President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will unseal tens of thousands never-before-seen documents on the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
The Washington Post reported that a number officials at various security agencies, however, are urging the President not to release some of the papers, which are being held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
‘Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,’ Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
Trump said that he will unseal tens of thousands never-before-seen documents on the assassination of JFK
Officials with the security establishment, however, have urged Trump not to release everything
Scholars have been speculating for weeks whether Trump would release the documents related to Kennedy’s death.
Pending the President’s possible interjection, the National Archives will release the files on October 26.
Trump made the announcement via Twitter early Saturday morning
The CIA and FBI, whose records make up the bulk of the batch, won’t say whether they’ve appealed to the Republican president to keep them under wraps.
Trump’s tweet appears as though he’s leaning towards a complete release of the documents, but The Post reported that he may stop short of fully disclosing all the information if the security establishment provides good cause.
The still-secret papers include more than 3,000 that have never been seen by the public and more than 30,000 that have been released previously, but with redactions.
‘The American public deserves to know the facts, or at least they deserve to know what the government has kept hidden from them for all these years,’ said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Experts say that they’re not expecting any bombshell revelations in the documents.
They are interested, however, to see if any new details emerge over Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, activities in Mexico in the fall of 1963.
President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot in Dallas (Pictured: Nov. 22, 1963)
The limousine carrying mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital seconds after he was shot in Dallas (Pictured: Nov. 22, 1963)
Oswald’s stated reason for going was to get visas that would allow him to enter Cuba and the Soviet Union, according to the Warren Commission, the investigative body established by President Lyndon B. Johnson, but much about the trip remains unknown.
‘It’s great news that the president is focused on this and that he’s trying to demonstrate transparency,’ said Phil Shenon,who wrote a book about the Warren Commission.
‘But the question remains whether he will open the library in full — every word in every document, as the law requires,’ Shenon said
‘And my understanding is that he won’t without infuriating people at the CIA and elsewhere who are determined to keep at least some of the information secret, especially in documents created in the 1990s.’
Congress mandated in 1992 that all assassination documents be released within 25 years, unless the president asserts that doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder, and shot to death two days later by Texas nightclub owner Jack Ruby while in police custody.