FBI finds 2,400 new documents linked to JFK assassination

What did the CIA know about Lee Harvey Oswald, and when did they know it?

The answers may lie in 2,400 documents newly linked to the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in Dallas after a records review conducted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI search was prompted by President Donald Trump’s push to release details about one of the nation’s most notorious and hotly debated crimes, including formerly classified intelligence and law enforcement files.

“The question for me is not whether the CIA was complicit, but whether the CIA was negligent,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.” Posner, who believes Oswald acted alone, said it would be “a big story” if the records reveal the CIA knew more than it let on about the gunman believed solely responsible for the assassination.

One other glaring question, however, is: Why are these records only coming to light now, 62 years later?

The FBI said Tuesday it conducted the records review after Trump’s executive order in January calling for declassification of records related to the assassination of the nation’s 35^th president.

“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,” the White House release stated. “It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”

Trump’s order also called for the nation’s security agencies to come up with plans to release documents related to the 1968 assassinations of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the former president’s brother and a presidential candidate, but has allowed more time for those.

Polls show skepticism remains about lone assassin theory

The Justice Department and other federal government entities have reaffirmed conclusions that Oswald was solely responsible for the killing of the former president. However, polls have shown many Americans believe Kennedy’s death was part of a wider conspiracy, and Posner said details remain lacking about what the Central Intelligence Agency knew about Oswald’s visits to Mexico City, including the Soviet embassy there, six weeks before the assassination.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department and the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, has expressed belief that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s death, an allegation denied by the agency. Kennedy Jr. has also said he believes his father was killed by multiple gunmen, contradicting official accounts.

The newly linked documents aren’t likely to support conspiracy theories about Oswald’s role as anything more than a lone-wolf gunman, historians say.

“I suspect that we won’t get anything too dramatic in the releases, or anything that fundamentally overturns our understanding of what occurred in Dallas,” said Fredrik Logevall, a professor of history at Harvard University in Boston. Logevall said he was prepared to be surprised.

Fascination has swirled for decades around the killing of one of the nation’s most storied leaders, unspooling vast material for film, literature, historical accounts and pop culture. Kennedy was fatally shot as his presidential motorcade rolled through downtown Dallas, and Oswald, arrested soon after, was himself fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television while being transferred to a county jail two days later.

Not everyone is happy about the declassification of records related to the assassination. Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy’s grandson, issued a statement decrying Trump’s executive order.

“The truth is a lot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn’t need to happen,” he wrote in a since-deleted post. “Not part of an inevitable grand scheme. Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back . . . There’s nothing heroic about it.”

Whatever the files contain, they aren’t likely to settle any debates, said Alice L. George, author of “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Political Trauma and American Memory.”

“I can’t imagine any document that would convince (conspiracy theorists) that Oswald acted alone,” George said. “Particularly among people who are really invested in that way of thinking. It’s going to probably leave them in the same place where they are now.”

Contributing: Reuters

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Upcoming JFK assassination document release just got bigger