President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification of files related to the assassinations of three of the most significant figures in U.S. history: former President John F. Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The executive order, signed last week, requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to review the documents and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.
This is not the first time the JFK files have been expected to be released. Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all records be housed in a single collection and be released within 25 years, unless postponed for security reasons. Trump had previously promised to release the last batch of documents during his first term, but efforts ultimately dissipated.
Trump’s latest order states that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue. Additionally, the order determines that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is also in the public interest.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was nominated to be Health and Human Services Secretary, thanked Trump for taking the first step towards reversing a “60-year strategy of lies and secrecy” surrounding the assassinations. Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson, criticized the move, saying it was “using JFK as a political prop” and “there’s nothing heroic about it.”
