JFK Files; 80,000 Pages Blowing in the Wind! By Charles Taylor (Florida)
According to the Al Jazeera article dated March 18, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to release approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and it has now been released. This move fulfills a campaign promise Trump made to declassify files concerning the assassinations of JFK, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., with the release ordered via an executive action signed shortly after his January 2025 inauguration. The documents, to be made public through the National Archives in the afternoon, are touted as a major transparency effort, with White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields hinting that Americans "are truly going to be shocked" by the contents, though specifics remain under wraps. The FBI, spurred by Trump's order, recently uncovered 2,400 additional records in February 2025, adding to the trove. Historians, however, temper expectations, suggesting no earth-shattering revelations will rewrite the official narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman, per the Warren Commission.
The release builds on prior declassifications—18,870 records in December 2021, 13,173 in December 2022, and 2,693 between April and August 2023 under Biden—yet some files remained redacted or unreleased until now. Trump's push for "no redactions" contrasts with past exemptions, fuelling speculation about what's left. Social media notes early reviews showing Oswald's Cuban ties and CIA monitoring, but no game-changers beyond the lone gunman theory. Still, Trump's own comments from 2024, suggesting CIA involvement, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claims of agency culpability, keep conspiracy fires burning.
Let's cut through the noise: if these 80,000 pages held a smoking gun tying the CIA or some shadowy "Deep State" to JFK's death, it'd be long gone—shredded, burned, or lost to the ether decades ago. The idea that damning evidence has sat untouched in a vault since 1963, waiting for Trump to fling open the curtains, is a fantasy for the naive. Anything truly explosive—say, a memo greenlighting Oswald or a coup blueprint—would've been scrubbed by the very players with the means and motive: the CIA, FBI, or whichever alphabet soup runs the show behind the scenes. Sixty-two years is plenty of time to sanitise files, especially when the stakes are existential for those in power.
Look at the timeline. The Warren Commission locked in the lone gunman story by 1964—conveniently fast. Decades of FOIA battles and partial releases (e.g., 1992's JFK Records Act) dribbled out crumbs, yet nothing flipped the script. Why? The gatekeepers aren't sloppy. The CIA missing a cleanup for six decades isn't luck, it's deliberate. Historians like Fredrik Logevall (NPR, March 18, 2025) bet this batch won't "dramatically overturn" anything—because the real dirt's blowing in the wind, scattered by design.
Trump's hype—80,000 pages, "shocking"—is theatre. The FBI's "new" 2,400 docs from February? Probably dross they overlooked, not dynamite they hid. Oswald's Mexico City jaunt to the Cuban Embassy (Newsweek, March 18, 2025) might spice things up—CIA knew he was sniffing around—but it's not a Deep State confession. If the CIA or some suit in Langley orchestrated a hit, those orders aren't sitting in a folder labelled "JFK: Oops." They're ash from a 1960s incinerator or coded in a dead man's brain. RFK Jr.'s rants about CIA guilt? Passion, not proof—Trump's nod to it in 2024 is red meat for the MAGA base, not a preview of evidence.
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