The US publishes the unpublished files on the assassination of JFK

[OyaYansa]

Several secret documents on the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy will be released on Thursday, but analysts warn that they do not contain any great revelations or make conspiracy theories disappear.

The Warren Commission, which investigated the murder of the charismatic 46-year-old president on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, concluded that it was committed by a solitary sniper, exmarine Lee Harvey Oswald. That verdict never managed to bury speculations about the case and they spoke of a sinister and complex plot to assassinate the 35th president of the United States.

Hundreds of books and films, such as Oliver Stone's 'JFK' (1991), have fueled conspiracy theory, pointing to Cold War rivals such as the Soviet Union or Cuba, the Mafia and even Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson.

President Donald Trump announced last weekend that he had authorized the release of the remaining 3,100 files on the case, with tens of thousands, probably even hundreds of thousands of documents. The decision is in line with an October 1992 Congressional Minute, which required that the documents on the murder in the national archives be made public 25 years later.

"The president believes that these documents should be made public for full transparency unless the agencies can clearly prove that there is some national security reason why they should not do so," said a White House official.

Few expectations
Experts in this area are eager to know these documents, but warn that you should not encourage many expectations. "Many people think that with these documents they will have the definitive solution for this case," said Gerald Posner, author of the book 'Case Closed', which concludes that Oswald actually acted alone. However he warned the AFP: "That will not happen." "No one will shed their conspiracy theory on the basis of a few documents," he said. "They will simply say that other evidence is still hidden or destroyed."

Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and author of the book "The Half-century of Kennedy," clarifies that Trump could decide - on the recommendation of the CIA or the FBI - not to publish some documents. "And any document they do not publish will further fuel conspiracy theories," he says.

Experts agree, however, that the documents will shed some light on an episode not well known in Oswald's life: his trip to Mexico City about seven weeks before the assassination of Kennedy. "There might be a lot of new information, I think, about how much the government knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before the murder," said Philip Shenon, author of 'A Cruel and Shocking Fact: The Secret History of Kennedy's Murder.' "We know, from other declassified files, that while he was there (in Mexico City) he met with Cuban and Russian spies who at the height of the Cold War had reason to wish Kennedy's death," Shenon told AFP . "He was being closely followed by the CIA," Shenon says. "The question is, how much did the CIA know in real time, weeks before the murder?"

"The most reliable evidence indicates that Oswald was the sniper at Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy died," continues Shenon. "But I think there might be a lot of information about Oswald's contacts with other people," he said. "I could have told others what I was going to do." Sabato claims that the CIA and the FBI could pressure Trump to block the publication of some documents in order to hide their own mistakes. "When you see things in the simplest way, the agencies let that bomb explode in their hands," he says. "They had all indications that Oswald was a misfit, a sociopath."

There was no alert
But no security agency alerted the Secret Service, which is in charge of protecting the president, about the danger that Oswald represented, says Sabato. The CIA may also want to protect the identity of the Mexicans who were CIA informants, says Posner. "Typically, such things would be edited, but this law requires the publication of the documents without any editing," he says.

Oswald went to the Soviet Union in 1959 and returned to the United States in 1962, was arrested shortly after the assassination of Kennedy and after he killed a Dallas police officer. Oswald was murdered two days later by the owner of a nightclub, Jack Ruby, while he was transferred to the county jail.