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Just before 3 p.m. Thursday, President Donald Trump took a seat behind his desk in the Oval Office and signed a flurry of executive orders, the last of which was a demand to declassify all remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“That’s a big one, huh? A lot of people are waiting for this for a long – for years, for decades,” Trump said as he signed the order.
In 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration estimated 97% of the roughly 5 million pages relating to JFK’s assassination were already public.
Patricia Hall, the owner of Oak Cliff’s Oswald Rooming House Museum, said she is “very pleased” by the news that any remaining information would soon be made public. Hall was 11 years old when Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room in her grandmother’s home, and as an adult she has curated the museum in honor of the man she believes was wrongfully framed for the president’s assassination.
No matter what the documents reveal, she feels they will offer a sense of closure.
“We have been waiting for this to happen for a long time,” Hall said. “This country, the people, we deserve the truth. Whether it was conspiracy by our own government or whether or not it was a lone gunman such as Mr. Oswald. I am very, very pleased.”
Trump promised to declassify the remaining files during his first term. In a Wednesday night interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the president said he was advised against releasing the documents by Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s CIA director and, later, secretary of state.
While only a few thousand documents remain to be revealed – including, according to the Associated Press, tax returns from Oswald and Jack Ruby, the Dallas club owner who killed Oswald – those who have reviewed the files warn enthusiasts to lower their expectations. Some documents include only slight redactions, but others are completely redacted.
“Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed,” Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed, told the AP.
The executive order gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general 15 days to put together a plan for how to release the JFK files, and 45 days to plan for the release of RFK- and MLK-related documents.
