Don’t expect President Trump’s order to declassify and release the JFK, RFK and MKL Jr. assassination records to satisfy conspiracy theorists — but it may be a grim eye-opener about CIA, Secret Service and FBI failures.
Unsealing the files on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1968 killings of his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may dispel mysteries surrounding three horrific acts in 20th century American history.
JFK grandson Jack Schlossberg accused Trump of “using JFK as a political prop.”
Yet his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls it “a great move because they need to have more transparency in our government, and he’s keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people about everything,”
We expect the results won’t support RFK Jr.’s speculation that the CIA was behind the murders of his father and uncle — but let the chips fall where they will.
Most likely, the declassifying may embarrass the FBI, CIA and/or Secret Service.
Including how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI used illegal surveillance of Dr. King to build a file of seamy personal allegations.
Understandably, the King family wants “the opportunity to review the files” prior to public release, a request we see no reason not to honor.
In his first term, Trump yielded to concerns that releasing the files would somehow endanger national security, but it’s near-impossible to see how secrets from over a half-century ago would do so.
Virtually everyone concerned here is long-dead — including the Soviet Union, should the docs actually bolster claims that it had fingers in the JFK assassination.
It’ll be weeks before Trump gets presented with a plan for releasing any of the remaining records, and likely months before the public gets clued in.
But the time has surely come: More than half a century is long enough to wait.