U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to declassify documents related to the assassinations of former president John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King (Jr).
Trump instructed the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to present a plan within 15 days for the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
They have 45 days to review the files on Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King (Jr) and present a plan for the records’ release.
“More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the Revd. Dr Martin Luther King (Jr), the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events,” the order stated.
“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth.
“It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”
According to the U.S. National Archives, the majority of the roughly five million documents, photos, videos, audio recordings, and artifacts related to the assassination of JFK have been available to the public since the late 1990s.
Trump had previously promised to release the files during his first term in office.
In 2017, some previously classified documents were made public, but Trump decided to withhold others at the request of the CIA and FBI, citing national security concerns.
Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, released thousands more Kennedy-related documents, but not all of them.
With the latest release in 2023, 99 per cent of the documents are now publicly accessible, according to U.S. media reports.
JFK’s slaying in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was a pivotal moment in U.S. history and has remained a popular subject for conspiracy theorists in spite of an official investigation’s conclusion that a lone gunman was responsible for the attack.
King, a civil rights icon who in 1963 captivated Americans with his “I Have a Dream” speech, was shot dead in Memphis in 1968.
Robert F. Kennedy was killed by a gunman while campaigning for the presidency in 1968. NAN