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I picked this topic because honestly nothing else stood out to me while I was researching topic ideas. All the other options were very boring and too government based or my liking ,but this was interesting to me.

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The different perspectives were that people didn't think that they should be released or that all of the files should of been released. I personally think that all of the information should be released because why after all these years only release a select few it makes me think that there is something behind the curtains that the government is hiding. People that I have talked to agree with me in saying why didn't they release all the files.

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A cover up is what is presented in this article, that the delays of the files being released were the CIA trying to cover up what was about to get released. The New Yorker is were I got my quote from for the group discussion and it gave me good background and seems to be a perfectly fine resource

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Twenty-three years ago, I was in Washington's Mayflower Hotel, talking with a man named Frank Ragano, whose memoir of sorts, "Mob Lawyer," contained a sensational claim about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (By sheer chance, no doubt, Richard Helms, the former director of Central Intelligence, was two tables away.) In the book, co-written with the veteran Times reporter Selwyn Raab, Ragano revealed that a client, a Florida Mafia boss, Santo Trafficante, Jr., had admitted being in on the assassination plot. Although attorney-client privilege extends beyond the grave, Ragano ignored that (and whatever claim the Mafia code of silence- omertà-may have had on him) by recounting what he claimed was Trafficante's admission, uttered in Sicilian, four days before his death, in 1987: " Carlos è futtutu. Non duvevamu a Giovanni. Duvevamu ammazzari a Bobby. " ("Carlos fucked up. We shouldn't have killed John. We should have killed Bobby.") "Carlos" was the New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello; Bobby was Robert F. Kennedy, who was his brother's Attorney General. According to Ragano, the motive was a quid pro quo: the mob killed Kennedy as a favor to Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters boss, and a target of Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. In return, the Mob got access to Teamsters' pension fund, then worth about a billion dollars. It was all about the money, Ragano told me as we sat at the Mayflower-"forget everything else." Ragano died, of natural causes, four years after his book came out, and there's no real evidence to substantiate his story.

Many were dismissive, but G. Robert Blakey, a former Justice Department lawyer and the chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, was not entirely so. (As is sometimes the case, things turn up to feed a hungry theory: after Hoffa disappeared-presumably by violent means-in July, 1975, federal investigators discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars had vanished from a Teamster pension fund.) When the committee finished its two-and-a-half-year investigation, in 1979, and concluded that a conspiracy was "likely" behind the murders of Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Blakey (speaking for himself, not for the committee) said that it was a "historical truth" that the mob killed J.F.K. Skepticism, though, is the rational response to almost any theory about the assassination. Fifty-three years after the Warren Commission concluded that the assassin was a lone rifleman, Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine who'd once defected to the Soviet Union, only a third of the nation believes it. It's probably impossible to study the subject without being worn down: by its jumble of possible motives; a cast that included mobsters, anti-Castro Cubans, the stripper Candy Barr, the C.I.A., the K.G.B., Marilyn Monroe, the Pittsburgh coroner who discovered that Kennedy's brain was missing-and, not least, a chain of seemingly meaningless coincidence. (Consider, for instance, that the White Russian George de Mohrenschildt, the closest friend of Oswald and his Russian-born wife, knew Jacqueline Bouvier, the future Mrs. Kennedy, when she was a young girl, or that Richard Nixon had been in Dallas on the day that Kennedy was shot.) It's fitting that the best books on the subject have been novels, the best of which is Don DeLillo's masterpiece "Libra." My former Washington Post colleague Jefferson Morley once said that the assassination was the Rosetta Stone of postwar American history, and he continues to pursue its mysteries.

All this helps to explain the intense interest in what was supposed to be the release, after twenty-five years, of the last heretofore classified, and/or redacted, government documents on the subject, in accordance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, on October 26, 1992. Donald J. Trump, the current U.S. President, said at first that he intended to "lift the veil," but the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. apparently pushed him to continue withholding, and redacting, some documents. Then, over the weekend, he promised to release everything but the names and addresses of living people. Very likely he was emboldened by Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who had called the latest delay "ridiculous," and tweeted, "YeGods u had fifty yrs NOW CIA WANTS FURTHER COVERUP/POTUS STOP." Trump, being Trump, may yet reverse himself, but it's hard to imagine what could justify another delay.

How, then, to explain the passion of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and other agencies to keep suppressing some records? Was there a secret too terrible to be exposed? John Tunheim, a U.S. district judge, who chaired a first review of the files, told Politico, "I just don't think there is anything in these records that require keeping them secret now." Was the American psyche regarded as a flower so fragile that, after the murders of the Kennedy brothers and Dr. King; the lies that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War; the Watergate scandals; and, more recently, possible interference by Russia in our last Presidential election, the nation could not face its own history?

