President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to declassify the assassination files for President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy (former US Senator and US Attorney General) was assassinated in a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles in 1968.
Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of a Memphis motel in 1968.
“A lot of people are waiting for this for a long time – years – decades,” President Trump said as he signed the order.
“A everything will be revealed,” Trump added.
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Trump orders release of long-secret final files on JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday ordered the declassification and release of long-secret files on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“Everything will be revealed,” Trump, 78, said in the Oval Office as he signed an executive order mandating the disclosure — after decades of speculation and conspiracy theories about each of the slayings.
The order says “the release of these records is long overdue” and requires the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to rapidly prepare for the release.
Officials will have 15 days to “present a plan to the President for the full and complete release of records” on the JFK assassination and 45 days to do so for the RFK and MLK cases.
President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 in Dallas — with prime suspect Lee Harvey Oswald murdered himself two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, spurring lasting debate about whether Oswald was part of — or a patsy in — a shadowy conspiracy.
Oswald, a Marine Corps veteran, defected to the Soviet Union four years before the assination and later returned to the US. In late September 1963, Oswald both visted the Cuban consulate in Mexico City and contacted the Soviet embassy there, ostensibly to arrange travel visas.
Fewer than two weeks before the assassination, Oswald wrote to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, complaining: “[H]ad I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana, as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business.”
In a CIA document released in response to a separate order by Trump in 2017, an official wrote that: “Although it appears that [Oswald] was then thinking only about a peaceful change of residence to the Soviet Union, it is also possible that he was getting documented to make a quick escape after assassinating the president.”
Ruby’s own known links to organized crime have provided another breeding ground for JFK conspiracy theories.
Then-New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Christian, in June 1968 — shortly after winning California’s Democratic presidential contest. Sirhan’s attorney at one point claimed he was framed.
Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and told an aide to give RFK Jr. the pen with which he signed Thursday’s order.
The younger Kennedy has argued in the past that the CIA was behind the murders of his father and his uncle, and argued — in opposition to his siblings, that Sirhan should be granted parole.
King was fatally shot in April 1968 by James Earl Ray after the FBI worked to undermine the minister’s anti-racial discrimination advocacy — including with an infamous 1964 letter that allegedly sought to push King into killing himself.
RFK was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Christian, in June 1968 — shortly after winning California’s Democratic presidential contest.
King was fatally shot in April 1968 by James Earl Ray after federal authorities worked to undermine his anti-racial discrimination advocacy.
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The last secret files about the assassination of John F. Kennedy can now be published after President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the declassification of all remaining documents about the 1963 murder.
Conspiracy theories continue to swirl 60 years after the killing.
And any new information will excite the amateur sleuths who continue to wonder whether there is more to the story than just a lone gunman in the shape of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Trump signed an executive order that directs his Director of National Intelligence to put together a plan within 15 days for the full release of documents about the JFK assassination.
‘That’s a big one, huh?’ he said as he scrawled his signature on the order, before asking that the pen be given to RFK Jr. ‘A lot of people are waiting for this for a long … for years, for decades.
‘Everything will be revealed.’
The executive order, obtained by DailyMail.com, said: ‘More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events.
‘Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.’
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