What JFK files have been released, and what have we learned?
(NewsNation) — Following up on a promise from President Donald Trump, the National Archives released thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Many of the documents are handwritten or blurred due to age and difficult to search, so historians and journalists are still pouring through them to uncover new details, but here is what is known so far.
The White House said Tuesday that more documents would be released Wednesday.
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Exactly what information is new and what is old is difficult to determine. Investigative journalist Gerald Posner told NewsNation the release was a document dump and a 'master class' in how not to release documents.
'They don't tell you what's new in them,' he said.
The only way to clearly tell what information is new is to compare the documents to older versions previously released by the National Archives, a laborious process.
The documents also were not classified or sorted in any way, so it could take days to determine what new information was actually released.
So far, there hasn't been any 'smoking gun' that would validate decadesold conspiracies about the assassination, but independent journalist Jefferson Morely told NewsNation the files don't debunk conspiracies either.
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'They undermine the official story that one man alone killed the president for no reason,' Morely said.
NewsNation contributor Ross Coulthart also notes that a document clearly laying out a planned conspiracy is unlikely to exist, and people would be unlikely to admit in no uncertain terms to taking part in one.
'Just because it's not written down on paper doesn't mean the evidence doesn't point to more than one shooter,' Coulthart said.
The main conspiracy theories around the Kennedy assassination have centered around the identity or number of the shooters and the motivation behind the shooting.
Many theorize that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the shooter and was set up or that he was one of multiple shooters and will be searching for evidence of that in the files.
People will also be looking for references to the CIA, FBI, Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Mafia, which have all been accused of being behind the assassination, either individually or as part of a larger conspiracy.
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Many are also interested in how much intelligence the U.S. or other countries, including Mexico, had on Oswald prior to the shooting.
Coulthart noted the documents also provide a glimpse into the bigger picture of Cold War clandestine actions, including the U.S. being behind the deaths of leaders who were deemed a threat to America's goal of stopping communism.
Another revelation was the number of CIA agents placed overseas as State Department employees, said to be about 1,500. The CIA has historically used State Department employment as a cover for agents, but a 1961 memo to Kennedy revealed the number was beginning to be seen as a threat to the ability of the agency to control its own policy.
Morely also noted that the documents suggest that CIA surveillance of Oswald prior to the assassination was more extensive than previously known.
Announcing the release of the documents, Trump promised no redactions, but that does not appear to have been true.
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Posner noted that some redactions include Social Security numbers for still-living individuals.
There are also redactions related to files on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. because they are related to information that was sealed by a judge for 50 years. Despite executive orders to release information, those files cannot be made public for another two years.
All the files released have come from the National Archives. A question remains on if or how files from other agencies, including the CIA and FBI, would be made public.
Following Trump's executive order, the FBI conducted a review and found 2,400 unreleased records relating to the JFK assassination. Those were not included in Tuesday's drop, and there has been no information on if or when they could be released.
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In addition to the Kennedy files, Trump also promised the release of files related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. A release date for those files has not yet been announced.
The files are being released in the name of transparency, but Posner said he doubts they will satisfy those who think the government is hiding something.
The fact that information has been kept secret for so many decades despite public questions about the official narrative may lead people to think incriminating files are still being obscured, he told NewsNation.
'The average person thinks they must have been hiding something to keep them hidden for so long,' Posner said. 'So people think maybe they're destroyed or kept elsewhere in government.'
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