Trump to release secret JFK assassination info?

WASHINGTON (PNN) - September 27, 2017 - Investigators have long speculated that the so-called Deep State is withholding critical information regarding the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, and on October 26 they may get one step closer to finding out the truth, thanks to President Donald Trump.

Trump has been battling the Deep State since taking office, and now he has a chance to go on the offensive and release thousands of never-before-seen government documents related to Kennedy’s assassination.

The potential release has scholars and armchair detectives buzzing, and it’s up to Trump whether to block the release of secret files that could shed light on a tragedy that has stirred conspiracy theories for decades.

The National Archives has until October 26 to disclose the remaining files related to Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, unless Trump intervenes. The CIA and FBI, whose records make up the bulk of the batch, have refused to respond to rumors they’ve appealed to the Republican president to keep them under wraps.

“The Amerikan 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,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of a book about Kennedy, said in an email. “It’s long past the time to be forthcoming with this information,” he said.

Sabato and other JFK scholars believe the trove of files may provide insight into alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City weeks before the killing, during which he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies. 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.

Kennedy experts also hope to see the full report on Oswald’s trip to Mexico City from staffers of the House committee that investigated the assassination, said Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which publishes assassination records.

The FBI has refused to comment on whether it has asked Trump to keep the files hidden. A CIA spokesman would only say that it “continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously-unreleased CIA information.”

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. The still-secret documents 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 files that were withheld in full were those the Assassination Records Review Board deemed not believed relevant. Its members sought to ensure they weren’t hiding any information directly related to Kennedy’s assassination, but there may be nuggets of information in the files that they didn’t realize were important two decades ago.

The Archives in July published online more than 440 never-before-seen assassination documents and thousands of others that had been released previously with redactions.

Among those documents was a 1975 internal CIA memo that questioned whether Oswald became motivated to kill Kennedy after reading an article in a newspaper that quoted Fidel Castro as saying, “(FPSA) leaders would be in danger if they helped in any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba.”

“Oswald might have had a clear motive, one that we have never really understood, for killing Kennedy, because he thought that by killing Kennedy he might be saving the life of Fidel Castro,” said Philip Shenon, a former New York Times reporter who has written a book about Kennedy’s assassination.

Experts say some of the files will likely remain under wraps.

For example, it’s unlikely the National Archives will release some IRS records, including the tax returns of Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald, Bradford said.

Sabato said he also suspects that some key records may also have been destroyed before the 1992 law ordered that all the files be housed in the National Archives.

Even a full release of the documents isn’t likely to put to rest conspiracy theories that have swirled around the young president’s death for more than five decades.