United States: Trump declassifies archives on “JFK” and Martin Luther King

Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the declassification of US government records on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, his brother Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, as well as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. the same year.

“All will be revealed,” the American president told the press when signing the decree in the Oval Office of the White House.

At the end of November, after his election, Donald Trump repeated his campaign promise to make public the last files classified “top secret” in the National Archives concerning the assassination of “JFK”.

Countless speculations until today

The official commission of inquiry into the JFK assassination concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine commando who had lived in the Soviet Union, had acted alone. But the assassination of President Kennedy has raised countless speculations until today.

As of December 2022, the National Archives made more than 13,000 documents public. But Joe Biden’s White House blocked the release of thousands more, citing national security concerns. According to the National Archives, 99% of the collection has since been accessible.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s brother, Robert Francis Kennedy, served as his Minister of Justice. He was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, when he was well positioned to win the Democratic presidential primary. The Democratic senator had just finished a speech at the Ambassador Hotel when he was shot dead by a Palestinian immigrant to the United States.

The leader of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, was assassinated on April 4, 1968 by a white segregationist on the balcony of a motel in Memphis (south), where he had come to support striking garbage collectors.

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