Former President Donald Trump told The Messenger on Monday that he will release all of the files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy if he regains the White House in 2025. Interest in the JFK assassination has never gone away, but it was given a new boost when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the nephew of President Kennedy (and the son of Kennedy’s brother, Robert, who was also assassinated) stated last week that there was “overwhelming” evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in Kennedy’s killing.
“I will release the remaining portion [of JFK files] very early in my term,” Trump promised.
During his presidency, Trump ordered the release of thousands of files, previously kept secret, concerning the Kennedy assassination, but opted to defer to the judgment of the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to not release about 300 hundred files. But after the FBI and the CIA both essentially were actively involved in opposing Trump before, during, and after his presidency, perhaps Trump is not as trusting of the intelligence community as he was early in his tenure in office.
The release of the Durham Report this week, which detailed how the U.S. intelligence agencies basically created the false Russian collusion story — which damaged Trump’s presidency and reputation, likely contributing to his loss of the White House in 2020 — has no doubt deepened Trump’s suspicions of those agencies.
Just a short time before his departure from Fox News, Tucker Carlson reported that a source with direct knowledge of the JFK assassination told him the CIA had a role in the incident. The source, Carlson said, told him, “I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”
Although Congress ordered the public release of all JFK-related documents in 1992, succeeding presidents have skirted the law, including President Joe Biden. In 2018, Trump wrote in a memo that “certain information should continue to be redacted because of identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. I agree with the Archivist’s recommendations,” adding that the continued withholdings “are necessary.”
When President Harry Truman signed the legislation creating the CIA, he expressed concern that the agency could develop into a rival government, and those concerns only increased in his latter years. It has also been reported that President Kennedy himself disliked the CIA — particularly its director, Allen Dulles. Kennedy was murdered November 22, 1963, and the Warren Commission, created by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. Ironically, prior to the Kennedy assassination, Oswald traveled to Mexico and met officials from the Soviet and Cuban embassies, and upon his return spent time in Alice, Texas, where LBJ had several powerful supporters, including some who had stolen the 1948 Senate seat for Johnson.
In 1979, a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives expressed that it was likely there were multiple shooters, not just Oswald. A district attorney in Louisiana, Jim Garrison, investigated the 1963 assassination and argued that the JFK killing was part of a conspiracy. Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK was inspired by Garrison’s investigations.
But the CIA rejects those theories, arguing that Garrison’s allegations were, possibly, part of a Soviet “disinformation scheme.”
Of course, the intelligence community also argued that there was some sort of collusion, or conspiracy, between Russia and Trump, and that assertion has now been debunked beyond reasonable doubt. The FBI even called the information found on Hunter Biden’s laptop a Russian “disinformation scheme.” This seems to be a default response from the U.S. intelligence agencies — if it hurts the candidates they support, it must be “disinformation.”
Some have lamented that the charges made by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the failure of the Trump and Biden administrations to release all documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination will inspire new “conspiracy theories.” While there are certainly wild conspiracy theories, use of that term has become a useful propaganda term to dismiss certain allegations without having to refute evidence, similar to calling political opposition “white supremacists.”
This November, it will have been 60 years since JFK was murdered in Dallas, Texas. All persons who could have been directly involved in a murder plot of that president have very likely gone onto their eternal reward. What could possibly merit continued secrecy of this tragic event? Is something systemically deeper being covered up now, something that could seriously damage the grip the Deep State holds in our country?
Whatever it is, we can hope that the next president — whether it is Trump or someone else — will have the courage to release all the files.
