DALLAS (AP) – Unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of United States (US) president John F Kennedy were released on Tuesday evening.
About 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the website of the US National Archives and Records Administration. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over six million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination had previously been released.
US President Donald Trump told reporters that the release was coming, though he estimated it at about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while visiting the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
There is an intense interest in details related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination.
He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Senator Robert F Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr, the Trump administration’s top health official. He’s the nephew of John F Kennedy and son of Robert F Kennedy.
The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle’s assassination. When Air Force One carrying JFK and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a re-election campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.
But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, a club owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
