Summary and Key Points: The latest release of JFK assassination documents has failed to uncover a “smoking gun” or new proof of conspiracy.
-President Trump’s ordered file dump consists mostly of previously known details, such as CIA espionage in Mexico City, surveillance of Soviet embassies, and U.S. plots against Fidel Castro.
-A 1967 memo resurfaced, describing CIA agent Gary Underhill’s belief in internal CIA involvement, but it remains speculation rather than proof.
-Ultimately, the release highlights the reality that most critical secrets—if they exist—are unlikely to be hidden in government files awaiting discovery, ensuring that the truth remains elusive even 60 years later.
No Smoking Gun: What the New JFK Assassination Files Really Reveal
Whenever there’s about to be a new release of a cache of government files about something controversial, whether it’s the JFK assassination, the Jeffrey Epstein case, UFOs, or something else of longtime interest to conspiracy theorists, there are always certain assumptions that many people have going in: That there’s going to be some smoking-gun piece of evidence, long kept hidden by the government, that’s going to at last surface and prove that the conspiracy theories have been right all along about everything.
However, once the “files” arrive, it never quite ends up that way. Mostly because that’s not really how the government works or how government files work. After all, if government personnel know the truth about something nefarious, they’re not likely to keep it hidden in a file, hoping it surfaces in some future document release.
This appears to be the case with this week’s release of a new cache of previously classified files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which President Donald Trump promised to order when he first got back into office.
JFK Files: A Great Deal of Volume
According to ABC News, the first batch of files released Tuesday night consisted of 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages, while a second batch, later that night, contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages. So there’s a lot there, and it’s taken historians, journalists, and enthusiasts a great deal of time to rummage through all of the available files.
What is being released is not a full report but rather thousands of pages of loose files.
An important thing to note, at first, is that much of what was released is not new and has been released before; as ABC stated, other JFK assassination-related document dumps have taken place in 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2017-2018.
What’s fairly clear from the early going is that the document release has not uncovered anything resembling smoking-gun proof of a conspiracy to kill the 35th president, nor anything else that significantly alters the general understanding of what happened in November of 1963.
What’s in the Files
As noted by ABC, a lot of the things that have drawn attention on social media, from the release of the files, were out there previously.
The biggest news, it would appear, involves what ABC describes as “granular details of mid-20th century espionage that the CIA had fiercely fought to keep secret.” This includes details on wiretaps that the intelligence agency conducted in Mexico City a year before the assassination, where Lee Harvey Oswald is known to have visited.
Also disclosed are efforts by the CIA, in the early 1960s, to surveil Soviet embassies, as well as new information about efforts by the U.S. government to overthrow Fidel Castro, around the same time.
A NewsNation report about the files quoted Ross Coulthart, who is set to host a special on that network this weekend, about the files released so far.
“Frankly, the biggest shock in the files to me so far is why on earth they kept the secret all these years and allowed this notion of conspiracy to fester,” the journalist said.
That Ramparts Article
There is one thing in the file release that has gotten some conspiracy types in a tizzy. It’s a memo from 1967 about Gary Underhill, a CIA agent, leaving Washington quickly, and later showing up “agitated” at the home of friends in New Jersey, telling the friends that he believed a clique within the CIA was responsible. Six months later, Underhill was found dead in his apartment, in what was ruled a suicide.
However, the Underhill memo is not new. It has been part of past document releases, and is based on an article in Ramparts, the left-wing magazine, that was published in 1967. And a report that one CIA agent believed people in the CIA were responsible for the assassination doesn’t count as proof of any kind.
Perhaps more will surface from the release of these documents as experts continue to rummage through it. But so far, not much of significance has been revealed.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
