US President Donald Trump has decided to keep some files on the assassination of John F. Kennedy secret following appeals from the FBI and the CIA. The remaining trove of nearly 2,900 records has been published.
Image: Reuters/JFK Presidential Library and Museum
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The US National Archives released the secret documents on Thursday, just hours before the legal deadline for their publication was set to expire. The long-awaited release is expected to shine additional light on the fatal Dallas shooting in 1963, which investigators attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine was himself shot and killed before the trial.
Many Americans believe that part of the story is being kept away from the public eye. Some conspiracy theories link the Kennedy assassination with the US intelligence apparatus, the military, or the Italian mafia.
Among the documents released on Thursday, there was a transcript of a November 24, 1963, conversation with J. Edgar Hoover, who was FBI director at the time.
John F. Kennedy and his wife moments before Kennedy was shotImage: Reuters/Walt Cisco/Dallas Morning News
The FBI informed police of a threat against the life of Oswald the night before he was killed. However, the police did not act on the tip, Hoover said.
US President Donald Trump approved the release of a 2,891-document trove, but decided that hundreds of additional documents will remain secret. According to White House officials cited by news agencies, Trump made this decision after the FBI and the CIA urged him to do so.
"I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted," Trump said in a White House memo on Thursday. "At the same time, executive departments and agencies have proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns."
"I have no choice — today — but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security," Trump added.
@dwnews - Kennedy files welcomed with jokes, conspiracy theories
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WikiLeaks offers money
Trump also ordered the federal agencies to further review the unreleased documents within the next six months and make their case for keeping them secret. After the new deadline expires, documents should stay secret "only in the rarest of cases" sources said.
"There does remain sensitive information in the records," including, for example, the identities of informants and their roles, an official told AFP.
Following the release, WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 (€86,000) reward for the still-unpublished documents on the Kennedy assassination, as long as those documents show "violations of law, inefficiency or administrative error." The group's founder, Julian Assange, said the delay was "inexcusable."
Ever-present speculation
In 1964, the Warren Commission declared that Oswald, a former Marine sharpshooter, had been the lone gunman. A separate congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence for supposed involvement by the CIA. However, alternative theories on the assassination have fueled hundreds of books, movies and publications on the event.
In 1992, Congress ordered that all records on the Kennedy investigation be made public and set the final deadline for October 26, 2017. With some 30,000 documents already released — albeit with redactions — experts do not believe that the remaining files contain earth-shattering revelations. However, the pressure from the intelligence agencies to keep some records secret is sure to fuel further speculation.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: for the western world, his murder was a shot through the heart.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A shot through the heart of the Western world
At 12:31 Dallas time, several gunshots hit the US president in the heart and in the head — in front of running cameras. His wife, Jackie Kennedy, was with him at the time, as was his host, the governor of Texas, John Connally, with his wife Nellie. Connally, too, was seriously wounded. It is still not known how many shots were fired or in what order they were fired.
Image: Getty Images/Three Lions/Hulton Archive
A day that changed history
It was a sunny Friday morning when the US president and the first lady arrived at the airport in Dallas. It was the second day of Kennedy's election trail in the conservative state of Texas. JFK himself suggested opening the top of the limousine for the motorcade through the city.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
The president is dead
An hour after his arrival, the 35th president of the United States was hit by gunshots on Dealey Plaza. When he arrived at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, his heart was still beating, but the bullet that had pierced his head made any attempt to save him impossible. Kennedy died at the age of 46.
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
Return to Washington
When Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president on board Air Force One, Jackie Kennedy was right next to him. Kennedy's coffin was also on board at the time, since his body was returned to Washington for a post-mortem. Four days later, Johnson appointed a commission to examine the assassination. The results released by the Warren Commission have remained disputed, however.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
The suspect Lee Harvey Oswald
The shots fired at the president had apparently come from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The gun belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was originally arrested as a suspect in the murder of a policeman an hour and a half after the assassination. Only in the course of Oswald's interrogation did police begin suspecting him of JFK's murder as well. Oswald denied both murders.
Image: Reuters
Silenced forever
On November 24, a camera crew from a national TV station was filming Oswald's transfer to another prison when night club owner Jack Ruby appeared in front of the suspected assassin and took him down with a single gunshot. Millions of people witnessed the murder on screen. Oswald, too, was brought to the Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he then died.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A shocked population
When the president was buried on November 25 at Arlington National Cemetery, millions of people lined the roads to accompany JFK on his final journey. The memorial service became an international media event.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
Final journey
After JFK's death, Jackie mourned her husband, while a nation mourned a politician who had inspired so many. After the memorial service in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, Kennedy's two brothers and his veiled widow accompanied the president's coffin to his final resting place. Five years later, Robert Kennedy was also the victim of an assassination.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
He was a "Berliner"
Germany, too, was shaken by John F. Kennedy's death. Especially in West Berlin, JFK had become an idol after his legendary declaration of "Ich bin ein Berliner" during a speech in August 1963, in which he expressed his solidarity with the divided city. After JFK's death, thousands of people expressed their sorrow by writing in condolence books or by laying flowers or wreaths at the Berlin Wall.
Image: picture-alliance/akg
What if?
The peak of Cold War hostilities came during Kennedy's term as Democratic president from 1961-63. Those years witnessed the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war. A young, charismatic president, for many "Jack" — as JFK was often known — embodied a new age for the United States. His assassination was a terrible blow to US consciousness.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone/Hulton Archive
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The only reason that so many files were released on Thursday is because Trump himself is a conspiracy theorist, Barbara Perry, an expert on JFK and the Kennedy family, told DW.
Perry, who is also the director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia, said it was no surprise that hundreds of documents had been withheld.
"I am surprised it has even come this far already, but I am not surprised that there are still things to come," she said. "I don't expect any bombshells, but one never knows."
