The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found around 2,400 files related to the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, a report said Monday, as a U.S. agency sent Donald Trump a plan to release classified documents.
The still-secret records are contained in 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found in a review prompted by President Trump's Jan. 23 executive order to release all of JFK's assassination records. The records were never provided through a task force that was supposed to review and disclose the documents, Axios reported.
Conspiracy theories about Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963 assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas have been talked about for 61 years, fueled by the government's reluctance to release all of the documents.
The existence of the new JFK documents was disclosed to the White House on Friday, and a further review of those records could reveal more information as to what happened in one of the most scrutinized tragedies in American history. The release of the new documents could also change the federal procedures for vetting and releasing information related to government events.
"This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously," assassination expert Jefferson Morley told Axios.
Morley is also the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation's largest source of online records of Kennedy's killing.
"The FBI is finally saying, 'Let's respond to the president's order,' instead of keeping the secrecy going," added Morley.
Under the 1992 JFK Records Act, assassination records were supposed to be handed over to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board and then to the National Archives, which were to be fully disclosed in 2017 during Trump's first term in the White House. However, the Axios report revealed that the newly discovered records had not been submitted or vetted by either of those entities.
At the advice of the CIA in 2017, Trump delayed disclosure of the records that the government had identified. President Joe Biden then ordered a limited release of the records, which continued to promote the public's view of the government's shroud of secrecy.
Experts say that the remaining records to be disclosed are unlikely to definitively prove whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman who pulled the trigger or if he was part of a broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, but it could put to rest the cover-up of documents that critics have blamed on the government for more than a half-century.
Despite Trump's order to release all of the JFK assassination records, sources told Axios that the various intelligence agencies with records of the assassination are still recommending redactions.
"When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he's gonna hit the roof," a White House official told Axios.
Trump's order also calls for the release of records related to the June 5, 1968 assassination of JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), as well as the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) on April 4, 1968. The records of both RFK and MLK are expected to be released by March 9.
Meanwhile, a U.S. government agency sent recommendations last week to President Trump on which classified documents he should release to the public related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
"In accordance with the president's executive order, ODNI submitted its plan to the White House," a spokesperson with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told Reuters on Tuesday. Trump's order had a deadline to send recommendations by last Friday.
Trump's pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, has said he believes the CIA was involved in his uncle's death, an allegation the agency has described as baseless.
Kennedy Jr. has also said he believes his father was killed by multiple gunmen, an assertion that contradicted official accounts.
Trump made a similar promise to release classified documents on John F. Kennedy's assassination during his 2017 to 2021 term, and he did release some documents. But he ultimately bowed to pressure from the CIA and FBI, and kept a significant chunk of documents under wraps, citing national security concerns.
Documents may reveal details about a gripping moment in U.S. history, but historians say they are unlikely to bolster any of the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's 1963 shooting in Dallas.
"I suspect that we won't get anything too dramatic in the releases, or anything that fundamentally overturns our understanding of what occurred in Dallas," said Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard history professor and one of four historians interviewed by Reuters.
One revelation the documents could contain is that the Central Intelligence Agency was more aware of Oswald than it had previously disclosed. Files revealing that the CIA failed to share intelligence on Oswald with the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be "a big story," said Gerald Posner, author of "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK," which concludes that Oswald acted alone.
"The question for me is not whether the CIA was complicit, but whether the CIA was negligent," Posner said.
Posner said questions remain about what the CIA knew about Oswald's visits to Mexico City six weeks before the assassination. During that trip, Oswald visited the Soviet embassy.
Barbara Perry, co-director of the presidential oral history program at the Miller Center, an affiliate of the University of Virginia, said the CIA may have been following Oswald.
"Certainly the FBI was, but they didn't connect the dots," Perry said. "But it wasn't a conspiracy on the part of the CIA or the FBI or any outside country."
The release, however extensive, will likely leave some discrepancies in the body of knowledge regarding the assassination, said Alice L. George, author of "The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Political Trauma and American Memory." So conspiracy theories are expected to endure.
"I can't imagine any document that would convince (conspiracy theorists) that Oswald acted alone," George said. "Particularly among people who are really invested in that way of thinking. It's going to probably leave them in the same place where they are now."