President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, during a news conference after his arrest in Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963. Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby two days later, on the eve of Kennedy’s burial.
AFP/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
AFP/Getty Images
President Trump’s order to release thousands of documents related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., could shed additional light on the events. However, few historians appear to be anticipating any narrative-shifting bombshells.
The National Archives records related to the assassinations in the 1960s were first set to be released in 2017, during Trump’s first term. Many were made public, but some remain under lock. Former President Joe Biden extended some of those exemptions during his term.
But in an executive order issued Thursday, days after his inauguration, Trump said continuing to redact and withhold information “is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue.”
It gives intelligence officials 15 days to present a plan for the release of documents related to President Kennedy’s assassination and 45 days for a similar plan pertaining to Robert F. Kennedy and King.
For decades, conspiracy theories about the assassinations — especially in the case of President Kennedy — have been fueled by the government’s withholding information from the public, citing national security concerns, historians say.
Documents might fill in a few missing pieces on JFK assassination
More than 300,000 pages making up the “vast majority of the material” related to President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, have already been released, notes Kevin Boyle, a professor of American history at Northwestern University.
Of the “fraction of material” remaining solely in the government’s possession, “my guess is that it’s not going to reveal … something new about John Kennedy’s assassination,” he says.
Fredrik Logevall, a biographer of President Kennedy, agrees that the new information will not “dramatically overturn our understanding of what happened on that terrible day in Dallas.”
“But even if they don’t alter our understanding in this deep way, I think there’s still useful information potentially in these materials,” he says.
Logevall thinks there could be something about shooter Lee Harvey Oswald’s travel to Mexico City in the lead-up to the assassination, such as “who he talked with when he was there and what the meaning of that trip was.” He also thinks there might be more to learn about “what the CIA either reported to the FBI about its knowledge of Oswald and his travels or what they didn’t record” prior to the assassination. “That’s really useful information, whatever it might reveal about the murder itself,” Logevall says.
Boyle thinks there could also be other information of interest that’s not directly related to the Kennedy assassination, such as some missing puzzle pieces when it comes to covert activity in Cuba. “There is a lot of information that’s already been revealed about the extent of the U.S. covert operation prior to John Kennedy’s assassination. And I think we could get interesting new revelations from that.”
More might be learned about FBI surveillance of MLK
Previous document releases have shown that the FBI had King under extensive surveillance and made use of wiretaps to uncover information aimed at damaging the civil rights leader — particularly evidence of extramarital affairs.
Kathryn McGarr, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says she doesn’t think there’s much more to learn. “We already know quite a bit about how much the government was surveilling and looking at [MLK] … and how many enemies he had within the government,” she says. “I don’t think that the narrative is going to significantly change, although of course, we could get some more details here and there.”
King’s death led to violence across the U.S., particularly in cities including Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Dozens were killed. Boyle says he’s interested in the federal government’s “reaction to the racial dynamic” that surrounded King and the response to his killing.
Firefighters tackle a blaze on H Street during the riots in Washington, D.C., that followed the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., in April 1968.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
John Stoner, a U.S. history professor at the University of Pittsburgh, thinks the fact that the federal government “worked so hard to isolate King, to investigate potential subversive connections of some of his advisers,” has added fuel to the conspiracy fire. King’s own family has said that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of firing the fatal shot in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, was framed.
Stoner says he’s hopeful that new documents might “shed light on the degree to which there is any hint of a government conspiracy to have killed [King].”
Robert Kennedy’s assassination has similarly been the subject of speculation, including the claim that the gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian refugee and Jordanian national, had been hypnotized by a woman standing nearby the scene to carry out the killing. But of the three assassinations in question, his has attracted the fewest conspiracy theories, probably because “so much air is taken up by [the assassinations of] JFK and MLK,” Stoner says.
New York Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy speaking to campaign workers, on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After making a short speech, Kennedy was fatally shot in an adjacent room.
AP/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
AP/AP
Sirhan, who remains in a San Diego prison, said after his arrest that the killing of Robert Kennedy was “for my country.” The June 5, 1968 assassination occurred on the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Six-Day War. Sirhan felt betrayed by Kennedy’s support for Israel, he said in a 1989 interview.
Stoner says he would be interested to learn whether the government “soft-pedalled political connections that Sirhan Sirhan might have had.”
Why has it taken so long to release the information?
Although national security is the often-cited reason for delaying the release of the assassination documents from the National Archives, McGarr from University of Wisconsin-Madison says it’s more likely that redactions are for “bureaucratic reasons.”
If her own archival work is any guide, she says, it’s most likely that information hasn’t been released because of embarrassment. “When there are certain documents that can’t be released till after someone has died, it’s often nothing more than a snide remark.”
Despite Trump’s quickly issued executive order, the documents still need to be reviewed and it could be some time before they see the light of public scrutiny, author Logevall says. “I could imagine a scenario in which … this is delayed and that there would be some redactions even in these final releases,” he says.
Northwestern’s Boyle says if the release follows the usual protocol, once it gets the official go-ahead, the National Archives will put the material online.
Typically, he says, it “doesn’t make for the most compelling reading,” he says. “You know, it’s bureaucratic material. It’s people files and personnel cases. … It’s not very exciting.”
Even if the documents don’t contain anything dramatic, they will still be of interest to people such as himself, he says. “As historians we never think that the story has been told. There is always the possibility of new information.”
