United States President Donald Trump has said that classified JFK files will be made public.
Trump broke this new on Twitter.
"Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened," Trump tweeted.
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American statesman who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime, but he was never prosecuted due to his murder by Jack Ruby two days later.
The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but various groups believed that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy.
Trump's tweet comes as he is staring down an October 26 deadline set in law by Congress mandating the public release of the still-secret documents -- including FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) files -- barring any action by the President to block the release of certain documents, CNN reports.
Congress mandated in 1992 that all assassination documents be released within 25 years, unless the president asserts that doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.
The White House said in a statement to Politico earlier this week that the White House was working "to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public" by next week's deadline.
JFK scholars believe the trove of files may provide insight into assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico City weeks before the killing, during which he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies, reports CBS News.
Kennedy's time in office was marked by high tensions with Communist states in the Cold War.
The CBS News further adds that Oswald's stated reason for going was to get visas that would allow him to enter Cuba and the Soviet Union, according to the Warren Commission, the investigative body established by President Lyndon B. Johnson, but much about the trip remains unknown.
Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which publishes assassination records, was quoted by the CBS News as saying that Kennedy experts also hope to see the full report on Oswald's trip to Mexico City from staffers of the House committee that investigated the assassination.
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