The administration of US President Donald Trump has declassified materials related to the assassination of the 35th US President John F. Kennedy. With this step, Trump fulfilled his campaign promise. For more than 60 years, concerned members of the public have put forward a host of alternative theories about the involvement of the mafia, US intelligence, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, or right-wing millionaires, either separately or together, in Kennedy’s assassination. Let’s see whether the declassified documents support any of these hypotheses.
The entire archive on the Kennedy case was supposed to be declassified back in 2017
The first batch of declassified documents on the Kennedy case was published in 1992. This happened a year after the phenomenal success of Oliver Stone’s film JFK, which is based on one of the conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. Following the resonance caused by the film’s release, the US Congress passed a law mandating the release of all classified documents related to the Kennedy assassination within the next 25 years. Only a few files may remain unpublished if they could harm US security. In fact, the entire archive on the Kennedy case was supposed to be declassified in 2017. However, Trump postponed the publication until 2021, citing requests from US intelligence agencies. One of the arguments was that the intelligence informants mentioned in the documents could still be alive, and this could threaten their security.
Among the documents declassified in 2021, the vast majority are duplicates of previously published papers. The only difference was that many of the names or CIA residencies mentioned in the reports were previously hidden, but then they were made public. It didn’t matter much because in the years since the previous batch of declassified papers were published, journalists had already figured out most of the names and locations.
The real breakthrough in this process occurred yesterday, March 18, when Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted a link to the NARA archive site, where the documents are posted — about 80,000 pages of previously classified materials, presented without redaction. And that’s not all: the possibility of declassifying documents that are under judicial seal or subject to restrictions of the Internal Revenue Code is also being considered. Trump has once again managed the almost impossible.
A non-existent Russian trace
The archive already contains more than six million pages, including photographs, audio recordings and other materials related to the investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Let’s look at what new facts the world has learned about this case. Of greatest interest are the CIA reports that detail the deals to keep surveillance on Kennedy’s prime suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. According to the reports, Oswald traveled to Mexico two months before the Dallas shootings, where he met with a KGB officer. The reports indicate the time of each of Oswald’s three visits to the Cuban embassy.
Judging by the entire body of previously declassified documents, the US intelligence services had been working on the theory for many years that Soviet intelligence might have been involved in Kennedy’s assassination. However, US intelligence informants among the KGB officers claimed that the USSR had nothing to do with Oswald and that Moscow was not involved in the assassination of the American president. According to informed FBI sources in the Soviet Union, “the Kremlin was in dismay and shock” upon learning of the assassination attempt on Kennedy.
A new batch of declassified documents mentions anonymous calls made to the US Embassy in Australia in 1962 and 1963. The first call was made on October 15, 1962, by an unknown person calling himself “the Polish driver of the Soviet Embassy in Australia” who said there was a plan to kill President Kennedy and was willing to pay the assassin $100,000. According to the caller, the plan was being developed by “countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain” as well as “communists in England, Hong Kong and possibly other countries.”
Was Oswald the only participant in the crime? There is still no answer
Also, the previously declassified 73-page CIA report states that a number of intelligence officers doubted that Oswald was the only participant in this crime. At the same time, one of the files notes that the CIA refused to provide more detailed information about Oswald’s visit to Mexico to representatives of the US House of Representatives Special Committee (HRC), created in 1976 to investigate the Kennedy assassination. The committee was not allowed to meet with former CIA employees and informants and some other people who probably communicated with Oswald in Mexico City.
Among the published documents is a reprint from a 1967 issue of Rampants magazine, which tells the story of former serviceman Gary Underhill, who may have had ties to the CIA. The day after Kennedy’s assassination, he left Washington and went to visit friends in New Jersey, to whom he told that people inside the CIA were behind the crime. A few months later, Underhill was found dead in his apartment. The coroner ruled the cause of death as suicide.
“The conspiracy theorists were right again — it was and always was the CIA,” commenters wrote on X. Other users noted that the information about Underhill was generally known. And actor Kevin Sorbo, an active Trump supporter, noted that “something doesn’t add up” in this data.
Currently, about 15 thousand more documents are classified, one way or another related to the Kennedy case. Judging by the list, most of the classified papers are CIA and FBI reports on operations in the 1960s and 1970s. It is unknown whether they will be published. According to US Congressman Steve Cohen, this will not happen because the intelligence agencies are trying to slow down the publication of documents from the archive, since the remaining files could show incompetence or wrongdoing on the part of the CIA, FBI and other agencies. Cohen also believes that the documents remaining in the archives are unlikely to refute the version that Oswald was the only one.
