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Topics: Conspiracy Theory, Donald Trump, US News, History
In a move that will either be a major blow or boon to conspiracy theorists, US President Donald Trump is releasing 80,000 documents pertaining to the JFK assassination.
Oh what the hell, the conspiracy theorists will make something out of it anyway. They always do.
The official version of events is that on 22 November 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot in the head by Lee Harvey Oswald as his open-topped car drove through Dallas, Texas, while Oswald was shot dead two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
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Yesterday (17 March), Trump appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. and made the announcement that the remaining files would be declassified.
Trump said that the information in the files would be 'very interesting' for people to know, and suggested that none of it would be redacted or otherwise kept back at last.
"While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate there tomorrow, announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files," he declared.
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“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.
"They’ve been waiting for that for decades. And I said during the campaign I’d release them and I’m a man of my word so tomorrow you have the JFK files."
The decades-long wait is something that's come out of Trump's mouth which is actually true, as the US Congress demanded the declassification and release of the JFK assassination documents all the way back in 1992.
A date of 26 October 2017 had been set as the deadline for publication, and could only be put back if the President thought keeping the contents a secret was 'made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations', or that 'identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure'.
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We actually have been waiting for over three decades for this to happen, as the documents have been stuck in several rounds of review and redaction, with Presidents granting authorities more time to look over them.
There have also been security concerns over what might be on the documents, as in 2018 the Drug Enforcement Administration warned that due to mafia violence there were some people who would 'remain in significant danger of retaliation'.
However, back in January, an order from the White House declared that keeping the JFK assassination documents private was 'not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue'.
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The order also stated that despite there not being an act of Congress ordering their declassification, it would also be in the public interest for documents pertaining to the assassinations of JFK's brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be released to the public.
JFK's grandson Jack Schlossberg previously accused Trump of using the former President as a 'political prop'.
In January he wrote on social media: "JFK conspiracy theories - The truth is a lot sadder than the myth - a tragedy that didn’t need to happen.
"Not part of an inevitable grand scheme. Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back. There’s nothing heroic about it."