Trump to release nearly all JFK assassination files

President Donald Trump has said he will release all documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, except those with the names and addresses of people who are still alive.

“After strict consultation with General Kelly, the CIA and other Agencies, I will be releasing ALL #JFKFiles other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, referring to his chief of staff John Kelly.

The assassination of President Kennedy has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. President Trump has said the public has the right to be “fully informed” about the event.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, as he rode in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas, in an open-topped limousine next to his wife Jacqueline Kennedy.

Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old Kennedy became the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to hold that office.

The US government has released 2,800 previously classified files on the assassination, but some documents have been withheld at the request of government agencies.

Following the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and self-proclaimed Marxist, was arrested. On November 24, he was shot dead in the basement of the Dallas police department by Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner. The shooting was captured live on television.

One memo revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had warned police of a death threat against Oswald.

“We at once notified the chief of police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection,” writes the FBI director J Edgar Hoover.