Among the top national security officials of Kennedy International Security, in the 24-hour battle
President Trump’s national security team announced on Monday that he would notify John F. Kennedy of the assassination only 24 hours a day that he would release 80,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of the president.
Administration officials have been releasing records since Trump signed the executive order. However, the process is still taking place Monday afternoon, when Mr. Trump said during a visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that the documents will be provided the next day.
By Tuesday night, when about 64,000 documents were made public (less than Mr. Trump estimates, less than Trump estimates), some national security officials in the country spent hours trying to assess any harm under extreme deadline pressure.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe has been stressing to senior administration officials that some documents have nothing to do with Mr. Kennedy and have developed decades after the assassination. People said he wanted to make sure other officials were fully aware of what the documents contained and were not caught off guard, but he was clear that he would not try to prevent any documents from being released and said on anonymous condition that the discussion was sensitive to internal deliberation.
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s speech Monday afternoon, National Security Council officials quickly called a call to develop plans to take stock of plans that still require unedited. This version must be coordinated with the National Archives Administration. Some officials have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of rushing to release documents, including the disclosure of sensitive personal information, such as the number of social insurance for those who are still alive.
Officials involved in the decryption process said the number of archives has expanded significantly over the decades because every investigation of materials related to Kennedy, information that has nothing to do with the assassinated president belongs to the umbrella. In some cases, one person familiar with the process said that this included documents created decades after his death.
“President Trump promised to release all Kennedy files, and he is delivering on that promise,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “No one who is surprised by this is concerned or intentionally ignorant.”
When asked Monday if he knew what was in the archives, Mr. Trump said he had “heard of them” but he did not receive a summary of the executive.
“I don’t have a summary,” he said.
A spokesperson for the NSC and the CIA declined to comment. A spokesperson for the National Archives did not respond to a request for comment.
Historians and conspiracy theorists have spoken out for decades to get more information about Kennedy’s death. The 1992 law requires the government to release documents related to the killing within 25 years, but may be harmful to national security.
In 2017, Mr. Trump released some other documents, but he also gave intelligence agencies more time to evaluate the documents and include revisions. Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News figure and Mr. Trump colleague, said the president regretted that the decision had been made by Mr. Trump to release documents to fulfill his long-term promise to the American people.
Just a few years ago, Mr. Trump said he had no great interest in the archives, which historians and many of his colleagues had hoped to see for decades. Trump said in an interview with a reporter from the New York Times in September 2021 that he was “not that curious” about the paper.
“I did this because I thought it was appropriate,” he said, explaining why he tried to decrypt the documents during his first term. “When you have something so mysterious, it really makes it sound bad. I think they might be right, maybe right. Let people check it out.”
But many on Mr. Trump’s track, including Mr. Carlson and Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser Roger J.
“The man sitting at the desk was murdered and every president afterwards covered up why and who did you go with,” Mr. Carlson said in an interview Tuesday. “How can you live like this?”
Kennedy’s assassination has long fueled conspiracy theories, including some of which Trump himself is addicted to. He also exploited his interest in assassination when political expediency was taken.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“This is to honor Bobby’s tribute,” Trump said.
He added: “I never asked me more, ‘Sir, release the documents of Kennedy’s assassination,’ we’re going to do that.”
During the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Trump claimed that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before President Kennedy was killed.
Mr. Trump told Fox News in a May 2016 interview that he was with Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald’s presence. “I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right? No one brought it up before he was shot. They didn’t even talk about this.
On Monday, Mr. Trump attended a board meeting at the Kennedy Center, an institution he has been working to become chairman and install loyalists, Including Richard Grenell, who briefly served as acting director of national intelligence for the final year of Mr. Trump’s first term. When he left, Mr. Trump said he had a “big announcement to be made.”
“When we’re here, I think that’s appropriate,” he said. “We’re going to announce and provide all the Kennedy documents tomorrow. So people have been waiting for decades.”
