National Archives
President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy before the president's assassination in 1963.
- President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the National Archives will release approximately 3,100 classified documents relating to President John F. Kennedy's assassination on Thursday.
- The release date was set by President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the National Archives will release approximately 3,100 classified documents relating to President John F. Kennedy's assassination on Thursday.
"The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!" Trump wrote.
Trump announced on Saturday that he would not block the planned release of more than 3,000 JFK files, many of which have been classified since the 1960s.
The October 26 release date was not determined by the Trump administration, but instead by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which then-President George H.W. Bush signed into law 25 years ago.
Sure to be fodder for conspiracy theorists, the files all relate to Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Following his murder, more than 30,000 government documents - totaling millions of pages - have been incrementally released to the public, although many of them have been redacted or only partially released.
Trump sparked controversy when, during the 2016 presidential primary, he suggested that Sen. Ted Cruz's father was involved in Kennedy's assassination and had contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who pulled the trigger. Trump hasn't yet apologized for the claim.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, just over two years into his presidency. Conspiracy theories about his murder have swirled ever since.
Of the tens of thousands of documents already partially released, approximately 3,100 still remain classified. No one knows exactly what information is contained in the files; the only guide is an index that vaguely lists the contents of the secret documents.
The index does, however, present eyebrow-raising file names that seem to implicate a connection between the Assassination Records Review Board and the CIA. One such batch of files is listed with the subject line "CIA CORRESPONDENCE RE ARRB," Politico reported.
Chris Weller and Jeremy Burke contributed to this report.