Keeping yet another campaign promise today, President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification and release of government files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Marxist “civil rights leader” Martin Luther King.
Trump declassified some of the files during his first term and some were released in 2021 with redactions.
Now, Trump said in his declassification order, the public will see all the files.
The Order
Noting that 1992’s JFK files legislation required release in 2017, Trump said that he had permitted executive agencies to redact certain documents in keeping with the law’s mandate to withhold documents if releasing them would cause “identifiable harm” to U.S. foreign policy, and the military-intelligence-law enforcement establishment.
Trump allowed some redactions.
As well, Trump said, his predecessor President Joe Biden published certifications three years running that “gave agencies additional time to review the records and withhold information from public disclosure.”
Now, the wait to see all the JFK files is over, Trump said, and he included the files of RFK and King as well:
I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue. And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.
Trump ordered the attorney general, national security advisor, director of national intelligence, and the counsel to the president, within 15 days, to present a plan to release the JFK files. They must present a similar plan within 45 days for the RFK and King files.
The plans must be for the “full and complete release of records.”
In August, having promised to release the JFK files in June, Trump again vowed to release them after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services — endorsed him.
“When I return to the White House, I will declassify and unseal all JFK assassination related documents. It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the TRUTH!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In 2021, the government released JFK files that revealed nothing new that would shed light on a supposed conspiracy to assassinate the 35th president.
Conspiracy Theories
As The New American reported at the time, conspiracy theories about the assassination of Kennedy on November 22, 1963 abound. The real culprits include the mob, the Israelis, the CIA, and even JFK’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a theory promoted by Trump retainer Roger Stone. The former aide to President Richard Nixon claimed that Nixon knew and said that LBJ set up the hit.
In 2007, the late Vincent Bulgiosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson and his family for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, published Reclaiming History, a 1,600-page account of all the theories.
Bulgiosi concluded that Oswald acted alone.
The Assassinations
Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan assassinated RFK on June 6, 1968, the night he won the California Democratic primary. Kennedy was likely headed for a confrontation in the general election with Nixon. Sirhan murdered Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. As with the JFK assassination, conspiracy theories about RFK’s murder have abounded since.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes the CIA murdered his uncle because he was reluctant to wage war in Vietnam, and said the evidence is “convincing but circumstantial” that the spy agency was involved in his father’s assassination. As with the assassination of JFK, theories about RFK’s murder are numerous. They include claims that a second gunman helped murder Kennedy and that Sirhan was a Manchurian candidate programmed to kill the candidate.
King’s relatives believe that his assassin, James Earl Ray, was innocent. Though career criminal Ray allocuted to the murder and went to prison, the King family believes the FBI assassinated him, partly because the bureau sent him a letter importuning him to commit suicide. In 1993, National Press Books published Ray’s Who Killed Martin Luther King?: The True Story by the Alleged Assassin, which claimed that bureau and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover murdered King.
Further evidence, they believe, came from Lloyd Jowers, a restaurateur who claimed Ray did not murder King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. The U.S. Justice Department dismissed Jowers’ highly-dubious claims.
Another doubter is Ray’s attorney, William Pepper, who wrote books about King’s assassination. He claimed that Special Forces operatives whacked King, and promoted the Manchurian candidate theory about RFK’s murder.