Secret JFK files that have fuelled assassination conspiracies for decades will be released TODAY… so here’s what we might discover
The release is expected to quell long-held conspiracy theories that the killing was organised by the Mafia, by Cuba or a cabal of rogue agents
SECRET JFK files that have fuelled assassination conspiracies will finally be released today after more than half a century since US President John F Kennedy was shot dead.
As America prepares for the much-anticipated classified documents, we take a look at what we might discover.
The National Archives is expected to release tens of thousands of files related to the 1963 killing of John F Kennedy - unless Donald Trump stops it.
Government agencies including the CIA have been urging Trump to ban the unveiling of certain parts of the files.
They fear the material — millions of pages contained in 3,000 never-before-seen documents as well as 30,000 that have previously only been partially released — could damage national security interests.
But President Trump on Saturday confirmed that he would allow the documents to be made public.
The release is expected to quell long-held conspiracy theories that the 46-year-old president's killing was organised by the Mafia, by Cuba or a cabal of rogue agents.
The US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 22 in 1963 as he travelled in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza.
Thousands of books, articles, TV shows and films have explored the idea that Kennedy's assassination was the result of an elaborate conspiracy.
Historians believe that secret files released by the US government can shed light on the assassination of President Kennedy.
No one knows for sure who killed JFK but the official version is that the culprit was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Shortly after, Oswald, a 24-year-old self-proclaimed Marxist, was arrested in a nearby cinema after police hunted the killer of one of their fellow officers.
He denied shooting anybody claiming to reporters that he was a "patsy".
Two days after the assassination, Oswald was gunned down by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being escorted through the basement of the Dallas police station.
Some of the documents are said to be related to Oswald's mysterious trip to Russia before the assassination.
Oswald said he was visiting the Cuban and Soviet Union embassies there to get visas, but much about his time there remains unknown.
It is believed Oswald attempted to convince the KGB to grant him Soviet citizenship, but was denied, .
The Warren Commission in 1964 reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved.
But some say this was a cover-up.
Conspiracy theories include a CIA plot, a mafia hit job and a covert operation by the vice president Lyndon Johnson.
Roger Stone, a close Trump ally, advanced the unsubstantiated and widely disdained theory that Lyndon Johnson, who became president upon Kennedy's death, was involved in the killing.
He believes official killer Oswald was just a stooge — and instead the assassination was masterminded by then-Vice President Lyndon B Johnson and the CIA, which feared JFK was too soft on communist Cuba.
He hopes the papers will back him up — a potentially tempting proposition for Trump, who has long made his distrust of the agency well known.
Academics who have studied Kennedy's slaying, said they expected the files to offer no major new details on why the first and only Irish-American Roman Catholic to hold the office was murdered.
Theories behind the killing
Was Kennedy actually killed by the CIA?
According to this theory, the CIA decided to do away with the President because the agency was furious about his “soft” stance on Cuba and communism.
He had allegedly angered the agency by refusing to offer air support for a disastrous CIA-sponsored bid to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1961.
JFK was blamed for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, which angered many anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
The CIA’s director Allen Dulles was fired by Kennedy as a result of the invasion, and some people theorise that all these things played into Kennedy’s death.
And was Mafia involved too?
The idea is that the CIA teamed up with the Mafia for the killing, because both organisations wanted to overthrow Castro.
The Mafia was worried that Castro would shut down its Cuban casinos.
Government documents did later show the CIA worked with the Mafia to try to take down Castro, giving some credibility to the conspiracy.
Or was it JFK's successor?
One extreme theory speculates that JFK’s Vice President, Lyndon B Johnson, feared getting dropped from the Democratic ticket in the upcoming 1964 election so intensely that he plotted to have Kennedy assassinated himself or in cahoots with the CIA.
According to a 1968 memoir by Kennedy’s personal secretary, JFK did indeed tell Johnson that he would be dropped – just three days before Kennedy was killed.
President Trump’s adviser Roger Stone is a firm believer in this theory.
He wrote a book claiming that fingerprints found on a cardboard box in the building where the shots were fired belonged to the Vice President’s former press secretary.
This man, Malcolm Wallace, was a convicted murderer, having shot a love rival on a golf course in 1951.
What about the KGB?
Some theorists believe a band of Soviet officers carried out the Kennedy assassination, directed by Premier Nikita Krushchev, as part of the Cold War.
Was there really only one gunman?
There has always been speculation that there simply was not enough time for a lone Oswald to reload and fire his rifle three times.
But a first shot wounded Kennedy, a second shot wounded Governor of Texas John Connally, who was also in the car, and a third and final shot killed Kennedy.
Some ballistic experts have claimed there must have been a second shooter, firing from a different angle.
Those who believe Oswald was working alone have come up with the so-called “single” or “magic” bullet theory, in which one round bounced in and out between Connally and Kennedy like a pinball.
Kennedy's assassination was the first in a string of politically motivated killings, including those of his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, that stunned America during the turbulent 1960s.
In 1992, President George HW Bush signed a law requiring that all documents related to the JFK assassination be released within 25 years, unless the president says doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.
The push for transparency was driven in part by the uproar in the wake of Oliver Stone's 1991 conspiracy-theory filled film "JFK".
The JFK files will be published online .
