WASHINGTON: Thousands of pages of digital documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are now available for historians, conspiracy theorists and the merely curious, following orders from US President Donald Trump.
The president, shortly after taking office for his second term in January, signed an executive order directing national intelligence and other officials to quickly come up with a plan “for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records.”
The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order. Trump told reporters on Monday that 80,000 pages would be released on Tuesday. Justice Department lawyers got orders Monday evening to review the records for release. The digital documents did not start appearing until 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) Tuesday on a National Archives web page. As of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday (0230 GMT Wednesday), the National Archives had published 2,182 PDFs totaling 63,400 pages.
The archives did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment on whether more documents would soon be released in response to a January order from Trump.
Kennedy’s murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.
“There will be people who will be looking at the records and seeing if there is any hint of any confirmation about their theory,” Larry Schnapf, an environmental lawyer who has researched the assassination and pushed the government to make public what it knows about what led up to the shooting in Dallas on a November afternoon six decades ago, said on Wednesday.
Schnapf, who stayed up until 4 a.m. poring over the documents, said that what he found as he went through them was less illuminating about Kennedy’s assassination than about US spy operations.
“It’s all about our government’s covert activities leading up to the assassination,” he said.
Department of Defense documents from 1963 that were among those released Tuesday covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Castro’s support of communists in other countries. One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called “Operation Mongoose,” or simply “the Cuban Project,” which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy’s death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations in 1968 of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said he advocates for transparency in Washington and noted previous administrations, including the Biden administration, have also released Kennedy assassination documents. But he added that even with the thousands of new documents, the public will still not know everything, as much evidence may have been destroyed throughout the decades.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to queries on Wednesday about whether plans for releasing documents on Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr had been developed or when such documents would be released.
On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
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On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
- The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order
US Catholic cardinals urge Trump administration to embrace a moral compass in foreign policy
- The three cardinals, who are prominent figures in the more progressive wing of the US church, took as a starting point a major foreign policy address that Pope Leo XIV delivered Jan. 9 to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See
ROME: Three US Catholic cardinals urged the Trump administration on Monday to use a moral compass in pursuing its foreign policy, saying US military action in Venezuela, threats of acquiring Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering instead of promoting peace.
In a joint statement, Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., warned that without a moral vision, the current debate over Washington’s foreign policy was mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”
“Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” McElroy told The Associated Press. “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.”
The statement was unusual and marked the second time in as many months that members of the US Catholic hierarchy have asserted their voice against a Trump administration many believe isn’t upholding the basic tenets of human dignity. In November, the entire US conference of Catholic bishops condemned the administration’s mass deportation of migrants and “vilification” of them in the public discourse.
The three cardinals, who are prominent figures in the more progressive wing of the US church, took as a starting point a major foreign policy address that Pope Leo XIV delivered Jan. 9 to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.
The speech, delivered almost entirely in English, amounted to Leo’s most substantial critique of US foreign policy. History’s first US-born pope denounced how nations were using force to assert their dominion worldwide, “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order.
Leo didn’t name individual countries, but his speech came against the backdrop of the then-recent US military operation in Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, US threats to take Greenland as well as Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was consulted on the statement, and its president, Archbishop Paul Coakley, “supports the emphasis placed by the cardinals on Pope Leo’s teaching in these times,” said spokesperson Chieko Noguchi.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment on Monday.
Cardinals question the use of force
The three cardinals cited Venezuela, Greenland and Ukraine in their statement — saying they “raised basic questions about the use of military force and the meaning of peace” — as well as the cuts to foreign aid that US President Donald Trump’s administration initiated last year.
“Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination,” they warned.
“We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy,” they wrote. “We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world, especially through economic assistance.”
Tobin described the moral compass the cardinals wish the US would use globally.
“It can’t be that my prosperity is predicated on inhuman treatment of others,” he told the AP. “The real argument isn’t just my right or individual rights, but what is the common good.”
Cardinals expand on their statement in interviews with AP
In interviews, Cupich and McElroy said the signatories were inspired to issue a statement after hearing from several fellow cardinals during a Jan. 7-8 meeting at the Vatican. These other cardinals expressed alarm about the US action in Venezuela, its cuts in foreign aid and its threats to acquire Greenland, Cupich said.
A day later, Leo’s nearly 45-minute-long speech to the diplomatic corps gave the Americans the language they needed, allowing them to “piggyback on” the pope’s words, Cupich said.
Cupich acknowledged that Maduro’s prosecution could be seen positively, but not the way it was done via a US military incursion into a sovereign country.
“When we go ahead and do it in such a way that is portrayed as saying, ‘Because we can do it, we’re going to do it, that might makes right’ — that’s a troublesome development,” he said. “There’s the rule of law that should be followed.”
Trump has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal. On Greenland, Trump has argued repeatedly that the US needs control of the resource-rich island, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark. for its national security.
The Trump administration last year significantly gutted the US Agency for International Development, saying its projects advance a liberal agenda and were a waste of money.
Tobin, who ministered in more than 70 countries as a Redemptorist priest and the order’s superior general, lamented the retreat in USAID assistance, saying US philanthropy makes a big difference in everything from hunger to health.
The three cardinals said their key aim wasn’t to criticize the administration, but rather to encourage the US to regain is moral standing in the world by pursuing a foreign policy that is ethically guided and seeks the common good.
“We’re not endorsing a political party or a political movement,” Tobin said. The faithful in the pews and all people of good will have a role to play, he said.
“They can make an argument of basic human decency,” he said.
