The FBI announced it recently uncovered nearly 2,400 documents that were cataloged and digitized
US: The FBI said on Tuesday that it has discovered around 2,400 newly digitized and inventoried papers that are connected to the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy but had not been previously connected to the case.
Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that led to the discovery of the documents. In addition to those from the 1968 killings of his brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., he ordered the declassification of the remaining secret documents related to the Kennedy murder.
Both the FBI and the Warren Commission, which was established to look into the killing of President Kennedy, came to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald committed the murder on his own. But according to a 2022 survey of 2,000 American voters by Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi, just 38% of respondents were persuaded by this account of events, and 50% thought there were many conspiracies at play.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of President Kennedy and son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is Trump’s choice to be the next U.S. health secretary. Despite the Warren Commission’s lack of proof, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had earlier stated that the CIA could have been involved in his uncle’s murder. Additionally, he has questioned if Sirhan Sirhan was the actual assassin of his father.
An executive order directing the release of the remaining secret documents pertaining to the killings of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, and King Jr. was signed by President Trump on January 23. The order ordered the attorney general and the director of national intelligence 15 days to devise a strategy to make the President Kennedy papers available, and then his brother and the civil rights activist 45 days.
Following Trump’s directive, the FBI claimed it carried out a fresh records search, uncovering 2,400 more papers that had not been connected to President Kennedy’s murder before.
The material included in these new papers has not yet been made public.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence told Reuters last week that it had recommended to the White House that public records pertaining to the Kennedy murder be made accessible, but it did not specify when this would happen.
In a statement, the FBI said that it had “made the appropriate notifications of the newly discovered documents and is working to transfer them to the National Archives and Records Administration for inclusion in the ongoing declassification process.”
Harvard history professor Fredrik Logevall said in a Reuters interview, “I suspect that we won’t get anything too dramatic in the releases, or anything that fundamentally overturns our understanding of what occurred in Dallas.”
The author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, Gerald Posner, said in an interview with Voice of America, “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed.”
The JFK files are owned by whom?
The federal government owns the files related to the Kennedy assassination. Since the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, about 99 percent have been made available to the public, according to the National Archive. Another 13,000 records were released by the Biden administration in 2022, while an estimated 4,000 were kept secret.
When Will the Public Access to the JFK Files Be Available?
The timing of the release of the remaining Kennedy assassination files has not yet been announced by authorities. Trump decided to suppress certain records under pressure from the FBI and CIA, but he did promise to disclose all the remaining data within his first term in office.
