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Close on the heels of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to release controversial Netaji files from archives though they yielded no new evidence to Indian freedom fighter’s death due to plane crash, US President Donald Trump has decided to release the pending thousands of classified government documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Trump tweeted on Saturday morning sayiing, “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”
Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017
These files are still kept as secret papers at the National Archives under a 1992 law that sought to quell conspiracy theories about the assassination. US intelligence agencies are averse to making the files open as they reportedly contained some documents which could damage national security interests.
The president, however, said “subject to the receipt of further information”, which may hold back some documents too sensitive to reveal any connections. Political pundits are unmoved at the decision saying nothing new would come out of it. The files may “help fuel a new generation of conspiracy theories,” said Philip Shenon, author of a book on JFK probe.
Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia professor and author of a book about Kennedy, who wrote a recent article about the documents in Politico maintained similar view. He tweeted after the news broke out thanking Trump.
Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017
The focus of both the writers is on the six-day trip by J.F.K. assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to Mexico City several weeks before the president’s murder to meet Cuban and Soviet spies.
Conspiracy theorists have long argued that the government intelligence agencies covered up the truth about the assassination. Trump himself vowed to release the documents and even alleged that the father of Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican primary rival from Texas, had met with Oswald shortly before Kennedy was killed.
“You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot,” he told Fox News in an interview in May 2016. “I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right, prior to his being shot, and nobody brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible.”
Now the clamor is for releasing secret files on UFOs. One tweet by Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen said:”Can you also open up the UFO files, so we can finally see that our country is being run by a leader from a competing galaxy?”
