Thousands of previously unknown documents regarding the investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be published in the coming days in the United States. It is planned that they will become available to the general public no later than Thursday, October 26 - the date set by Congress.
The Kennedy assassination, one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century, was committed on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Shots were fired at 12.30, as the President's motorcade drove along Elm Street.
Thanks to the testimony of witnesses, it soon became clear that the gunman was hiding on the sixth floor of a book depository next to the highway, and one of the employees, Lee Harvey Oswald, left the building shortly after the shooting.
Soon Oswald was stopped on one of the streets by a policeman and at the time of his arrest he killed him, shot four times. After a while, he was detained at the city cinema and taken to the police.
From the moment of the attempt on Kennedy's life to the arrest of Oswald, only 1 hour and 20 minutes passed. That same night, Oswald was charged with the murder of the president and a police officer. Two days later, Oswald, escorted by the police, was shot and killed by the owner of the nightclub, Jack Ruby, at gunpoint from television and cameras. It is established that the weapon of Kennedy's assassination was an Italian carbine, found by police among the boxes of books on the sixth floor of the book depository.
The Kennedy assassination was investigated for almost a year by a specially created commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren (Warren Commission).
who concluded that the assassination was carried out by a lone killer, Oswald.
Despite this, today, 54 years after the assassination, polls show that only 29% of Americans believe the Kennedy assassination was the work of Oswald alone, and 62% - that the murder was the result of a larger conspiracy.
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This conspiracy, according to various versions, could be the Russians, Cubans, the mafia and even the CIA itself.
62% of Americans believe that the authorities are hiding the true results of the investigation, and only 28% believe the published findings of the commission.
Back in 1992, the US Congress passed the Act on the collection of evidence of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The document obliged the national archives to collect and publicize all materials of the investigation. In total, the archive contains more than 5 million pages related to the assassination attempt on Kennedy, including photographs, films, sound recordings and other artifacts.
However, even before 1992, 98% of the documents were declassified. Now in the archives there are about 3 thousand documents - 1% of all materials.
Only the desire of President Donald Trump could prevent the publication of the remaining documents, but he spoke in favor of the publication of the archive. "As president, I authorize the release of classified documents on the Kennedy affair," he tweeted last Saturday.
Last secrets
How can the unpublished documents surprise the American public, journalists, numerous researchers of this topic and, of course, supporters of the conspiracy?
First, they may contain data on Oswald's cases in Mexico City, where he traveled in September 1963, just two months before the murder. The documents may reveal the role of some prominent Mexican figures who may have leaked important information to the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the days before and after the assassination.
“There may not be any scary dark secrets, but the release of the documents could offend the people involved,” said Gerald Posner, an expert on the Kennedy assassination. In 1992, he published the book Case Closed, in which he argued that the versions of a widespread conspiracy were untenable, and that the murder was committed by Oswald alone.
“Don't forget that Mexico City in the 1960s was a seething cauldron of intrigue, where everyone spied on each other,” recalls Posner.
American political consultant Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, said recently that it was he who advised the head of state to publish the documents, and that CIA Director Mike Pompeo "vehemently opposed the president to open them." Posner and Stone, who have different views on who killed Kennedy and why, have joined forces in recent weeks to advocate for publication. Despite the fact that more than half a century has passed since the murder, the disclosure of documents could compromise some of the methods by which the investigation was conducted.
Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia is one of the researchers who advocated the publication of the remaining documents. He believes that their release will not provide answers to key questions, but will help to understand what the American intelligence services knew and did not know.
“Since the assassination attempt, many questions have been asked about what the government learned and when it did,” says Sabato. “Unfortunately, the FBI and CIA were reluctant to share critical information. Personally, I want to find important parts of this story that we don't understand."
In particular, Sabato is trying to find out whether various intelligence agencies have exchanged data with each other about
that a man who once lived in the Soviet Union (Oswald) works in one of the buildings along the route of the cortege.
“Unlike some, I don’t think we’ll find the Rosette Stone, which will suddenly bring all the pieces of history together and identify the conspiracy, it will not happen,” he said. "We hope to be able to fill in some of the gaps and help understand what really happened on November 22nd."
In addition, the publication is demonstrative - the authorities make it clear that they have nothing to hide from the public in this long-standing case. “I think that at least partly it will help people understand that the government is not hiding something important from them,” said former Justice John Tannheim of Minnesota, who once led the commission to publish the documents.
He admits that after the beginning of the 90s, new evidence could appear in the case, which was sent to the national archives, and now they can shed new light on the circumstances of the assassination attempt.
Posner believes that the version about the plans of the US special services and the mafia to jointly eliminate the head of state is true. Their only target was another political leader - Fidel Castro. “They tried seven times, but they couldn't even hurt him,” Posner said. According to Ken Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia, the released documents may just shed light on the US attempts to assassinate Castro and participation in the conspiracy against the Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.
According to Posner, documents that are not directly related to the murder will see the light. “They will all make you worry. First, there must be a handwritten letter from Jacqueline Kennedy about Kennedy's funeral. There must be a letter from the former head of the FBI Groover, classified all these years, - explained the historian.
In his opinion, on the day the archives are opened, a large number of requests can crash servers and prevent access, which will give rise to new conspiracy theories.
Pavel Kotlyar