Donald Trump’s election promise, which received great resonance in the United States, has been fulfilled. He declassified documents related to the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 80,000 documents, including those from the American secret services, will become public. The first batch of declassified documents appeared on the website of the US National Archives. She pleased historians, as new facts about the political situation in the country in the 1960s became clear, and upset those who were waiting for sensations. The released documents, at least not directly, do not confirm any of the numerous conspiracy theories of the Kennedy assassination.
There is no crime in American history more firmly embedded in the collective memory of the people of the United States than what happened on November 22, 1963. The Dallas shootings, which ended the life of the 35th President of the United States, gave rise to a whole wave of theories, mass myths and fears of an almost mystical nature. This is partly due to the personality of Kennedy himself. There were too many hopes associated with him during his lifetime. The youngest president, the first Catholic in office, he seemed to embody the coming era of change in the country and the world in the 1960s. Under Kennedy, the course towards ending racial segregation and equalizing the rights of black and white Americans continued (or, as some historians believe, actually began). As a result of the Cuban missile crisis, he was faced with the choice of starting a war with the USSR or not, and chose peace, even at the cost of keeping communist Cuba at America’s side. Kennedy had vague hopes for a way out of the impasse of the Vietnam War, in which the United States was increasingly bogged down. And he even outwardly reminded Americans not of their usual type of politician, but of a character in Hollywood films. Kennedy was perhaps the first American president who consciously and purposefully constructed his image in the media. In this sense, he is the forerunner not of his modern Democratic party members, but of Trump.
And then there are the circumstances of the crime itself. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a man with a fantastic biography that begs for conspiracy theories and was probably only possible during the Cold War. She served in the American Marines, emigrated to the USSR after being discharged from service (in Minsk, he is the fate of people! – worked at the same factory with the future first leader of independent Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich), returned to the United States, contacts with far-left and far-right organizations, Cuban anti-communist immigrants who did not abandon plans to invade Cuba, CIA and KGB officers. To top it all off, he was killed shortly after his arrest by another mysterious figure, Jack Ruby, who later died of cancer. It is not surprising to distrust the investigation of the commission of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, to its detailed report and completely devoid of secrecy conclusion: the president was killed by an unstable man of those who from time to time open wanton gunfire on the streets of American cities, who, in turn, was killed by the same psycho, obsessed with the desire to become famous.
Whose only trace in the Kennedy assassination was not searched! The CIA, the KGB, Cuba, the military-industrial complex, the mafia, aliens – the list of versions is extensive. Trump, he said, became interested in the Kennedy assassination after watching the 1991 film JFK directed by Oliver Stone. This is a great film work, which, unfortunately, presents a completely delusional version of this crime that cannot be confirmed by any facts. Which is not surprising: the film was largely based on the book by James Farrell Mars, a ufologist and conspiracy theorist. It was probably then that Trump decided to release all the information about the Kennedy case in order to remove or, conversely, confirm the guilt of the American special services in this murder.
The declassified files largely relate to the activities of the CIA. Among them there is, for example, the full text of the memorandum of Kennedy’s assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr., sent to the president in the summer of 1961, which has long been of interest to historians. It sharply criticized the CIA for its actions in Cuba. The document confirms what has long been known.: Kennedy and his entourage often had difficult relationships with American intelligence agencies. But there is no evidence that they were behind his murder.
Our country is also mentioned in the declassified document. In particular, information about the CIA’s surveillance of KGB officer Valery Kostikov, who worked undercover at the USSR Embassy in Mexico, is interesting. Oswald came there two months before Kennedy’s assassination. According to the CIA report, he was going to “get a visa allowing him to return to the USSR.” Kostikov, being an employee of the consulate, processed his request. “We have no information that indicates that the two men communicated for a purpose other than discussing Oswald’s visa request,” the CIA wrote. At the same time, they characterize Kostikov himself “as the most effective and dangerous of the intelligence officers in Mexico,” who is “described as a man without morals, education and manners.”
The book by Oleg Nechiporenko, a former KGB officer who served undercover at the USSR Embassy in Mexico City and personally communicated with Oswald there, contains Kostikov’s account of his meeting with the future Kennedy assassin. “Oswald was very excited, and at the mention of the FBI, he suddenly became hysterical, began to cry and began to wail through his tears: “I’m afraid… they’ll kill me… let me go.” Repeating over and over again that he was being followed and even here in Mexico, he was being watched, he reached into the left side of his jacket with his right hand, pulled out a revolver and said: “Here, I carry a gun to defend myself,” he put it on the table where we were sitting opposite each other.” The startled KGB officer carefully took the revolver, removed the cartridges from it, gave the unloaded weapon to Oswald and tried to quickly escort the strange visitor out of the consulate.
