President Trump has the power to decide whether the National Archive will release the final set of JFK assassination files.
The release of another large batch of JFK assassination files has had everyone from Kennedy academics to conspiracy-theory lovers chomping at the bit to get their hands on the never-before-seen information to be released in October.
The final decision on whether these files regarding the assassination of the 35th President will be released is in the hands of our 45th President, Donald Trump. He can put a halt to the final JFK file release if he deems the information contained within to be a danger to national security.
The wait is now on to see if Trump will step in before October 26, the date by which the National Archive must release them, or if John F. Kennedy fans and fanatics will finally receive the insights they’ve been hoping for about the 1963 assassination. The question is whether the CIA or FBI, the two organizations that control the vast majority of the Kennedy assassination files left to release, have asked the President to intervene in the release.
Will President Trump decide to intervene in the release of the JFK assassination files?
“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,” Kennedy book author and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics Larry Sabato told the AP.
“It’s long past the time to be forthcoming with this information,” he continued.
Read more: 5 things you might not know about John F Kennedy’s assassination
The National Archives were given 25 years to make public all the Kennedy assassination files
In 1992, the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act ruled that all the files, audio, and video, collected in the investigation into JFK’s death were to be released to the public within 25 years, as long as their release would not be detrimental to the security of the nation.
With a massive treasure trove of assassination files already released in July 2017, it is not expected that much further information will be released in the remaining files, a belief backed up by Judge John Tunheim, who was the chairperson of the independent agency that made the original 1992 release ruling.
Scholars and Kennedy family fans are hoping to learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald, particularly the details of a trip he took to Mexico City just weeks before the killing.
“Nobody has really ever gotten to the bottom of what went on there,” Philip Shenon, historian and author of “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination,” told the Boston Globe earlier this year.
Many of the files previously released had sections redacted for national security reasons
Will the JFK assassination files prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for Kennedy's death?
The National Archives are in the process of releasing all five million documents associated with the assassination to the public, with 3,000 still secret and 30,000 others previously released but with redactions.
Yet, even if there is nothing in the files to even hint that Oswald was not responsible for the assassination or that he was a Russian agent, Tunheim still believes that the conspiracies will continue to evolve.
“People will probably always believe there must have been a conspiracy,” he said to AP.
“I just don’t think that the federal government, in particular, is efficient enough to hide a secret like that for so long"
The JFK assassination files are available to the public via the National Archive
JFK assassination files are expected to reveal further information on his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
For those who are keen for more information even if the files are released it will take some time to sift through all the information given the sheer size of the collection covered by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992.
The records already released are available to the public here.
What's your JFK assassination conspiracy theory? Let us know in the comments section, below.
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