Sadiq S BhatWashington, DC — John F Kennedy wasn't just the 35th president of the United States. He was an image — of youth, charm and leadership. His words carried the weight of a new era. His presence lit up a room, and his very existence seemed to embody America's future.
That future came to a crashing halt in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
The shots fired in Dealey Plaza on Elm Street did more than kill a debonair president. They fractured America's confidence in itself. They birthed an era of doubt, of whispered conspiracies, of classified files locked away in government vaults.
Now, six decades later, the final trove of JFK assassination records — 64,000 pages of once-secret documents — has been unsealed following an order by President Donald Trump, many without the redactions.
However, the question remains: Do they finally reveal the full story, or do they only deepen the mystery?
The latest documents offer a window into the climate of fear at the time surrounding US relations with the Soviet Union shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nearly led to a nuclear war, according to Reuters news agency.
Many of the documents reflected the work by investigators to learn more about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's time in the Soviet Union and track his movements in the months leading up to Kennedy's assassination.
The pieces that never quite fit
The official story has always been simple: a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, fired the fatal shots. The Warren Commission sealed that version into history. Case closed.
But buried within the newly declassified pages is a story far more tangled — one where the facts are murky, and the truth is just out of reach.
Oswald and the Russians: A long-classified CIA memo from 1991 suggests the Soviets never trusted Oswald. Moscow thought he was unstable, even doubting his ability to handle a rifle.
Yet intelligence files show that Soviet agents monitored him closely. If he wasn't working for them, why did they care so much? And why did American intelligence dismiss the possibility that he was being used as a pawn in a bigger game?
The Cuban connection: Just weeks before the assassination, Oswald turned up in Mexico City, visiting both the Soviet and Cuban embassies. A newly surfaced memo describes an intercepted phone call where he spoke with a known KGB officer.
The CIA was listening. They were tracking movements, wiretapping embassies. Yet, somehow, Oswald slipped through the cracks.
Shadows of espionage: The documents offer a rare peek into Cold War spycraft—covert wiretaps, surveillance operations, cryptic memos.
The CIA went to great lengths to keep its methods hidden, redacting details for decades. But one question remains: What exactly did they know in those weeks leading up to Kennedy's murder?
TRT Global - The documents released by the National Archives contain PDFs of memos and references to conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of JFK.
Mafia, the FBI and unanswered questions
For years, rumours swirled that the Mafia had played a role in Kennedy's death. The newly released files don't debunk that theory. If anything, they make it more plausible.
FBI reports confirm what many suspected: the mob felt betrayed by the Kennedys. JFK's election victory was closely watched by organised crime figures, only for Robert F Kennedy, as attorney general, to declare war on the underworld.
The files now expose once-redacted names of informants — suggesting that the Mob had motive, means and connections.
And then there's Jack Ruby. The Dallas nightclub owner who shot Oswald before he could talk had deep ties to crime syndicates. Some reports suggest the FBI was warned about Ruby's intentions but failed to act. Even more chilling?
Certain documents hint at Ruby's links to Cuban exile groups, adding another layer of intrigue to an already tangled story.
A vault of secrets
Even with this final document dump, the puzzle remains incomplete. Many pages are still heavily redacted. Some files hint at intelligence failures; others suggest a possible cover-up.
And the sheer volume — 64,000 pages — means it will take several weeks, may be months to fully grasp what they reveal about the assassination that took place six decades ago.
1960s America had an intoxicating mix of rebellion, romance and possibility. It was a decade where JFK's boyish charm and soaring rhetoric made Americans believe in a new frontier, where The Beatles and Woodstock redefined music as a movement, and where civil rights activists marched with unshakable hope.
Against this backdrop Kennedy's death wasn't just an assassination; it was a rupture in history. And memory.
Search for truth goes on
So, do these files bring closure? Not quite. They don't deliver any neatly wrapped conclusion as far as the initial overview by scholars and experts goes.
The documents don't hand over the single, irrefutable answer that conspiracy theorists have sought for decades.
What they do reveal is something just as unsettling: a world of secrecy, espionage and power struggles that shaped the aftermath of JFK's assassination.
They show us how history is written — not always with facts but with omissions, half-truths and narratives carefully constructed by those in power.
