John F. Kennedy Files Finally Released

As promised, President Donald Trump oversaw the release of thousands of pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Available now on the National Archive website, interested parties can inspect papers, reports, and interviews.

Casting a Wide Net

The roughly 63,000 pages (spread across more than 2,000 PDFs) are mostly documents that have previously been made public but with many of the redactions withdrawn. Researchers will spend months – if not years – completing the wider picture of the events in Dallas, Texas, and the following investigations that ran well into the 1970s.

Some of the more eye-catching documents include:

The President’s Intelligence Checklist: This is the first summation received by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on November 23, 1963, just one day after JFK was assassinated.

Deposition of William C. Sturbitts: In 1975, speaking to the Rockefeller Commission, CIA operative Sturbitts claimed that in either October or November 1963, he had overheard agency discussions on plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The alleged plot involved a disgruntled Cuban military member.

He said: “I had overheard that discussions were going on with a member of Castro’s military but that he wanted … some Belgian rifles and a telescopic sight.” “I know that subsequent to that time [Desmond] Fitzgerald [head of the Cuban Operations Group] met with him again and as I recall as the personal representative of the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy,” Sturbitts related.

The internet is currently filled with amateur (and some professional) researchers claiming to have unearthed something new. However, it turned out that many such “discoveries” had been released in prior batches. This does not mean yesterday’s tranche lacks value but that it will take time to determine just how much it adds.

Kennedy and the Historical Pivot Point

Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation – named after a Dallas secretary who was one of the earliest researchers into the JFK assassination – said making the documents public was “an encouraging start.” The foundation’s president, Rex Bradford, explained:

“Every time they do this, people discover interesting things that fill out the story … The saga of the Kennedy assassination is one revelation after another revelation. It’s an unpeeling of history at the height of the Cold War and, for that reason alone, it’s interesting, even apart from the assassination.”

Indeed, the further revelations seem to add more layers to the event that many say destroyed the innocence of the nation. And yet, the obsession with truth-seeking has captivated generation after generation of Americans and, in many ways, has set the bar for skepticism in government. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, was a pivotal moment in the country’s history.

1. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
2. The Kennedy assassination inspired conspiracies throughout the years. Whenever new files are released by the government, they seem to disprove some conspiracies while, sometimes, inspiring whole new ones.
3. President Donald Trump’s administration released about 63,000 pages of Kennedy related files recently.