WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to declassify any remaining files from the assassinations of former president John F. Kennedy, or JFK, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, or RFK, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, or MLK.
"I have now determined 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," Trump said in the executive order.
In the executive order, Trump instructed the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to present a plan to him for the "full and complete" release of records relating to the assassination of JFK within 15 days. The Senate has confirmed neither of the nominations.
Trump also directed that they have 45 days to present a plan to release all the RFK and MLK files.
JFK, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Nov 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a motorcade. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on a charge of murder, yet, numerous conspiracy theories about the circumstances of Oswald's dramatic death two days after the assassination remain prevalent even today.
In 1992, Congress required that all documents related to the assassinations be made available to the public within 25 years, by Oct 26, 2017.
Only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination of JFK are yet to be fully declassified. While many who have studied what's been released so far say the public shouldn't anticipate any earth-shattering revelations, there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
In his first term, which started in January 2017, Trump accepted proposed redactions from executive departments and agencies but ordered the continued re-evaluation of those remaining redactions.
