- By October 26, the National Archives will release approximately 3,100 classified documents relating to JFK's assassination.
- The documents have been classified for more than 50 years, but a 1992 law mandated they be disseminated within 25 years.
- Historians don't believe there will be any bombshell findings, but the files could shed light on the CIA's investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's suspected killer.
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More than 3,000 classified JFK files are about to be released — here's what they are
Nobody knows what's inside the secretive JFK files that have been classified for more than 50 years, but experts warn there probably won't be any bombshells.
President Donald Trump announced that the National Archives' will release more than 3,000 JFK files on Thursday, many of which have been classified since the 1960s.
The formal date of the release is October 26, 2017, as determined by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which George H.W. Bush signed into law exactly 25 years ago.
What are the JFK files?
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Sure to be fodder for conspiracy theorists, the files all relate to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Following Kennedy's murder, more than 30,000 government documents — totaling millions of pages — have been incrementally released to the public, although many of them have been redacted or only partially released.
Much of the public stayed in the dark about the presence of these files until Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK," in which a closing statement told the public about the secret documents. Movie-goers quickly turned into letter-writers, as concerned citizens began demanding that Washington make the full set of files available.
Of the tens of thousands of documents already partially released, approximately 3,100 still remain classified. No one knows exactly what information is contained in the files; the only guide is an index that vaguely lists the contents of the secret documents.
The index does, however, present eyebrow-raising file names that seem to implicate a connection between the ARRB and the CIA. One such batch of files is listed with the subject line "
But conspiracy theorists who don't believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy are likely to be disappointed, Gerald Posner, the author of "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK," told CNN.
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There is some doubt whether Trump will follow through with allowing the National Archives to dispense the documents in full.
Speaking to Politico, an anonymous White House official said that "
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