Government releases latest batch of JFK assassination documents
The National Archives and Records Administration started posting the long-awaited files just before 7 p.m. — a day after President Donald Trump announced that 80,000 pages related to the fatal shooting on Nov. 22, 1963, were about to be released.
'In accordance with President Donald Trump's directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released," the administration's statement read.
Within minutes, thousands of documents that had been hidden from the public for decades appeared on the site.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the trove of documents contains any bombshells or evidence to counter the conclusion the Warren Commission reached in 1964 that a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Texas Schoolbook Depository.
'You got a lot of reading,' Trump said Monday as he visited the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. 'I don't believe we're going to redact anything.'
Trump was cagey about what would be in those files. Historians contend that around 4,700 documents haven't yet been released.
"The origins of the 80,000 pages of material are unknown," Jefferson Morley, an expert on the JFK assassination and the CIA, wrote on his 'JFK Facts' blog before the new batch of documents was released.
Justice Department lawyers worked all night to review hundreds of pages of classified documents before they were released, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.
It also remained to be seen whether the document drop would finally put to rest the widespread public skepticism of the government's official explanation that Oswald acted alone.
'People have so many doubts,' presidential historian Michael Beschloss said. 'There are so many theories that are conflicting. It's very hard for me to imagine that there will be one piece of evidence that will make everyone agree on what happened here. What most people do agree is that the killing of John Kennedy changed history, and mainly in a bad way.'
When Trump was campaigning last year and trying to win the endorsement of JFK's nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he renewed his promise to release the files.
Hours after he snagged RFK Jr.'s endorsement in August, Trump vowed that if elected, he would establish a commission on assassination attempts in honor of RFK Jr., who is now his secretary of health and human services.
Shortly after he began his second term, Trump signed an executive order mandating the release of all records related to President Kennedy's assassination, as well as the 1968 assassinations of RFK Jr.'s father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, all the documents related to the assassination were supposed to have been released by 2017, when Trump was president the first time.
Trump released some JFK-related documents then, but he also gave the intelligence agencies more time to assess the remaining files.
It wasn't until December 2022 that President Joe Biden released more than 13,000 records after the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the country's largest nonprofit repository of JFK assassination records, sued the administration to make all the documents public.
But Biden released only about 98% of all the documents related to the killing that remained in the National Archives, which controls the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.
'It's high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,' Morley, who is also the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, said at the time.
'This is about our history and our right to know it,' he said.
The 4,700 or so records that were kept under wraps were believed to have included more information about accused Oswald's sojourn in Mexico City before the assassination.
Among those documents were 44 related to CIA agent George Joannides and a covert Cuba-related program he ran that came into contact with Oswald less than four months before Kennedy was shot, according to calculations made by JFK researchers with the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
In a memorandum explaining why some documents weren't being released, Biden noted that the records act 'permits the continued postponement of disclosure of information ... only when postponement remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.'
Prominent historians didn't buy that explanation.
'We're 59 years after President John Kennedy was killed, and there's just no justification for this,' U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994 to 1998, said when Biden released the records.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
6 minutes ago
- The Hill
EPA cancels $7 billion Biden-era grant program to boost solar energy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday terminated a $7 billion grant program that was intended to help pay for residential solar projects for more than 900,000 lower-income U.S. households. It's the latest Trump administration move hindering the nation's shift to cleaner energy. The funding, part of Democratic President Joe Biden's Solar for All program, was awarded to 60 recipients including states, tribes and regions for investments such as rooftop solar and community solar gardens. Solar, a renewable energy, is widely regarded as a way to introduce cleaner power onto the electrical grid and lower energy bills for American consumers. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement on social media that authority for the program was eliminated under the tax-and-spending bill signed last month by Republican President Donald Trump. The law eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was approved under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The fund set aside $20 billion in 'green bank' money for community development projects to boost renewable energy, and an additional $7 billion for the solar program. 'The bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive,″ Zeldin said. 'Today, the Trump EPA is announcing that we are ending Solar for All for good, saving US taxpayers ANOTHER $7 BILLION!' Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, who introduced the Solar for All program to slash electric bills for working families, called Zeldin's action illegal. 'Solar for All means lower utility bills, many thousands of good-paying jobs and real action to address the existential threat of climate change,″ Sanders said in a statement. 'At a time when working families are getting crushed by skyrocketing energy costs and the planet is literally burning, sabotaging this program isn't just wrong — it's absolutely insane. We will fight back to preserve this enormously important program.' The Trump administration has already targeted the 'green bank' funds, first freezing the grants, then terminating the agreements altogether. Zeldin called them 'a clear cut case of waste and abuse' and a 'gold bar' scheme earlier this year. The EPA has argued that the tax and policy bill law repealed the green bank and allows the agency to rescind the money it has already obligated. The recipients of that money disagree. They say the bulk of the money had already been disbursed and isn't affected by the law. Grant recipients have filed lawsuits challenging the administration's actions, and a judge ruled in April the EPA cannot freeze the contracts. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee, called Zeldin's elimination of the solar program a betrayal 'that will further hike electricity costs and make our power grid less reliable.' 'Trump is — yet again — putting his fossil fuel megadonors first,' he added. ___ St. John reported from Detroit. ___
Los Angeles Times
