Let’s talk about…the JFK files released!

Kit Knightly

“Promises made, promises kept!” is the battle cry of the MAGAs right now, but was this a promise worth keeping?

Last night Donald Trump’s administration released two-thousand files, totaling over 60,000 pages, pertaining to the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

You can read them all here.

The files are in seemingly no order, with no index or search system, so combing through them will take a while.

The National Archive press release claims these are “all records previously withheld for classification”, but that’s then admit that’s not technically true [emphasis added]:

In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released. The National Archives has partnered with agencies across the federal government to comply with the President’s directive in support of Executive Order 14176. As of March 18, 2025, the records are available to access either online at this page or in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats, at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. As the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to this page.

This is only the digitized ones, the undigitized ones are all available as well, you just have to go to the national archives in Maryland to see them. They’ll put those on the internet too, just as soon as they’re done digitizing them. Honest

Of course, the process of “digitizing the records” and the weeks it’s expected to take “historians and experts” to go over the files keeps the narrative open. They can add new files as they see fit to steer the conversation.

So far the media coverage has been exactly as you’d expect, with a quasi-religious repetition of the Official Story best exemplified by the pathetically predictable New York Times, where Adam Nagourney headlines simply:

Here’s what to know. (Oswald still did it.)

Propaganda so laughable you wonder if they’re really trying…and perhaps they’re not.

Social media reactions have been as you’d expect, too.

Republicans claim this is a case of “promises made, promises kept”. Democrats claim there’s no new information here, it’s just the same files Biden released with parts unredacted.

As is usually the case, it’s likely neither is entirely correct.

It’s possible this data dump is actually happening earlier than planned, an attempt by the Trump admin to win back some support after many of his base were alienated by his bombing of Yemen and continued support for Israel. There was, allegedly, a “24-hour scramble” to release the files, but that might just be a story designed to make Trump look chaotic.

Some of the “revelations” being discussed so far are really no such thing. For example, the idea that the CIA having hundreds of their agents inside the State Department is new information is ridiculous.

Although, the prominent and widespread discussion of potential CIA involvement is noteworthy.

In our prediction on the JFK files back in January, Kit wrote that…

It can’t be concrete declarations, because deniability – and therefore more debate – must be built in, but it will be enough to lend legitimacy to some of the milder or more fringe “conspiracy theories” in a way that fuels what will become a very public controversy.

And so far that seems to be bearing out, with unredacted mentions of both Israel and “Israeli intelligence services” already dominating the discussion:

CIA suppressed top officer James Jesus Angleton’s connection to Israeli intelligence as shown by this newly unredacted JFK assassination records file.

Angleton had subverted JFK’s policy of preventing Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons and was praised by Mossad head Meir… pic.twitter.com/68La055aZY

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 19, 2025

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Via https://off-guardian.org/2025/03/19/lets-talk-about-the-jfk-files-released/