Yesterday, January 23, on President Trump's 3rd full day in office, he issued an Executive Order related to declassification of records on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations.

Entitled DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATIONS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY, AND THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., the full order can be viewed at whitehouse.gov.

The order begins with a paragraph of "Policy and Purpose" which states the following:

After then reviewing a bit of history of the last 6 years of partial declassification of JFK records, Section 2 of the memo gets to the heart of the matter. The first paragraph concerns JFK records:

and a second paragraph addresses records related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.:

This is welcome news. It is also as yet not a plan, but rather an announcement that plans will be made. So we shall see how this unfolds. At this point, there are a few key questions:

How will this quick review period actually work?

Given that the National Archives has been sitting on a dwindling pile of not-fully-released JFK Collection records for 6 years, making a plan for them should be easy - much less so for RFK and MLK records. Though it's also true that two of the three officers charged with making the plan - Director of National Intelligence, Attorney General, and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs - have not even had their positions filled yet. Tulsi Gabbard's first hearing for the DNI role is not till Jan 30. Who will actually be directing creation of these plans, and on what realistic timetable?

What JFK records precisely are we talking about here?

There are roughly 3,500 JFK documents in the official "JFK Collection" which still feature "redactions" hiding names, operations, and more. Over 75% of them are CIA records. Agency officials have fought disclosure before, and will do so again, though given the new leadership they may or may not prevail this time around.

There are also more than 500 additional records which are "withheld in full" legally under the JFK Records Act. These are mostly IRS records, but also include some very interested deed-of-gift-restricted letters and interviews of Jackie and Bobbie Kennedy. It's not clear that Trump has the authority to release these.

And then there are the records that slipped through the cracks, including notably those of a CIA officer named George Joannides. The former head of the Board that declassified the JFK records in the 1990s has said that these files should have been released then, but weren't due to "inaccurate representations made by the CIA." But the Joannides files are not currently considered part of the JFK Collection. Will they then be ignored, or will there be a process to declassify these and other such documents?

What RFK and MLK assassination records exist and how will they be located?

President Trump gave a 45-day window for the three officials to "review records" for the RFK and MLK assassinations. That's a tall order, because they are not sitting in a set of boxes somewhere to be reviewed. In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board spent the first few months defining what an "assassination record" even was, and then worked for 4 years (sometimes testily) with agencies to find and process them.

In the MLK case, there is one easily identified trove of documents - the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. That Congressional body investigated both the JFK and MLK assassinations (not RFK). Their JFK files numbered in the hundreds of thousands of pages, and the MLK-related set is probably similar.

But the rest of the potentially relevant files exist in various places - files of the Church Committee, the FBI, the CIA, and other government agencies from the NSA to the Army. It is a non-trivial process just to identify them. Will the plan to be proposed include creating a new temporary agency of government to take on that work, like the 1992 JFK Records Act did?

The LAPD released its files on the RFK assassination in 1988, and there are court transcripts and records related to Sirhan Sirhan's case which are public. Many FBI files on the case have also been released. No doubt there is more in the hands of the FBI and probably other government agencies, but again it takes a serious process to even locate them.

Where do the files go when they are released?

In the 1990s, the released files went into the National Archives II in College Park MD, for researchers to visit and view in person. But, more helpfully, since 2017 the National Archives has scanned and put the newly-released records in PDF files online.

In 2025, it would be beyond anachronistic to release these records in paper form only - the plan should include digitization and online access. President Biden ordered the Archives in 2021 to come up with a plan to digitize the full JFK Collection. The Archives wrote up a plan, but the public is still awaiting its implementation.

For much more on the JFK records, see State of JFK Releases 2025.

What's Next?

What will these plans look like? Are we in for an era of disclosure? It's worth noting that the final section of the executive order lists a few caveats. Nothing in the order, it says, shall impair or affect "the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof" or "the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals." This is followed by the statement "This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations." So, in the case particularly of the RFK and MLK files, might budgetary concerns limit or squash the effort?

Another question is a legal one. In June 2023, President Biden signed off on "transparency plans." This moved decision-making on further declassification away from the JFK Records Act process, specifying new release criteria and handing control to five agencies of government - CIA, FBI, State, Defense, and the National Archives. Does this then inhibit Trump's ability to invoke the JFK Records Act to complete the release? Then again, as head of these executive agencies, he could as president presumably simply order the five agencies to release these records.

The above questions and observations are not meant to diminish the import of yesterday's announcement. These assassinations were more than tragic - they tore at the fabric of America, kicked off the long decline of Americans' belief in their government's truth-telling, and are an unresolved black spot in our nation's history. Full release of relevant government files will not cure this wound, but it helps.

So this announcement is indeed welcome news. But to realize the goal set out, particularly in the case of the RFK and MLK assassinations, will require more than an order. It will need personnel, resources, a budget, time, and above all a sustained will to see it through.

Rex Bradford
January 24, 2025