6 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
New boss of Paramount grilled about rumored Trump deal
David Ellison finally clinched his prize Thursday, completing Skydance Media's $8-billion takeover of the historic Paramount. But the tech scion immediately faced questions about President Trump's boast that he expects $20 million in free advertising and programming as part of a settlement to end Trump's lawsuit over CBS '60 Minutes' edits. The settlement cleared the way for Skydance's takeover of the company that, in addition to CBS, includes MTV, Comedy Central and the storied Paramount Pictures. Last month, Paramount paid $16 million to settle the lawsuit, which 1st Amendment experts said had no merit. Three weeks later, Ellison's acquisition of Paramount was approved by federal regulators. If Skydance participated in such a deal to give free public service announcements to Trump to settle his '60 Minutes' lawsuit, viewers are going to have to watch CBS to find out. The first question Ellison, the newly minted chairman and chief executive of Paramount, fielded from reporters during a press briefing Thursday was about the purported PSAs. Ellison would not directly answer it. 'We are not going to politicize anything today,' Ellison said at the event held at Paramount headquarters in Times Square in New York. Paramount Global handled the settlement and Skydance was not involved 'in any way,' Ellison said. But Trump — who has a friendly relationship with Ellison's father Larry — has proclaimed numerous times that he's been promised $20 million in free air time for public service announcements that promote causes favored by the White House. Trump's former agent, Ari Emanuel, also helped Ellison make its case to the president to allow the deal to go forward. Ellison and the other top executives stated their support for the news division at the press conference. Ellison said CBS News and '60 Minutes' were among the first stops on his tour of the company's offices after the deal was closed. As for the news ombudsman that Skydance agreed to as part of the terms to get approval, Paramount's new president, Jeff Shell, said the position should not be viewed as a censor. 'The ombudsman is meant to be a transparency vehicle, not an oversight vehicle,' Shell said. 'We do believe in transparency.' Asked how Skydance will handle the ongoing attacks on mainstream media that continue to come from the White House, Ellison said the company will stand its ground. 'We're obviously going to be fierce defenders of our talent,' Ellison said. 'We always have been.' Ahead of the press conference, Ellison put out a mission statement for the merged company, promising to combine the company's storied movie and TV properties with technological prowess. Paramount is also the home of several iconic but aging cable brand names, including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. 'Moving forward, we will work with conviction and optimism to transform Paramount into a tech-forward company that blends the creative heart of Hollywood with the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley,' Ellison wrote. The immediate challenge facing Skydance will be building the scale of Paramount+, which, despite a decent number of popular shows, has lagged in the streaming competition led by Netflix and Amazon Prime. Ellison promised the direct-to-consumer offering can be 'a leading global streaming service.' The mogul is taking over the most-watched television network in CBS, but like the rest of the legacy media industry, it's fighting the migration of viewers to streaming. Ellison's note made a point of praising '60 Minutes,' saying it has 'a long tradition of impactful reporting led by seasoned journalists committed to accuracy, integrity, and public trust' and expressed thanks to the news division for continuing to toil through the controversy. 'We take immense pride in CBS News' legacy of impactful journalism and look forward to continuing to foster a newsroom culture where journalists are empowered, trusted, and equipped to do their best work,' Ellison wrote. The new company is now called Paramount, a Skydance Corp, with its stock trades under the PSKY ticker. Shares were trading down about 3%, to $11.25, in midday trading. According to Ellison and his private equity Paramount investors, RedBird Capital Partners, the company will soon be positioned to reach new heights. Ellison's play for the studio began nearly two years ago during Hollywood's summer of labor unrest, when then-controlling shareholder Shari Redstone's family enterprise, National Amusements, found itself in a cash crunch after Paramount halted its dividend to its investors. In December 2023, Redstone turned to Paramount's board to approve the Skydance transaction. That triggered another fraught process as board members agonized over the structure of a deal that would reward rank-and-file shareholders — not just the Redstones. The deal was finally signed July 7, 2024. As part of the Skydance buyout, the Redstones National Amusements Inc. were paid $2.4 billion. After the firm's considerable debts are paid, the family should come away with about $1.75 billion. Paramount shareholders will receive $4.5 billion. Skydance and RedBird Capital Partners also agreed to inject $1.5 billion into Paramount's balance sheet to help pay down debt. 'Our investment in Paramount and long-term partnership with the Ellison family reflects our deep conviction in the value of world-class intellectual property and the potential to unlock substantial growth,' RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale said in a statement.
The Hill
6 minutes ago
- The Hill
Kudlow: None of the tariff ‘gloom and doom' has happened
Economist and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Thursday noted how many of the most dire predictions about President Trump's tariffs have not come to fruition, as new rates on dozens of countries took effect. 'All the gloom and doom, tariff inflation, tariff recession, tariff catastrophe, none of that has happened, OK? And in fact, as you noted earlier, the tariff revenues are pouring in,' Kudlow said during a Thursday appearance on Fox News. 'He [President Trump] could do as much as $400 billion this year alone in tariff revenues, imports from China, or let's say Chinese exports to the United States are at their lowest point in over 20 years,' added Kudlow, who served in Trump's first administration. In recent weeks, the president has announced deals with the European Union, Japan, United Kingdom and Vietnam — however higher rates on many other countries without deals took effect at midnight Wednesday. Some analysts predicted Trump's tariff war would torpedo stock markets and deflate U.S. business growth, but Kudlow said the nation has seen the opposite effect. 'Our trade deficit through June is at its lowest point in the last two years. These are all positives,' Kudlow, former director of the National Economic Council, told Fox News. Kudlow said adjusted trade rates are a sign of the White House's success in navigating negotiations. 'People have been taking advantage of the United States and that's coming to an end. Now, instead of warfare, you know, instead of retaliation or the so-called world tariff war, no, it's dealmaking,' he added. The U.S. nearly $100 billion in tariff revenue from January to June this year, according to trade data analyzed by the Peterson Institute. Yale's Budget Lab has estimated that all new tariffs in 2025 would raise $2.7 trillion from 2026 to 2035, but says the policy will make the U.S. economy about 0.4 percent smaller in the long run. Stocks slipped on Thursday as new tariffs kicked in, but remain near all-time highs.
