A statement released on Saturday by President Donald Trump revealed that he intends to allow the release of classified government documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy "subject to the receipt of further information."
President Trump made the announcement with a tweet as the October 26 deadline approaches, the deadline is set in law by Congress mandating the public release of the still-secret documents which include FBI and CIA files that are hindering any action by the President to block the release of certain documents.
"Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened," Trump said, appearing to leave open the possibility that some documents could still be withheld.
A statement released by the White House to Politico earlier this week revealed that the White House was working "to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public" by next week's deadline.
President Trump is no stranger to the controversies and conspiracy theories that have plagued the assassination of the 35th president. Trump made an unfounded claim during the 2016 campaign, in which he claimed that the father of GOP rival Sen. Ted Cruz was involved with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Roger Stone, who remains a longtime political adviser to Roger Stone, helped launch Trump's campaign for president, he’s also an avid conspiracy theorist who wrote a book about the wild claim that President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's vice president, was involved in the assassination of JFK.
On Saturday morning, Stone tweeted claiming that he urged Trump to release the classified documents. Some of the Republican members have urged Trump to allow the full release of the documents. "No reason 2 keep hidden anymore," Grassley tweeted earlier this month. "Time 2 let American ppl + historians draw own conclusions."
The historians who have studied the assassination doubt that the documents will lead to any bombshell new conclusions in the Kennedy assassination, however, the documents could shed more light on facets of the investigation and Oswald's mysterious trip to Mexico City weeks before the assassination.
The President has the power to withhold the release of certain documents if he believes their release could pose harm to US intelligence, law enforcement, the military or US foreign relations.
"There's going to be no smoking gun in there," Gerald Posner, the author of "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK," told CNN's Michael Smerconish. "But anybody who thinks this is going to turn the case on its head and suddenly show that there were three or four shooters at Dealey Plaza – it's not the case."
"Oswald did it alone," Posner continued. "But what the files are doing and why they're important to come out is they fill in the history of the case and show us how the FBI and CIA repeatedly hid the evidence."
Based on Posner’s perspective, the conspiracy theories about the CIA and mob working together to assassinate a head of state are true. However, Cuban leader Fidel Castro was the target, not Kennedy.
"They tried seven times and they couldn't even wound him. … They couldn't get rid of Castro, but somehow these same guys who were an 'F' there pulled off the perfect crime in Dallas, and 54 years later we can find not a shred of evidence about it. I just don't buy it," he said.
Source: http://www.wcyb.com/news/politics/trump-plans-to-release-classified-jfk-documents/642548383
