Trump Releases Classified Files on JFK Assassination

President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday released what it said were all of the government's classified files on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, making tens of thousands of pages of unredacted records available to the public for the first time.

The release of the files comes after Trump signed a day one executive order in January aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

The contents of the documents, and whether any previously unreleased information is in them, wasn't immediately clear. Historians quickly said they would need time to assess the flood of files to understand if they were significantly different from previous releases.

So far, nothing in the documents has changed the long-held findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 while the then-president rode in a motorcade in Dallas.

Read the JFK files

Looking to read the JFK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here.

Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since Kennedy's assassination. There are also photographs and sounds recordings, mostly from the 1960s.

Report from Russia: Oswald was a lousy shot

One document dated Nov. 20, 1991 appears to be a teletype of U.S. intelligence reporting on Lee Harvey Oswald, his time in the Soviet Union, his stormy relationship with his Soviet wife – and his apparently poor marksmanship.

The document says that a KGB official named Nikonov reviewed files from the feared Soviet security service, the KGB, to determine if Oswald “had been a KGB agent.”

Reuters reported that the document cited a report from an American professor named E.B. Smith who reported he had talked in Moscow about Oswald with KGB official “Slava” Nikonov, who said he had reviewed five thick files about the assassin to determine if he had been a KGB agent.

“Nikonov is now confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB,” the document says.

From the description of Oswald in the files, Nikonov “doubted that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KBG (sic) watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.”

Nikonov also commented that Oswald had “a stormy relationship with his Soviet wife, who rode him incessantly/”

The KGB files “also reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the USSR,” the document said.

Some conspiracy theorists have latched onto bits and pieces of the CIA’s files on Oswald, including those about his erratic behavior, as proof he either didn’t act alone – or didn’t actually have anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.

Documents touch on Lee Harvey Oswald theories

Some of the documents also include references to various conspiracy theories suggesting that Oswald left the Soviet Union in 1962 intent on assassinating the popular young president.

Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the U.S. involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of communist forces in other countries.

The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point "that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime."

"It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America," the document reads.

What did experts initially say about the JFK files?

James Johnston, author of "Murder, Inc.: The CIA under John F. Kennedy" told USA TODAY that he wasn’t expecting any bombshells, given that virtually all of the relevant agencies – including the CIA – had promised to turn over everything they had years ago to the National Archives in 1988.

“If it was going to embarrass the agency or tell a different story, they wouldn't have turned them over to the National Archives in the first place,” said Johnston, who was a staff member of the congressional Church Committee that investigated the CIA in 1975. “And if they were withholding them before, I’m guessing they would continue to withhold them.”

Johnston cited one particular document that he knows exists but that he says hasn’t been turned over to the National Archives – the first one-on-one conversation between President Lyndon Johnson and CIA Director John McCone right after Johnson took office after Kennedy’s assassination.

McCone was long suspected of withholding information from the Warren Commission, the panel Johnson created to investigate Kennedy’s murder, according to Philip Shenon, author of “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.”

McCone was kept on as CIA director by Johnson and pledged full cooperation with the commission, which was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Shenon wrote in a 2015 Politico article about his book’s findings. He testified that the CIA had no evidence to suggest that Oswald was part of any conspiracy, foreign or domestic, but rather a former Marine and self-proclaimed Marxist who acted as a delusional lone wolf.

That depiction of Oswald was ultimately adopted by the Warren Commission in its final report. But years later, Shenon said, the CIA itself acknowledged that McCone had withheld information from commission investigators.

What is the Warren Commission?

Several of the documents released Tuesday are tied to the Warren Commission: But what is it?

After Kennedy was shot in 1963, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to investigate the assassination. The Warren Commission determined that Oswald, who was arrested and later shot by a nightclub owner on live television, acted alone.

Still, the assassination has fueled intense debate and a myriad of theories challenging the conclusion of the Warren Commission. Polls have shown that many Americans believe Kennedy’s death was part of a wider conspiracy.

Part of Trump’s promise of ‘maximum transparency’ at the nation’s intelligence agencies

Trump himself did not immediately post about the document release. But Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of National Intelligence, hailed their release, saying it was part of Trump’s promise for “maximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies.”

Critics have long accused the intelligence community, and CIA in particular, of withholding potentially revelatory information about the case. Still, intelligence officials over the years have insisted that they have released everything important and that what’s left was withheld only to protect highly classified sources and methods of gathering intelligence and protecting sources.

In a statement, Gabbard said that she immediately sent out a directive across the intelligence community after Trump’s Monday announcement ordering everyone to provide all unredacted records within the collection of documents about Kennedy's assassination the national archives for immediate release.

JFK file experts said those documents almost certainly have all been made public and viewed already, but with mostly minor redactions.