Perhaps the real fragile flowers are agencies determined to hide their documented incompetence: leads that were ignored, witnesses not listened to, murderous plots against foreign leaders concealed for years. In February, 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was leading the official investigation, was asked if the full record would be released, and he replied, "Yes, there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime. I am not referring to anything especially, but there may be some things that would involve security." More than a half century later, it might be argued that secrecy itself shares the blame for fomenting so many conspiracy theories, paranoidal movies like "J.F.K.," and so much suspicion that, according to the Pew Research Center, only nineteen per cent of Americans say that they trust the government to do what's right. (In 1958, when the question was first posed, seventy-three per cent trusted the government.) In a democracy that relies on trust in its institutions, and the consent of the governed, that diminishment of faith is a national tragedy on the level of the murder of a President.

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The J.F.K. Files and the Problem of Trust

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Twenty-three years ago, I was in Washington's Mayflower Hotel, talking with a man named Frank Ragano, whose memoir of sorts, "Mob Lawyer," contained a sensational claim about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (By sheer chance, no doubt, Richard Helms, the former director of Central Intelligence, was two tables away.)

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This is a very good article and really sums up what is briefly happening but does little to inform the reader that not all the files were actually released just some of them were. I have read things for government type classes before so it seem creditable to me and it had what other web sites also had.

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In this file photo, President John F. Kennedy's hand reaches toward his head within seconds of being fatally shot as first lady Jacqueline Kennedy holds his forearm as the motorcade proceeds along Elm Street past the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. | James W. "Ike" Altgens, File/AP Photo

The FBI said Monday it has now authorized the release of all the previously withheld materials in its files about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The bureau said that the files would now be released by the National Archives on a rolling basis in the coming weeks.

Story Continued Below

Last week, President Donald Trump delayed the release of an unspecified number of documents while also allowing the release of dozens of new files on events surrounding the 1963 assassination. The White House said at the time it was doing so at the request of the FBI and CIA while directing federal agencies to re-review remaining files. Officials cited national security concerns.

The FBI said Monday that the remaining documents contain some redactions that relate to individuals who provided information during its investigation of the shooting, and whose lives may be at risk if they're identified.

The bureau said it will remove all redactions, apart from names and addresses of people who may still be living.

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FBI to release all of its JFK assassination files

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The FBI said Monday it has now authorized the release of all the previously withheld materials in its files about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The bureau said that the files would now be released by the National Archives on a rolling basis in the coming weeks.

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This article is exactly what I am thinking on the topic that the release of the new files have brought up not necessary new information but a new way of looking at things. It brings up that Oswald might have been a secret agent. The Washington post is a very credible website that it used a lot in the government side of things.

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Of the 2,800 files related to John F. Kennedy's assassination released last week, one document seemed especially juicy.

It was a previously classified 1975 deposition of former CIA director Richard Helms before the President's Commission on CIA Activities in which Helms was asked about Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine who shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Oswald himself was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby at Dallas police headquarters on live television, fueling decades of conspiracy theories.

The 1975 testimony, taken by the commission's counsel, David Belin, cut off right at the most tantalizing part.

MR. BELIN: Well, now, the final area of my interrogation relates to charges that the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy. During the time of the Warren Commission, you were Deputy Director of Plans, is that correct?

MR. HELMS: I believe so.

MR. BELIN: Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or an age[nt]...

Several news organizations, including The Washington Post, seized on the truncated file as an example of the government's continued secrecy about the assassination.

[Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK Files]

The Sun newspaper in Britain wrote an article breathlessly headlined: COVER-UP? JFK files CUT OUT CIA director's reply to whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a secret agent...so will we ever know the truth?" The Huffington Post reported the cut-off document and speculated that if Oswald had been a CIA agent, "it would stoke even more confusion" because of Oswald's reported meeting with a KGB officer in Mexico City nearly two months before the assassination. The New York Times also found the abruptly finished document fascinating, saying it "may add to the questions" fueling conspiracy theories about the killing.

On Twitter, the suspicious-looking deposition also earned some attention. After the faux account of President Richard M. Nixon tweeted about the Kennedy files, one user replied: "Sir, have you seen the partial deposition of the Richard Helms that mysteriously cuts off?"

Sir, have you seen the partial deposition of Richard Helms that mysteriously cuts off?

- Harry Dixon (@hddixon3) October 28, 2017

Here's the thing, though. The rest of the deposition was released. Just not in this latest batch. The full testimony was declassified in 1994, according to the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which has been monitoring and writing about the Kennedy assassination records for years. So, what did Helms say?

