The Trump administration released 80,000 files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Tuesday evening — triggering a feeding frenzy among amateur historians, conspiracy buffs and experts who have studied the events of Nov. 22, 1963, since that fateful day in Dallas.
Several Trump administration officials told The Post in advance of the release that they did not expect new bombshells to emerge from the documents, most of which appeared to relate to the initial investigation of the assassination by the Warren Commission in 1964.
That commission, helmed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy with a high-powered rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, overlooking Dealey Plaza, as the president’s motorcade passed below him.
The commission’s official conclusion has been subject to controversy, with polls consistently showing a clear majority of Americans feel Kennedy was murdered as the result of a conspiracy — with theories floated implicating the Mafia, the CIA and disgruntled Cuban exiles, among others.
“President Trump is ushering in a new era of maximum transparency. Today, per his direction, previously redacted JFK Assassination Files are being released to the public with no redactions,” director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said of the release. “Promises made, promises kept,” she added.
Three days into his second term, President Trump signed an executive giving officials 15 days to present him with a plan to release the remaining JFK files and 45 days to concoct a plan to release government files on the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Under the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, Congress had set a 2017 deadline to release the outstanding JFK files.
When the time came, Trump had released thousands of files, including 19,000 in 2018. But there were still JFK files kept under wraps amid pressure from national security buffs like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
By the end of 2022, former President Joe Biden had taken a similar approach and released over 13,000 files.
Prior to Tuesday’s release, the National Archives and Records Administration estimated that roughly 98% of the files had been made public.
Some of the new files were marked with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests over the past couple of decades and many of them have handwriting that is barely legible or text that is faded.
A preliminary review of the behemoth JFK file dump by The Post found that some of the documents appeared to have previously been released to the public.
The files are intended to add additional context to what is already known about the government’s efforts to uncover the history of Oswald, who was gunned down by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after shooting former Kennedy in the head in Dallas.
“In September/October 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald approached the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in an attempt to get a visa allowing him to return to the USSR,” one document labeled “secret” explained. “[Valeriy Vladimirovich] Kostikov, as a consular officer, handled this visa no information request.”
“We have no information which indicates any relationship between these individuals other than for the purpose of Oswald’s making his visa.”
That document which was written in 1971 noted that Kostikov later worked in Mexico and was “considered by some to be the most effective and dangerous of intelligence officers” in the country.
The CIA’s interest in Kostikov has long been known. Kostikov was a former KGB agent who helped the Russians with sabotage and assassination. However, the CIA later concluded it “was nothing more than a grim coincidence” that he and Oswald crossed paths.
Oswald had been a Marine Corps veteran, who defected to the Soviet Union four years before gunning down Kennedy. Before the assassination, he had visited the Cuban Consulate in Mexico where he made contact with the Soviet Embassy in pursuit of a travel visa.
Just under two weeks before the attack, Oswald wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, whining: “[H]ad I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana, as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business.”
Another file included a November 1991 memo indicating that a CIA official befriended an American professor whose friend worked for the KGB and reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald — noting with confidence that “Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”
The memo continued with the KGB official disputing “that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that KGB watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.”
The official also reflected on Oswald’s poor marksmanship in the Soviet Union.
Another one of the files in the new batch, which was also labeled “secret,” showed how the CIA tracked an Italian newspaper article that alleged the agency itself was behind the assassination of the 35th president.
Some of the documents also shed light on some of the intelligence community’s machinations in the 1960s, including details about secret CIA bases across the world.
One document, for example, described how the CIA was tracking a Cuban national named AMFUANA-1 who was sent to Cuba in 1961 before establishing a network of at least 20 people who helped draw up over 50 reports.
Trump had pledged to increase government transparency during his second term.
Last month, his administration faced controversy when US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced plans to release the files on notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. She initially passed those files over to MAGA influencers.
When the files came out, it quickly became clear that there was almost nothing new in them. Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel have since pressed the FBI Field Office in New York to find any remaining files on Epstein.
Trump also brought Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into his second administration to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services. The Kennedy scion has openly toyed with the possibility that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s murder.
His daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox, a former CIA officer, currently serves as the director of Intelligence and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, where she assesses the intelligence community’s black budgets.
Jack Schlossberg — JFK’s grandson and RFK Jr.’s nephew — tore into CNN for covering the newly unveiled documents about his grandfather’s assassination.
“You’re better than this. This is so f–king stupid. There’s so much actual news going on. Why are you covering this,” the 32-year-old lamented in a video he posted on X.
With Post wires
