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THOUSANDS OF PAGES of unredacted documents on the assassination of John F Kennedy were released this week – but historians say that it will take time to go through the files and that that not many revelations are expected.
The files are being made available following an order by US president Donald Trump earlier this year.
Experts and historians are combing through the over 1,100 files consisting of in excess of 31,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination.
Larry J Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Centwe for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century, said “We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that”.
The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of more than million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artefacts related to the assassination have previously been released.
Prior to the release of these files, researchers had estimated that the number of files still to be released either in whole or in part was around 3,000 to 3,500. The files released earlier this week are a fraction of these.
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation said: “Rampant over classification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document.”
Trump announced the release on Monday while visiting the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.
There have been countless conspiracy theories spawned regarding the details surrounding Kennedy’s assassination throughout the decades.
Kennedy was killed on 22 November 1963 on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building.
Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
Oswald was a former US Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
Files in the release included a memo which described Oswald, as a “poor shot”. The memo also included that a KGB official was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”
The documents also confirm that Oswald visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City before killing JFK.
With additional reporting from Press Association
Great to see the occupied territories bill got canned.
@Rian O’Sullivan: Yeah fantastic, maybe we should cheerlead the mass slaughter of children and babies , I oppose the slaughter of all babies as I’m sure you do ?
@Electro Box: I applaud the government for canning that absolutely nonsense bill.
@Electro Box: just mute that troll he has about 20 fake accounts,,,
@Rian O’Sullivan: you enjoying whats happening in Gaza?
@Kevin O Brien: Enjoying that the ridiculous bill is canned.
@james rowan: I have one account kid have to break it to you.
JFK was gotten rid of because he didn’t support the new world order we live in, you can see how the world its views , its policy etc… changed hugely after he went.
@Be Lucky: look at the irony of zelensky, who’s beautiful Nation has been dragged kicking & screaming to the very prescipe of Peace by President Trump…… He doesn’t thank America or Europe…….. No sir, just the hand out yet again for another few billion of death machinery
@Mary Linton:
Why does he have to thank America.
Trump said he would end the war, but it is still going on.
@Thomas O’Brien: the taxpayers of America can think of a 150 Billion reasons
@Be Lucky: Or maybe more squalid reasons like revenge on the part of the Mafia and bitterness on the part of the CIA and US military? Not saying that I know but just the possibility.
@Mary Linton:
Think of the money those money grabbing Americans could save if Trump ends the war.
@Thomas O’Brien: Or if he didn’t impose tariffs.
@James T.Kirk:
He will bankrupt the country and himself if he imposes too many tariffs.
@Bert Carolan: The truth is we will never really know why.
Let’s be honest, anybody with a brain cell knows that Oswald was a Patsie, they’ll never release the details because it would tarnish the CIA irrevocably
The Americans are finally going to find out the truth, that it wasn’t Kennedy in the car and that he’s been living with Elvis in North Dakota all these years selling real estate on the down low.
@Temp Stuff: And they dyed him.
Forget about the historians and researchers, just give the files to anti-vaxxers and ‘truth-seekers’ and they conclude JFK was shot by Bill Gates when he was 8 years old whilst wearing a World Economic Forum t-shirt.
Trump is a Russian agent.
Who shot JFK.
Anyone want to hazard a guess how many gunmen were there on the day.
@Thomas O’Brien: It depends if you believe in the magic bullet theory or not
@Brian D’Arcy:
I don’t believe in the magic bullet theory, that’s just a myth to throw people off the scent.
@Thomas O’Brien:
I’m going to start with two gunmen, anyone want to counter that.
JFK stood up for the Palestinians right of return so couldn’t be allowed live by guess who!
@Kevin O Brien:
Donald Trump.
Russian embassy you mean.
He was killed by aliens
@qffaffaf affrafrfraf: hilarious, how intelligent.
@qffaffaf affrafrfraf: it was a big-foot flatopia land.
Israel done it case closed let’s move on
What we’ll get from the thousands of somewhat redacted pages are more books about JFK’s assassination. Publishers have already signed up clever journalists to write their manuscripts.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Governor John Connolly was the target of the assassination or both Kennedy and Connolly were targets of separate assassination attempts? Connolly had just as many enemies as Kennedy. We’ll never know what happened on that fateful day in Dallas, but I’m surprised that the driver William Greer was never looked into. After the first shot was fired, Greer immediately drove in the direction of the sound of the gunshot. Why would you accelerate into the line of fire? In a dangerous situation like this, Secret Service’s standard protocol would require the driver to protect the President by speeding away from the source of the danger, not toward it. This raises the question of whether the driver was deliberately trying to place the car in a more vulnerable position.
@William Jennings: people do strange things when being shot at
Shame the way his family has turned out. Be need to go back. And to the left.
The government killed him why would there be any files of anything interesting or new, that stuffs burnt many moons again.
Well we shouldn’t have expected much. It’s not like the bad guys would leave a paper trail
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