The rest of Belin's question asked Helms whether Oswald was an "agent of the FBI or any other Government agency?" Here is how Helms responds:

MR. HELMS: Mr. Belin, this question, and I think you may recall this, was raised at the time and the Agency was never able to find any evidence whatsoever, and we really searched that it had any contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. As far as the FBI was concerned, my recollection is not all that precise. I believe that Mr. Hoover testified that he had not been an agent of theirs either. He was certainly not an agent of the CIA. He was certainly never used by the CIA. Whether any CIA officer ever talked to him any place or not I don't know but I certainly felt quite comfortable - I believe Mr. [John] McCone [a previous CIA director] was asked to testify before the Commission on this point. I believe he was asked to testify. It was a hot item anyway at the time. And my recollection is that I informed Mr. McCone that we could find no evidence that Oswald had any connection with the CIA.

Belin didn't challenge Helms any further on the matter. Instead, he pivoted and asked whether the CIA had withheld any information from the Warren Commission.

On Saturday, Dale K. Myers, writing for the Mary Ferrell Foundation's blog, expressed his displeasure with the world's news outlets and its reporters/aspiring historians.

"If the , or any other news organization really wanted to know whether the Helms testimony transcript was new or available elsewhere, they could have found out with a few mouse clicks," Huffington Post, or the Sun Myers wrote. "Does anyone know how to use Google over there?"
Read more Retropolis: Zapruder captured JFK's assassination in riveting detail, fueling decades of conspiracy theories Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK files JFK assassination conspiracy theories: The grassy knoll, Umbrella Man, LBJ and Ted Cruz's dad Lee Harvey Oswald's eerie calm the day before he pulled the trigger 'Foul traitor': New JFK assassination records reveal KGB defector's 3-year interrogation JFK's last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the presidential yacht

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Tantalizing mystery of missing JFK assassination file solved - 23 years ago

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Of the 2,800 files related to John F. Kennedy's assassination released last week, one document seemed especially juicy. It was a previously classified 1975 deposition of former CIA director Richard Helms before the President's Commission on CIA Activities in which Helms was asked about Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine who shot Kennedy on Nov.

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The article goes into when Trump first said that he was going to release the files. It also goes into the date that trump was "staring down" and that it was a government law that they couldn't be released until then. CNN is were I usually get most of my news from and I personally trust them so it was a great place to go for this project.

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trump plans to release classified jfk documents - cnnpolitics

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Trump plans to release classified JFK documents

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President Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to allow the release of classified government documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy "subject to the receipt of further information."

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This article is mainly just telling what is happening with this situation and also shows a tweet from Trump about how the files have been long blocked , which is completely true and I am happy they finally got released. CNBC is a very reliable source from a lot of people so I take it as is and trust it also.

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President Trump said Saturday that he will allow more than 3,000 classified files on the JFK assassination to be released next week by the National Archives as ordered by Congress.

The classified files were scheduled to be made public by Oct. 26, barring intervention by the president, under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

"Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened," Trump tweeted.
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Most of the document are believed to to be from the 1960s and 1970s, stemming from the 1963 assassination and aftermath. But several dozens were generated by government agencies in the 1990s in apparent response to the conspiracy theories raised by the controversial Oliver Stone film "JFK."

The National Archives has said that, pending presidential approval, it would all the released documents available on its website in a single day by Oct. 26.

Trump's tweet did allow some wiggle room for last-minute exclusions by noting that his decision was "subject to receipt of further information."

The Washington Post reported earlier Saturday that an unidentified National Security Council official said in an interview that some unnamed federal agencies were asking Trump not to release an unknown number of the files because they involved sources and methods used by the agencies.

Gerald Posner, author of the book Case Closed, which argues that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination, tells CNN the most revealing files to be released involve circumstances around Oswald's trip to Mexico City seven weeks before the shooting in Dallas.

During the visit, Oswald tried to obtain visas from the Cuban consulate and Soviet embassy, according to documents released in 1999.

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Trump will release thousands of classified files on JFK's assassination

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President Trump said Saturday that he will allow more than 3,000 classified files on the JFK assassination to be released next week by the National Archives as ordered by Congress. The classified files were scheduled to be made public by Oct. 26, barring intervention by the president, under the President John F.

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The conversation i had outside o class was with my sister and I believe for her to be a good source to get information from because she is very politically well rounded. I believe this conversation to be slightly bias because she did have some background on this topic but very little so i filled her in on the topic but i'm pretty sure I was bias when I was explaining so all she heard was my side.