As of this writing, it looks like President Donald Trump will be releasing thousands of never-before-seen documents–held by the National Archives and Records Administration–related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK” piqued such public interest–and the possibility of undermined confidence in the Warren Commission’s findings–that the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act was passed in 1992. It required that the remaining documents be published in 25 years–by October 2017. Only the president has the authority to extend the remaining secrecy–for “national security” concerns.
Two points.
First, this won’t settle the issue, and not just because I’m a serious, lone-Commie-gunman-out-to-make-hateful-history-who’s-murdered-before-a-trial cynic. Remember the main source of additional background on Lee Harvey Oswald, including the Mexican connection, is the CIA, an unconscionably rogue outfit back in the day. Some redactions are more CIA self-service than legitimate national security matters.
Current CIA director Mike Pompeo knows that. There’s a reason he’s been lobbying Trump to hold back on the document release.
Also, try putting Kennedy and Trump in the same sentence without conjuring up the Cuban Missile Crisis. You know where this is going. Imagine if that Cold War Oval Office occupant had been a president with the unhinged, in-your-face temperament of Trump dealing with Fidel Castro and his Soviet suppliers.
How do you think he would have handled Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” Lemay & Co. on the matter of a Cuban invasion and aerial attack? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question. We already see how he’s handling “Little Rocket Man.”
Neither Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev wanted to back the other guy into a corner with no face-saving way out. Khrushchev honored the blockade (oops, “embargo”) and then pulled the missiles from Cuba. And the U.S. agreed to withdraw missiles from Soviet-bordering Turkey and promised not to invade Cuba. Nuclear Armageddon averted.
That was then.