Oliver Stone is grinning from ear to ear (I assume). Meanwhile, everyone else in America has the exact same question: “Why the hell did it take so long?”
This afternoon, President Trump slaughtered three of the Deep State’s most prized sacred cows, ordering via executive order the declassification of files pertaining to the lives, assassinations —and possible cover-ups — of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
You can witness the history-making moment yourself:
President Trump Orders Historic Transparency: JFK, RFK, and MLK Files to be Declassified
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 23, 2025
“This is a big one. A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades. Everything will be revealed.” –President Trump pic.twitter.com/iYfF7huHj9
As Trump said, “Everything will be revealed.”
Under the terms of the executive order, the director of National Intelligence has 15 days to finalize a plan for the full, complete release of the JFK files and 45 days to release the files for RFK and Dr. King.
The executive order states:
More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.
Given the 50+ years that have passed, it’s unclear why the government waited so long to release the documents. Obviously, anyone with the power to assassinate a president, a senator, or a civil rights leader in the 1960s is unlikely to still be alive in 2025. And even if the government sought to protect certain information-gathering tactics and/or informants, it’s next to impossible to imagine the tactics or names being relevant today.
Furthermore, by dragging their feet for so long, the government inadvertently gave credence to conspiracy theorists who’ve long suspected a cover-up: Why else would they continue to hide the truth?
Nature abhors all vacuums, including information vacuums. Eventually, a story, theory, lie, or legend will emerge to fill it. Then, after so many decades, it’s awfully difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Lee Harvey Oswald may (or may not) have acted alone, but the PR wounds from obscuring the truth for 60+ years were entirely self-inflicted. And today, just 29% of Americans believe Oswald was the lone gunman. A vast majority — 65% — believe there was a conspiracy.
Releasing these documents is long overdue.
In December of 2021, then-president Joe Biden ordered a review of the JFK assassination files. (Naturally, since this was Biden, it was soon forgotten.) However, at the time, Politico offered an interesting explanation for all the foot-dragging:
The Archives paperwork shows that the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have fought particularly hard to protect the identity of informants in organized-crime investigations — an argument that will intrigue conspiracy theorists who believe the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s death. Many assassination researchers argue that the assassination was blowback for the so-called war on organized crime waged by the president’s brother, then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
In fact, the correspondence shows the overwhelming majority of the documents that the FBI has withheld from the public in recent years somehow involved organized-crime investigations. Of the nearly 7,500 documents that the FBI kept classified at the time of the 2017 deadline, 6,000 were from “various files of members of organized crime or La Cosa Nostra.”
The DEA even argued — as recently as 2018! — that “Given the well-documented propensity for violence by the Mafia, it is reasonable to expect the individuals, if alive, remain in significant danger of retaliation for their assistance.”
So, was it the mafia? A corrupt government agency? Cuban and/or Soviet spies? What the hell happened to JFK, RFK, and Dr. MLK, Jr.?!
Frustratingly, one of the most coveted pieces of evidence — journalist William Manchester’s 10-hour taped interview with former first lady Jaqueline Kennedy in 1964 — won’t be released until 2067.
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