Kennedy attack: US national archive releases secret documents

According to President Donald Trump’s arrangement, the National Archive in the United States published the files on the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Accordingly, all documents would now be released “who had previously been held back because of their classification”, it said.

“It is in the national interest to finally release all records in connection with these murder,” said the order of January.

On Tuesday evening (local time), more than 1100 PDF documents were found on the website of the National Archives. The new publication comprises about 80,000 pages earlier as a secret documents that would now be published without blackening, said the US secret service office. It is unclear whether these documents provide new knowledge about the assassination attempt.

The documents can be viewed both online and personally in the National Archive near the US capital Washington. Documents that could currently only be viewed on site would be digitized and placed in the online archive in the coming days, it continued.

“Other documents that are held back under court decision or are subject to confidentiality (…) must first be released,” it said. However, the content of these documents is largely known.

According to the National Archives, the collection of the files for the murder of Kennedy consists of several million pages, photographs, electronic data carriers, most of which were already accessible to the public before the new publication. However, some files would be kept under lock and key because their approval could endanger military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or foreign policy relationships.

Historians are now investigating the new documents – but it should take some time for this work to be completed. It is not expected that the documents will bring groundbreaking revelations over the assassination attempt. There are still numerous conspiracy theories for the attack on the charismatic 35th US President, which had triggered stamelessness worldwide. Kennedy was fatally hit on November 22, 1963 in Dallas in Texas during a trip in the open car of shots.

An investigation commission came to the conclusion that the assassin had acted alone Lee Harvey Oswald. But Oswald was never able to testify in court – just two days after the assassination attempt, he was shot by the night club owner Jack Ruby. To date, there is no valid evidence that contradict the official version. Nevertheless, distrust persists. A number of alternative theses have made the round over the years.

Trump had already announced during his first term that the Kennedy files fully disclose. In 2017, some secret documents were published. But at the urging of the CIA and the FBI, Trump decided to keep certain documents secret because the authorities expressed security concerns. His successor Joe Biden later released thousands of other documents – but not all.

Also files by John F. Kennedy Brother. Robert F. Kennedy, and the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. should be released later.

In 1968, five years after the attack on “JFK”, Robert F. Kennedy also fell victim to an assassination attempt: he was shot down in Los Angeles on the night of June 5, 1968 and succumbed to his injuries a day later. At that time he was promising candidate for the presidential candidacy of the Democratic Party and also on the election victory.

The pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King had been murdered in Memphis two months earlier on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998 – but King’s children had said doubts in the past whether Ray was really the perpetrator.