The release of roughly 64,000 documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday began a race to find revelation as journalists, historians and amateur detectives washed the pages in the hopes of something, anything, being considered a consequence.
Instead, the big evident was that it was not much clearer. This is the biggest takeaway of a blockbuster that wasn't.
Decades of secrets protected CIA Spycraft, not the second gunman.
For years, as the government has declassified and published documents related to Kennedy's assassination, the assumptions expressed by conspiracy theorists and some historians were that what is still withheld must be large. Even Kennedy's nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the nation's finest official, has long called for the release of all documents related to his uncle's death.
But with the release of nearly 64,000 pages by the National Archives, it is becoming clear that something else could have been behind decades of secrets, including one previously made opaque by the editing.
Rather than revealing what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once claimed was “overwhelming evidence” that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination, the file contains details about the agency's agents and informants, secret actions and budget lines. The secret appears to have been small details, not small news.
This release produced almost revelation, but it caused a lot of side-damaging.
The documents made little public that they challenged known facts regarding the assassination of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but this may not be the end of the classification.
The Justice Department on Wednesday moved to the Sealed FBI Surveillance Records involving Dr. King on objections to those concerned that revelations about the private lives of civil rights leaders will be used to hurt his legacy.
Others will be directly affected by the release of the document. The new files released include accounting records that include social security numbers for dozens of Congressional employees since the late 1970s. Some of those people are still alive, including 80-year-old Judy K. Balga, who once worked as a government contractor.
She says she was surprised to find out that her personal information is included in the file and doesn't know how to improve the situation. “People's personal information needs to be kept private,” she said.
Value is in the eyes of the viewer.
The latest documentation may not be excited by the average reader. That messy release made it difficult to navigate the files easily. However, for historians and scholars, there were some gems that were excavated by reading between lines.
For example, the 693-page Secret CIA Report summary of 1975 touches on cases where the agency “may have surpassed its mission.” However, there were also references to station chiefs, overseas intrusions, illegal surveillance, and various “very sensitive” operations. “This is a catalog of “bad behaviours” for the agency,” says David J. Garrow, a historian with deep experience with intelligence files.
Trump said 80,000 pages would be released. It won about 64,000.
On Monday, President Trump said he would release 80,000-page documents related to the assassination within 24 hours. He said there would be no edits. It scrambled national security authorities.
Around 64,000 of these documents were published in two document dumps on Tuesday evening. Some of them actually blocked information. But that's 16,000 files, which Trump has promised. Would you like to come more?
It was just enough to keep the conspiracy theorists moving. (It's always sufficient.)
Nothing may satisfy a conspiracy theorist who is convinced that there is still information missing from public records. Theories that took hold immediately after the murder were only amplified by investigations intended to counteract them. The film “JFK” released in 1991 breathed even more life. A man repeatedly wrote letters to officials, claiming that he alone knew more than the government allowed.
The Warren Committee, established in 1963 to investigate Kennedy's assassination, explicitly sought to discredit the theory of conspiracy. (That didn't work.) Then, within 25 years the law ordered papers relating to murder was published, and with limited exceptions, there was the law of 1992. (That was not quiet.)
By 2023, 99% of the documents had been disclosed, with 64,000 people now added to the record. Still, the question of what is missing may never go away.
