On March 18, President Donald Trump signed an executive order forcing the release of remaining classified documents regarding the assassination of former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963. The release, which included 2,200 documents and nearly 64 thousand pages of information, was made available to the public in an effort to provide full clarity surrounding the details of the assassination.

Leading to the release of the documents President Trump told the press, “We have a tremendous amount of paper.” He said, “You got a lot of reading, I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.”

Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963 when visiting Dallas as part of a potential bid for reelection. Kennedy was shot and killed as he traveled in a motorcade from the Carswell Air Force Base and through the downtown area of the city.

The shooter, soon identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, was apprehended by police just hours after the shooting took place. Despite confirmation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Oswald acted alone, the assassination became a point of contempt among Americans: was the government telling the truth about the brutal assassination of President Kennedy?

The skepticism about Oswald’s lone act wasn’t completely unfounded. In order to provide clarity for Americans about the circumstances of Kennedy’s death, his successor former president Lyndon B. Johnson founded the Warren Commission, dedicated specifically to investigating the assassination of president Kennedy. The final product of the series of investigations was a 450 page report that concluded Oswald was the sole actor in the murder of JFK. At first glance, most Americans agreed with the findings of the commission. However, as people had time to sit with the newly reported information, US citizens became increasingly concerned that the government was withholding information about the possibility of other actors in the crime.

Upon the release of the Warren Commission in 1965, three separate government agents had reportedly conducted independent investigations to verify that Oswald was the man who assassinated JFK. At the conclusion of each agency,  Oswald was the lone shooter behind the gun that killed President Kennedy. For decades following the publication of the Warren Commission’s report, conspiracy theories were created and spread by the American people regarding the truth of that fateful day in the fall of 1963. 

In the years following the release of the Warren Commission's reports, a reinvestigation of the event was initiated by the House Select Committee on Assassination which reported that there were at least four shots fired at the president and a very likely possibility that at least two gunmen were a part of the attack on Kennedy. 

This finding aroused numerous conspiracies about the details of the assassination as the report explored an entirely new possibility. This was the only government report that suggested the possibility of multiple gunmen. Due to a lack of transparency in the original commission, the matter became even cloudier.

In response to the speculation of multiple shooters, former president George Herbert Walker Bush signed an order allowing Congress to release certain classified documents regarding Kennedy’s assassination in an effort to dispel rumors about its circumstances. 

T. Jeremy Gunn, former executive director of the Assassinations Records Review Board created by President Bush, explained his involvement in the document release in an interview with National Public Radio on Nov. 10, 2013. When asked about the effectiveness of the series of releases, he said, "The institution that had the opportunity to best get to the bottom of this, as much as it was possible, was the Warren Commission, and they didn't do it […] Now it's too late to do what should have been done originally."

After his inauguration in 1961, Kennedy hit the ground running. Just over a month into his presidency, JFK fulfilled a campaign promise by creating a temporary Peace Corps. This was a reactionary effort to offset the force of communism during the Cold War. Although the initiative was not created with the intention of withstanding the test of time, Kennedy’s Peace Corps has evolved into what we know today as the volunteer organization aimed at building trust within Americans in their government, its policies and beyond.

The main concern of the Kennedy administration was the fight against communism. Most notably, the government and the Central Intelligence Agency — spearheaded by Kennedy — made an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro by provoking Cuban citizens to incite a revolt. Kennedy made the decision to not provide any sort of air support for the Cuban people during the revolt, including missiles and airstrikes, which was heavily criticized by Americans and politicians alike following the conflict. Despite the overwhelming popularity of the Kennedy administration among Americans, this attempt to overthrow Castro left an unsavory taste in the mouths of many.

Cuba was not the only nation that became a point of contention for the Kennedy administration's fight against communism. JFK was behind a rampant increase of American military presence in Vietnam amidst their war and gave the seal of approval on the coup that took down leader Ngo Dinh Diem and the South Vietnamese government.

In spite of these military miscalculations, Kennedy continued to grow in popularity, which raised the question: why was the Kennedy administration so popular?

JFK was born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts and was the very first Catholic president. Many of his biggest fans were New England natives who identified themselves with his Irish-Catholic heritage. His popularity spread far beyond the northeast as he rose to prominence. Well-spoken and charismatic, Kennedy became one of the most popular presidents of all time with an American approval rating of nearly 80% during his term.

Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, was found to be an advocate for pro-Russian and pro-Cuban movements, to which he attempted to move to each nation and was rejected. Considering the anti-communist sentiment embraced by Kennedy, it is clear that Oswald was a harsh opponent of the president.

The thousands of documents associated with the beloved president's assassination have long been classified in an effort to lay him to rest in peace and with privacy. However, archivists and some average Americans alike have pushed to have more transparency about the events that took place in November of 1963.

In an effort to finally put all of the rumors to rest surrounding the death of the 35th president, President Trump urged that the March 18 release of the thousands of documents would provide Americans with the ability to sift through the papers themselves.

Instead of uncovering secrets about the actors in the assassination, the documents revealed formerly classified CIA plans in Cuba and intentions to grant the State Department more control in an effort to offset the overwhelming power of the CIA at the time. 

Formerly redacted information tracking the location of Oswald on various trips around the world leading up to the assassination revealed that the FBI and CIA were aware of the threat that Oswald posed to the president. On his trips to Russia, Cuba and Mexico leading up to the assassination, it is now believed that Oswald had spoken about his plan to kill the president while visiting Mexico City.

However, this release was not as seamless as Trump imagined it to be. Leaving the project to the National Archives — which just experienced a major series of layoffs sanctioned by him — archivists scrambled to sift through the documents on such short notice. The lack of time to review each file led to a major data breach. According to an article published by the Washington Post on March 20, “The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 400 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday [March 18] in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to a review by The Washington Post.” Staffers affected by the security breach are not only at risk of having their personal information stolen, but they have also been subject to threats in wake of the publications.

The White House admitted that they only began to go through the documents after they had been released to the public, only beginning their detection of private information after much of it had already been published.

As archivists continue to comb through the newly available information surrounding the Kennedy assassination, no new conspiracies surrounding the event have been brought to light — the documents mostly include information that confirms what government agencies have already concluded about the tragic ending of the life of Kennedy.