.
“In Dallas, almost everyone had a highly emotional tale or direct connection,” Sabato wrote in his 2014 book, “The Kennedy Half Century.”
Cruz, Sabato continued, “told me that his antiCastro immigrant father, then doing menial work in Dallas to make a living, was allowed to go out to the street to see the motorcade. The elder Cruz was no JFK fan but saw the Kennedys up close from Dealey Plaza.”
A spokesman for Cruz said last week that he had no comment on the claim, which Sabato repeated on Twitter in 2015 and again on May 3, 2016, the day Cruz dropped out of the race.
Sabato said his 2014 revelation about Cruz’s father was not intended to cast suspicion. Nor did it get much public notice — at least initially.
“Little did I know and little did he know that it would become part of the presidential campaign and would hurt him,” Sabato said in an interview. “I’m embarrassed about it. It’s horrible to think you were part of that.”
Sabato is no conspiracy theorist, though he confesses that JFK’s assassination has been a lifelong obsession. It’s produced books and a plethora of JFK “paraphernalia” at his campus residence, where he says Cruz related his father’s story during a visit in April, 2014 — a year before he announced for the presidency.
“I don’t happen to believe it was anybody besides Lee Harvey Oswald,” Sabato said. “But probably a substantial majority of the conspiracy community disagrees.”
With the release deadline approaching this week, the “conspiracy community” is abuzz with rampant speculation about what juicy morsels might be left in the tens of thousands of never-before-seen documents.
Sabato, for his part, predicts a fiasco as a global public goes online all at once to download documents, likely overwhelming government computers. That was the experience last summer when the National Archives released its last batch of documents under the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act.
The National Archives, the government agency legally responsible for the pending “document dump,” has sought to tamp down expectations. According to its website, about 88 percent of the records in the 5-millionpage JFK collection already have been made public.
Another 11 percent have been released in part with “sensitive” portions removed. That leaves about 1 percent of the trove that remains out of public view.
While officials can’t comment on the contents of the records, the agency’s website says “we assume that much of what will be released will be tangential to the assassination events.”
But only Trump can stop the truth — such as it is — from coming out. Lingering doubt
Regardless of Trump’s decision, there will always be room for doubt. The 1992 law signed by Bush — a former CIA director — exempts certain categories of records, including grand jury and tax return information, as well as “records covered by a specific deed of gift.”
Bush himself made an early appearance in the public record, having passed on a tip to the FBI after the shooting about having overheard somebody in Texas talking about killing JFK.
Since that day theories have abounded, focusing on the Soviets, the Cubans, the Mafia, Robert F. Kennedy and, last but not least, the CIA and the federal government.
Amid some half-dozen investigations, the Warren Commission, established by LBJ, concluded in 1964 that Oswald and Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald shortly after Kennedy’s death, both acted alone.
But persistent doubts about the Warren Commission report eventually led to the 1992 JFK records law that mandates this week’s release.
Scholars like Sabato point out that it is unlikely that even the National Archives technicians themselves know what else is left in the documents. But many say it’s high time that the administration come totally clean on the seminal event in the growth of popular American distrust of government — the very distrust that helped elect Trump.
“The idea that the federal government has withheld hundreds of thousands of pages of information about the assassination of a president for 54 years should disturb everybody,” Sabato said.
A decision by Trump to hold back any information, he added, would only amp up the buzz: “If he withholds documents it will inevitably regenerate the entire controversy about his ridiculous comments about Cruz.”
“Ito believedon’t happenit was anybody besides Lee Harvey Oswald. But probably a substantial majority of the conspiracy community disagrees.” Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist