Trump holding back some JFK files, releasing others
The National Archives has released some of the long-secret records relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
President Donald Trump blocked the release of others, bending to CIA and FBI appeals. He placed those files under a six-month review while letting the 2,800 others come out Thursday, racing a deadline to honor a law mandating their release.
The Archives posted those documents Thursday evening.
EARLIER: WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump acted Thursday to block the release of hundreds of records on the John F. Kennedy assassination, bending to CIA and FBI appeals to keep those secrets.
"I have no choice," Trump said in a memo, according to White House officials. He was placing those files under a six-month review while letting 2,800 other records come out Thursday evening, racing a deadline to honor a law mandating their release.
Officials say Trump will impress upon federal agencies that JFK files should stay secret after the six-month review "only in the rarest cases."
Much of Thursday passed with nothing from the White House or National Archives except silence, leaving unclear how the government would comply with a law requiring the records to come out by the end of the day — unless Trump had been persuaded by intelligence agencies to hold some back.
White House officials said the FBI and CIA made the most requests within the government to withhold some information.
No blockbusters had been expected in the last trove of secret files regarding Kennedy's assassination Nov. 22, 1963, given a statement months ago by the Archives that it assumed the records, then under preparation, would be "tangential" to what's known about the killing.
But for historians, it's a chance to answer lingering questions, put some unfounded conspiracy theories to rest, perhaps give life to other theories — or none of that, if the material adds little to the record.
Researchers were frustrated by the uncertainty that surrounded the release for much of the day.
"The government has had 25 years_with a known end-date_to prepare #JFKfiles for release," University of Virginia historian Larry Sabato tweeted in the afternoon. "Deadline is here. Chaos."
Asked what he meant, Sabato emailed to say: "Contradictory signals were given all day. Trump's tweets led us to believe that disclosure was ready to go. Everybody outside government was ready to move quickly."
Trump had been a bit coy about the scheduled release on the eve of it, tweeting: "The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!"
Experts say the publication of the last trove of evidence could help allay suspicions of a conspiracy — at least for some.
"As long as the government is withholding documents like these, it's going to fuel suspicion that there is a smoking gun out there about the Kennedy assassination," said Patrick Maney, a presidential historian at Boston College.
The collection includes more than 3,100 records — comprising hundreds of thousands of pages — that have never been seen by the public. About 30,000 documents were released previously — with redactions.
Experts said intelligence agencies pushed Trump to keep some of the remaining materials secret — the CIA didn't comment on that.
Whatever details are released, they're not expected to give a definitive answer to a question that still lingers for some: Whether anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination.
The Warren Commission in 1964 reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved. But other interpretations, some more creative than others, have persisted.
The 1992 law mandating release of the JFK documents states that all the files "shall be publicly disclosed in full" within 25 years — that means by Thursday — unless the president certifies that "continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense; intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations."
That doesn't allow the president, for example, to hold some records back because they might be embarrassing to agencies or people.
"In any release of this size, there always are embarrassing details," said Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Rice University.
The law does not specify penalties for noncompliance, saying only that House and Senate committees are responsible for oversight of the collection.
Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Calvin Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.
JFK files: Feds release 2,800 secret records; Trump withholds others due to national security concerns
WASHINGTON — Sketchy testimony from barroom drunks in New Orleans, accounts of parties in Mexico City attended by gunman Lee Harvey Oswald and squabbles between CIA officials and congressional investigators marked the release of the final batch of records Thursday related to the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
President Trump authorized the release of almost 2,900 document files through the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which set Thursday as the final deadline to release them. Others were kept secret because of requests from the CIA and FBI, which feared their release would compromise national security.
Long awaited by historians, journalists, researchers and conspiracy theorists, the final batch of secret files shed more light on the Kennedy assassination, which has fascinated Americans for almost 54 years. The 1964 Warren Commission, led by then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, was created by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, as a way to clear up questions about the murder, but it instead spawned multiple conspiracy theories.
More: JFK files: Highlights from 2,800 previously classified records
More: JFK files: New details on Lee Harvey Oswald, Castro plots; no 'smoking gun'
More: JFK files: Search the secret files on John F. Kennedy assassination
While many of the documents pertained to the CIA and FBI investigations into the activities of Oswald, the 24-year-old former Marine sharpshooter identified as Kennedy's killer, many dealt with the multiple covert operations of the Cold War 1960s and 1970s, including Cuban exile groups, defectors from the Soviet Union and the espionage hothouse that was Mexico City.
Other files included notes from committees that investigated the original investigation of the assassination, as well as the 1968 killing of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Some of the notes were lists of newspaper articles or documents.
Other details include:
• Ledgers of payments to Cuban exile groups working to overthrow the government of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who defeated a brigade of CIA-backed exiles who tried to overthrow him through a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Kennedy had vowed to depose Castro.
• A Nov. 27, 1963, memo from a Secret Service agent who interviewed a man named Robert C. Rawls, who was in a bar in New Orleans a week to 10 days before the assassination and heard a man betting $100 that Kennedy would be dead within three weeks. Thought nothing of it until the assassination. But Rawls was drunk at the time and couldn’t remember the name of the man, what he looked like or what specific bar it was in.
• A 1975 history of U.S. attempts to overthrow Castro written by then-White House counsel Philip Buchen, a longtime friend and law partner of President Gerald Ford. It noted that the first attempt to kill Castro came in 1959, shortly after he came to power.
• A letter from longtime CIA official Tennent Bagley to the chief lawyer for the House assassinations committee arguing that he had been smeared by testimony about the agency's handling of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, who had monitored Oswald while he lived in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1962. Nosenko said the Soviet KGB did not try to recruit Oswald, because they considered him unstable. Bagley and other agents suspected Nosenko might be a Soviet double agent and interrogated him harshly for three years. In 1969, the CIA acknowledged Nosenko was a legitimate defector.
Lifting a veil
Despite his decision to keep some documents secret, Trump said his move provided a new look at old secrets.
"The American public expects – and deserves – its government to provide as much access as possible to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records so that the people may finally be fully informed about all aspects of this pivotal event," Trump's memo said. "Therefore, I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted."
Other records will be held back for further review, and released on a rolling basis with redactions in the coming weeks, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
Trump's memo says some agencies worried the release of some details would hurt U.S. national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs.
"I have no choice – today – but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation's security," Trump said.
Trump ordered agencies to review the proposed redactions and justify them. This process will take up to 180 days, and the agencies have to demonstrate why the blackouts are necessary to protect their sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The vast majority of the requested redactions came from the CIA and FBI, according to senior administration officials who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak ahead of Thursday's release.
At the end of the six-month period, the National Archives will release more records deemed to be in the public interest, Sanders said, with redactions "only in the rarest of circumstances" by the deadline of April 26, 2018.
The Assassination Records Collection Act, passed in the wake of Oliver Stone's conspiracy-minded film JFK, required the release of all records of the assassination investigation by the 25th anniversary of the bill's signing — Oct. 26, 2017 – unless the president decides there is a reason to withhold them. "Agencies who would like their information withheld for longer, need to file a formal appeal with the President," the National Archives said on its website ahead of the release.
This week, Trump himself appeared excited about allowing the release of the secret records, tweeting on Saturday that he would be allowing "the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened." On Wednesday, he said the "long anticipated" release the following day would be "so interesting."
Yet Trump's decision to continue withholding some records, said Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination, is already fueling public suspicions. “What a mess. A new round of conspiracy theories are launched," he said.
Previous releases have not altered the government's initial conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Historians anticipate that many of the records will deal with Oswald's activities in Mexico City, where he traveled two months before the assassination.
Gerald Posner, author of the 1993 book Case Closed, which supported the conclusion that Oswald was the sole killer, said the Mexico City documents could be embarrassing for people who will be identified as informants for the U.S. government during the 1960s and later.
JFK Files: Thousands released but Trump holds back others
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has blocked the release of hundreds of records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, bending to CIA and FBI appeals, while the National Archives came out Thursday night with a hefty cache of others.
“I have no choice,” Trump said in a memo, citing “potentially irreversible harm” to national security if he were to allow all records to come out now. He placed those files under a six-month review while letting 2,800 others come out, racing a deadline to honor a law mandating their release.
The documents approved for release and made public late Thursday capture the frantic days after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, during which federal agents madly chased after tips, however thin, juggled rumors and sifted through leads worldwide.
They include cables, notes and reports stamped “Secret” that reveal the suspicions of the era — around Cubans and Communists. They cast a wide net over varied activities of the Kennedy administration, such as its covert efforts to upend Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba.
For historians, it’s a chance to answer lingering questions, put some unfounded conspiracy theories to rest, perhaps give life to other theories.
Despite having months to prepare for disclosures that have been set on the calendar for 25 years, Trump’s decision came down to a last-minute debate with intelligence agencies — a tussle the president then prolonged by calling for still more review.
The delay sparked a round of finger-pointing among agencies and complaints that Trump should have released all records.
Roger Stone, a sometime Trump adviser who wrote a book about his theories on the assassination, urged Trump to review personally any material that government agencies still want to withhold. Trump should at least “spot check” any extensive redactions to make sure agencies are not “dabbling in acts of criminal insubordination,” Stone said in a statement.
As for the unreleased documents, Trump will impress upon federal agencies that “only in the rarest cases” should JFK files stay secret after the six-month review, officials said.
In the meantime, experts will be poring through a mountain of minutiae and countless loose threads in search of significant revelations.
In the chaotic aftermath of the assassination, followed two days later by the murder of the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald while in police custody, FBI Director J, Edgar Hoover vented his frustration in a formerly secret report found in the files. It opened: “There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.”
But, reflecting on Oswald less than an hour after he died, Hoover already sensed theories would form about a conspiracy broader than the lone assassin.
“The thing I am concerned about, and so is (deputy attorney general) Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,” he said.
He also reported: “Last night we received a call from our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald.”
Hoover said he relayed that warning to Dallas police and was assured Oswald would be sufficiently protected. Oswald was shot dead the next day by Jack Ruby.
A document from 1975 contains a partial deposition by Richard Helms, a deputy CIA director under Kennedy who later became CIA chief, to the Rockefeller Commission, which was studying unauthorized CIA activities in domestic affairs. Commission lawyers appeared to be probing for information on what foreign leaders might have been the subject of assassination attempts by or on behalf of the CIA.
A lawyer asks Helms: “Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or agent” — here the document ends, short of his answer.
Among the files is a more than 400-page document that appeared to describe people being monitored as potential threats to Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Officials described one such person this way: “Subject participated in pickets against JFK in 1961. Allegedly trained in guerrilla tactics & sabotage. Considered very dangerous by those who know him. Has visited USA & Cuba. Considered armed and dangerous.”
Some suspicions missed the mark badly.
One document describes a person who sent a letter to Johnson in December 1963 stating “you’re doomed.” The document says: “Interviewed 1/23/64; friendly. Said letter was a joke. Not dangerous. Attending 5th grade.”
The collection also discloses a Sept. 14, 1962, meeting of a group of Kennedy’s senior aides, including brother Robert, the attorney general, as they discussed a range of options against Castro’s communist government.
The meeting was told the CIA would look into the possibility of sabotaging airplane parts that were to be shipped to Cuba from Canada. McGeorge Bundy, JFK’s national security adviser, cautioned that sensitive ideas like sabotage would have to be considered in more detail on a case-by-case basis.
Much of Thursday passed with nothing from the White House or National Archives except silence, leaving unclear how the government would comply with a law requiring the records to come out by the end of the day — unless Trump was persuaded by intelligence agencies to hold some back.
White House officials said the FBI and CIA made the most requests within the government to withhold some information.
Trump ordered agencies that have proposed withholding material related to the assassination to report to the archivist by next March 12 on which specific information meets the standard for continued secrecy.
That standard includes details that could cause “harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or conduct of foreign relations,” Trump wrote in his order. The archivist will have two weeks to tell Trump whether those recommendations validate keeping the withheld information a secret after April 26.
The full record will still be kept from the public for at least six months — and longer if agencies make a persuasive enough case for continued secrecy.
The collection includes more than 3,100 records — comprising hundreds of thousands of pages — that have never been seen by the public. About 30,000 documents were released previously — with redactions.
Whatever details are released, they’re not expected to give a definitive answer to a question that still lingers for some: Whether anyone other than Oswald was involved in the assassination.
The Warren Commission in 1964 concluded that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved. But other interpretations, some more creative than others, have persisted.
https://interactives.ap.org/jfk-documents/
Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.