JFK conspiracy theorists are going to have to wait another three and a half years before they get to see everything they want about the 1963 assassination of the president.
On the day the final batch of federal documents tied to the murder of John F. Kennedy are scheduled to be released, Donald Trump has issued an order to keep some sealed. The decision comes roughly six months after Trump had suggested he would release them all.
Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017
The documents were originally scheduled to be released on Oct. 26, the result of a 25-year deadline Congress set in 1992 for the release of all remaining documents tied to the assassination. On that day, though, Trump released some documents, but gave federal agencies another six months to pore through the documents and argue if some should be kept secret.
Thursday, Trump issued an order saying he was keeping some documents sealed “because of identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.”
“I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure,” he added.
Even with the records Trump ordered kept sealed, there’s still plenty for historians to examine. The National Archives originally planned to release 19,045 documents today. Instead, it uploaded 18,731.
All of the new documents, as well as previously released ones, can be downloaded at the archives’ website.