MSNBC: Trump Tweets He Will Allow Classified JFK Files to Be Opened

RUSH EXCERPT:

O'DONNELL: "Well, there is always a possibility that an agency like the CIA or the FBI could say that something within the documents would reveal some national security interest or sources and methods that they would not want to be revealed. The big counterargument to that is we’re talking about events that happened more than 50 years ago with the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. This came about not as an idea belonging to Donald Trump, but something that was set in motion a long time ago, 25 years ago, when Congress was reacting to public interest in the assassination in part due to the success of a film by Oliver stone called “JFK” that raised a lot of conspiracy theories. Of course there had been earlier iterations where peoondered were others involved. Because of the sensitivity in the first decades after the assassination about official classified records that might be about people alive or current missions within the intelligence community or investigative matters, these records were sealed for a long time. In 1992 Congress said by October 26, 2017, whomever is president will have the authority to decide if the remaining 3,000 or so pages of historical documents can be made public through the national archives. That’s why it falls to Donald Trump. That’s why it’s happening now, with a deadline coming this week. There have been many members of Congress urging the president to get the information out there for the sake of transparency. Historically when we learn something new, there are experts in the area of research of the JFK assassination who do not expect that there will be some big secret revealed. But at the same time having access to new reports and new information that have not been seen in this more than 50 years could be the work for researchers to find out some new information or to give us a fuller picture of what happened. So it’s been intriguing. It has certainly captured the imagination of Americans over the last couple of generations. And now Donald Trump has a role to play by authorizing this release. So it’s possible for national security some things would be held back, but the nature of his tweets suggest that he wants the bulk, if not all of the remaining documents, to be available publicly through the national archives."