New JFK files won't answer all of our questions

With all the misinformation floating around social media, the release Thursday of thousands of files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination will doubtless provide tons of clickbait fodder in the coming years.

Thanks in part to Oliver Stone’s conspiracy movie “JFK,” Congress in 1992 mandated that all assassination documents be released within 25 years, but Trump could block them if they were judged to hurt intelligence or military operations, law enforcement or foreign relations.

While Stone’s movie was based on largely discredited speculation, JFK scholars hope the files will shed more light on Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City shortly before the assassination. Oswald said he went there to get visas to enter Cuba and the Soviet Union, but many questions remain to be answered.

“Subject to the receipt of further information,” President Trump wrote in a Saturday morning tweet, “I will be allowing, as President, the long-blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”

Former top campaign adviser and long-time friend Roger Stone, who wrote a book alleging that Lyndon Johnson was behind Kennedy’s assassination, had urged Trump to release the files, since he felt they would strengthen the argument that the Oswald had links to the CIA.

In July, the National Archive published online more than 440 previously unseen assassination documents and thousands of others that had previously included redactions.

It’s unlikely all the questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination will ever be resolved, but at least release of the files will offer new questions for debate.