President blocks the release of some records on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
CIA, FBI insist some documents should remain secret for national security
WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump delayed on Thursday evening the release of hundreds of classified documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, bowing to pressure from the CIA, FBI and other federal agencies still seeking to keep some final secrets from the nearly 54-year-old investigation.
The president allowed the immediate release of 2,800 records by the National Archives, after a last-minute scramble to meet a 25-year legal deadline. Following lobbying by national security officials, the remaining documents will be reviewed during a 180-day period. In a memo released by the White House, Trump said: “I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted. 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. “
On Thursday evening, the Post was still reviewing the records that were put online just after 7:30 p.m. It was unknown how much new information the files contain and how heavily they’ve been redacted by national security officials.
The government was facing a Thursday deadline for disclosing the records, and Trump had tweeted twice that the documents would be made public.
“The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow,” he promised Wednesday. “So interesting!”
Given Trump’s enthusiasm, legions of assassination scholars, professionals and hobbyists alike had been waiting throughout the day to begin a reading frenzy. Any delay or limitations of the release could be ordered only by the president.
In his memo Thursday night, Trump said that any agency that wants to continue withholding documents after April 26 “should be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement of full disclosure of records.”
The documents could shed new light on Lee Harvey Oswald’s movements and contacts in the months before he shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Many historians hope for new details of Oswald’s six-day trip to Mexico City, where he met with Cubans and Soviets two months before the assassination.
The papers also could reveal more about the careers and activities of Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both of whom were longtime CIA operatives.
But experts do not believe the documents will contain information to shake the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald, a troubled former Marine who temporarily defected to the Soviet Union at one point, acted as the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza. Oswald himself was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on Nov. 24, 1963, at Dallas police headquarters on live television — a stunning turn that fueled decades of conspiracy theories.
The release was mandated by a 1992 act of Congress that was meant to empty the official cupboards of classified material that had been shrouded in controversy and hearsay for decades.