US President Donald Trump has moved to declassify the JFK files. Photo / Getty Images
US President Donald Trump has moved to declassify the JFK files. Photo / Getty Images
Donald Trump’s order to declassify JFK assassination files raised expectations but experts doubt a “smoking gun” will be found.
The release could reveal more about the CIA’s knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald, particularly his activities in Mexico City.
Concerns remain about revealing informants' identities, which could endanger former CIA assets and their families.
For decades conspiracy theorists have pointed to the US government’s refusal to release the John F Kennedy files as evidence of a cover-up of the former President’s assassination.
So Donald Trump’s assurance back in January that “everything will be revealed” when he signed an executive order to declassify the trove of redacted documents will have set some high expectations.
But experts on the November 22, 1963, assassination in Dallas, Texas, unanimously believe those hoping for a “smoking gun” to rewrite history will be bitterly disappointed.
The release, however, could provide some revelations to help shed light on how much the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) really knew about shooter Lee Harvey Oswald ahead of the killing.
The Dallas Police Department mug shots of Lee Harvey Oswald following his arrest for possible involvement in the John F Kennedy assassination and the murder of Officer JD Tippit. Photo / Corbis, Getty Images
There are still around 3000 redacted files held by The National Archives and Records Administration, including some 500 of which have been redacted in full, although most of these relate to tax returns for Oswald and his killer Jack Ruby.
This is what experts and historians think could be gleaned from the release of the documents on Tuesday:
The Mexico connection
When more than 13,000 documents related to the 1963 assassination were released in 2022, JFK academics and theorists had hoped it would reveal more information about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City, where he met the KGB officer in October 1963.
Oswald had visited Mexico City several weeks before he assassinated Kennedy to obtain a visa allowing him to defect to Cuba.
Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, said he hopes the files will reveal more information about the CIA surveillance of Oswald’s visit.
The file he is most eagerly awaiting is a 50-page document he says includes Mexican intelligence information that was gathered on Oswald and provided to the CIA, of which 30 pages are currently redacted.
“The CIA definitely has surveillance, maybe they had human assets, intelligence, an informant inside one or more of the [Cuban or Soviet] missions there,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “What did they know about his visit? They’ve always said they knew very little.
“Did they know that he took a pistol out at one point and slammed it on the desk of a KGB agent and the Soviet mission thought he was unstable? Did they realise that he was as unhinged as he appeared to be in Mexico City? Because, if so, what they should have done when he returned to the United States is handed it off to the FBI ... They certainly didn’t do that.
“That would be terribly embarrassing for the CIA. Not only did it happen, but that they kept it under wraps for 60 years,” he added.
Fredrik Logevall, history professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, agreed such detail could be revealed in the classified documents.
“It’s possible that the new materials will underscore what previous releases have shown: that US intelligence agencies knew more about Oswald and his activities than was originally known,” he said.
“The CIA may have failed to report some of its knowledge about him to the FBI.”
Targeting Castro
The documents could include further details on the Special Group Augmented (SGA), which included Robert F Kennedy and former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy.
Professor Larry Sabato said the group’s aim was “to get rid of Fidel Castro and communism in Cuba before JFK’s re-election”.
“This group met ... more often than you might expect, given how busy things are in the White House and notes were kept, I suppose, because we were all busy, and maybe they forgot things,” he said.
“But the release of some of this information has occurred, the problem is it tells us enough to tantalise us, and then redacts what we really want to know. I want to see the redactions now.”
Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Centre for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century, said the partially redacted documents suggest the group were plotting events in and out of Cuba to embarrass Castro.
Cuban president Fidel Castro speaks to reporters after attending the UN General Assembly meeting, New York City, in 1960. Photo / New York Times, Getty Images
Fears of retaliation for CIA agents
One of the reasons some of the documents remain redacted is because they are thought to contain information about informants working for the CIA.
Although the majority will no longer be alive, there are concerns that publishing the names could put the former informants and their families in danger.
“I want to know the names so I can do some research on them,” Sabato said.
“Obviously they’re dead, but you can research them, you can find out what is on the public record about them and maybe you can be led to others, children at the time, or grandchildren, or whatever, you can find out certain things ... it’s better than knowing nothing,” he said.
But Mark Zaid, a lawyer who has fought for the release records, says such names come into a category of documents Trump cannot declassify with a stroke of his Sharpie.
“I expect that there will be pushback from the intelligence community,” he says.
“Some of the records are because we have human assets who worked inside the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City ... some of them were in their 20s.
“They could be in their 80s, maybe 90s, and if you’re talking about ... would Cuba or Russia take retaliatory action against someone who would be considered a traitor to their country even six decades ago?
“You’d best expect that yes, they would, and they might even take action against their family members decades younger.”
While they won’t shed light on the planning of the assassination attempt, Posner expects the notes historian William Manchester took from his interview with Jackie Kennedy to be included in the unredacted files.
Manchester spoke to Kennedy after her husband’s death.
The tapes of the interviews cannot be released owing to an agreement with the Kennedy family that they would not be made public until 2067, but Posner says Manchester’s notes could be unsealed.
“They may not tell us anything about a grassy alt-shooter or conspiracy, but I think that people are going to want to know about that because it’s a human story, it’s not about ballistics and bullet angles.”
Will ‘everything’ be revealed?
All the experts The Telegraph spoke to were unconvinced that Trump could unseal all the redacted files.
A trove of documents has been declassified in recent years, but scores of them remained redacted during Trump and Joe Biden’s administrations.
In his order, Trump directed his Attorney-General and Director of National Intelligence to give him a plan within 15 days “for the full and complete release of records” relating to the assassination.
Zaid said there are hundreds of documents he does not think the President has the authority to release.
For example, tax returns are protected by statute, he said. There are also records that have been sealed by courts. To release them, the Justice Department would have to go to the courts directly and order them to unseal it.
“The President can’t just flout an order of a court that sealed the records,” he said.
There are also a number of items that are subject to deeds of gift and access is overseen by the Kennedy family. Such items include autopsy photographs and Mrs Kennedy’s dress from the day of the assassination.
Sobata is not confident Trump will deliver on his promise to make everything public.
“Unfortunately, I’m in my seventies and I’ll be dead before we know all the information, but I’ve got people who will come to my grave site yelling,” he said.
