Dallas 1963: New Documents on the Kennedy Assassination

Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday (March 18th) released thousands of documents related to the assassination of the president John F. Kennedy, which are previously confidential, writes CNN.

Many files related to the Kennedy assassination have been released before, including 13.000 documents released during the Biden administration.

Trump said Monday that "people have been waiting for decades" to see 80.000 pages of documents related to the Kennedy assassination. Shortly after taking office, he signed an executive order ordering the public release of these documents.

However, there is no indication that the documents will contain any information, according to one of the people who have already seen many of the records.

Tom Samoluk, former deputy director of the Assassination Documents Review Board, a government panel formed in the 1990s to study documents related to the assassination, said he and a team of about a dozen people between 1994 and 1998 re-examined a huge amount of documents for publication.

From what he has reviewed, there is nothing that would change the current conclusion about the Kennedy assassination - that the sole attacker was Lee Harvey Oswald.

"The collection of documents that we've reviewed, the vast majority of which have been released -- some of which have been classified in whole or in part -- if we're talking about it, there's no key evidence," Tom Samoluk told CNN in a phone interview.

"The public may be disappointed"

Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said that in addition to what will be released, there are additional documents that are "held under court seal or jury secrecy, and records subject to Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code."

The National Archives, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, is working to speed up the process of unsealing those documents.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, warned that the public may be disappointed by the lack of new revelations.

"I'm just telling you we're going to find out," Sabato said. "But it might not be about the Kennedy assassination, and people who expect to, you know, solve the case after 61 years are going to be bitterly disappointed."

The Kennedy assassination has long fueled conspiracy theories, some of which have been publicly mentioned by Trump himself. This is partly the reason why the Committee for Review of Documents, where Samoluk worked, was established - to assess whether documents related to the assassination can be published.

Previous actions and promises

Despite earlier promises by presidents, including Trump, to release all remaining documents, the CIA, Pentagon and State Department are still withholding certain files. The reason for this, as they state, is to protect the identity of confidential sources who are still alive, or could be, as well as the preservation of intelligence work methods.

During his first term, Trump agreed not to release all remaining Kennedy assassination files at the request of national security agencies. However, during the 2024 campaign, he promised to release the remaining documents.

Source: CNN