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US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has ordered the release of thousands of classified governmental documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, which has fuelled conspiracy theories for decades.
The executive order Trump signed on Thursday also aims to declassify the remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of Senator Robert F Kennedy and the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.
The order is among a flurry of executive actions Trump has quickly taken the first week of his second term.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “everything will be revealed”.
Trump had promised during his re-election campaign to make public the last batches of still-classified documents surrounding the former president’s assassination in Dallas, which has transfixed people for decades.
He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bent to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld.
Trump has nominated Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to be the health secretary in his new administration. Kennedy, whose father was assassinated in 1968 while running for president, has said he is not convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President Kennedy, in 1963.
The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to declassify the remaining John F Kennedy records, and within 45 days for the other two cases. It was not clear when the records would actually be released.
Trump handed the pen used to sign the order to an aide and directed it to be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination of President Kennedy have yet to be fully declassified. And while many who have studied what has been released so far say the public should not anticipate any earth-shattering revelations, there is still an intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
“There’s always the possibility that something would slip through that would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing,” said Larry J Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Centre for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century.
“That’s what researchers look for. Now, odds are you won’t find that but it is possible that it’s there.”
Kennedy was fatally shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963, as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor.
Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over five million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
During his first term, Trump boasted that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records on the former president’s assassination but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released under president Joe Biden, some still remain unseen.
Sabato, who trains student researchers to comb through the documents, said that most researchers agree that “roughly” 3,000 records have not yet been released, either in whole or in part, and many of those originated with the CIA.
The documents released over the last several years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.
The former marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
There are still some documents in the collection though that researchers do not believe the President would be able to release.
Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement. And, researchers note, documents have also been destroyed over the decades.
“He has not offended since” maybe because he was caught and was probably being monitored??
One year he’ll be out. Judge Nolan strikes again.
And to this day Paul begley is still taking therapy for being locked up by judge nolan for Importing garlic instead of apples. Even though he paid the revenue what was owed. Journal change headline to mature student.
@Paul Gorry: Simplistic boIIox. He wasn’t jailed for importing garlic instead of apples. He was jailed for committing a multimillion euro fraud on the citizens/taxpayers of this State. If he couldn’t hack the punishment for his crime, that’s on him.
@Tommy Roche: still got more time than this lad… and he employed people… bottom line is, don’t f*ck with the state’s money… if you do there will be no suspended sentence, anything else is fair game
@Paul Gorry: yeah so true. Sgt. Martin Nolan old scores for someone.
@Stephen Boland: he didnt get more time than this lad. He appealed his sentence and it was drastically reduced.
if this had happened in his own country it would be off with his king ding a ling and probably his head. Here we give him a year tops, probably out in 6 months and no deportation. We have enough numptys of our own without letting this one stay. And can someone in government please for the love of Christ remove this excuse for a judge, Martin Nolan, from his post. The man is unfit for the role.
@Alan Clarke: so your suggestion is to murder people?
@Alan Clarke: he was given 16 months, he’ll get 25% remission which is 4 months off, so he’ll serve 12. Believe it or not that’s actually a decent sentence for this offence here. More often than not they get suspended sentences for first offences when distribution wasn’t involved.
Deport him as soon as he’s out
@Raymond Kelly: deport him first i’d say!
@paddy mulcahy:
“Deport him first”
In other words reward him for his crime with a free plane ticket home??
That is assuming that he is not Irish.
Why is he allowed stay here? I’m confused as to why he wouldn’t be kicked out to be honest?
No jail time deport back immediately and let the authories in his country know of antics. I bet he would rather do jail here.
@brendan o connell: ah shur all lives matter ya ya ya
@brendan o connell: we won’t do that because he could face the death penalty in Saudi ..we don’t like doing that… unless of course it’s the USA that asks us …
Oh Nolan was judge? No surprise there. That lad needs to be removed and investigated. The lad that did this, who’s name reads like a chemical? Chemical castration.
This shouldn’t be tolerated in any way and it’s justice served that he was convicted. However, I’d be very interested to know how he was caught. Do the Gardai conduct random searches of people’s search history from certain keywords. Surely GDPR rules prevent the monitoring of people’s search history?
@Dan the man: if you read carefully, the Germans told the Gardaí
@Kevin Feeney: yes I can read. How was Interpol aware of what some lad was searching for from an Irish IP address?
@Dan the man: Think it says it in the article mate. German police alerted Interpol who in turn alerted Gardai. I imagine (and hope) there are state organisations searching out these websites and servers and then monitoring people that access them.
@Ciaran Brady: it doesn’t mate. No mention of how the German’s were randomly looking at the search history of an Irish computer
@Dan the man: the IP address identifies the source computer as based in Ireland.
@Geraldine D’Arcy: well done
@Dan the man: I was referring to how he was caught. Germans informed Interpol who then informed Gardai. The second part of my post is my opinion.
I think we can be sure that German police weren’t looking at random search histories however.
I’m no IT expert but surely it was a site or sites being monitored in order to capture the IP addresses of people accessing. Again, thats just my guess/opinion.
@Dan the man: looking for a way to.covwr your tracks?
@Dan the man: They were probably monitoring German citizens’ activities on particular sites and came across lots of IP addresses in other EU member states and notified the other police forces…..that or they are actively tracking these perverted sites with a view to closing them down.
@Dan the man: Sounds like you could be in bother Danno, ya nonce !
@Dan the man: You’re very interested in finding out how to avoid getting caught, aren’t you?
@Dan the man: Data protection is irrelevant in investigations of this, terrorist and organised crime related natures.
@Dan the man: police monitor places where sex abuse images are posted both on the normal Web and dark Web. Don’t worry their not going to be getting access to your browsing history from virgin media.
what happened. judge nolan actually sent him to jail. not like him. even with a small sentence
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