On October 20, President Donald Trump tweeted his intentions to release confidential reports from the National Archives containing the details of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  

  The Warren Commission’s reports are to be released on October 26th due to the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Collection Records Act that kept the files confidential for 25 years until that date. While Trump has the power to prolong this deadline, he has stated his desire to release the information, despite the CIA and the National Security Council lobbying to keep the files private. Some of his advisers support his decision to release the reports, like long-time adviser Roger Stone and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. However, the likelihood of the reports being released is very slim, as the White House has released a statement stating, “The president believes that these documents should be made available in the interests of full transparency unless agencies provide a compelling and clear national security or law enforcement justification otherwise.”

  The report is thousands of pages long and  most believe that they contain no new information. Carissa Knoblauch (11) said, “I doubt that anything new will arise from these papers. It’s been almost 50 years since the assassination; if there was some great, nation-rocking secret we would already have heard about it.”

 According to CNN, a few people believe that the reports contain some shocking details about Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Conspiracy theorists in particular support this claim and believe that the documents contain information regarding the darker details about the assassination and the ensuing investigation, such as Oswald acting with accomplices or that the CIA withheld evidence during their investigation. One particularly popular theory concerns Oswald’s trip to Mexico a few weeks before the assassination. The theory suggests that during this trip, Oswald met with Mexican and Cuban authorities to plan the assassination.

  Cynthia Ge (10) said, “I don’t believe in these conspiracy theories and I don’t think we should ruin our relationship with Mexico by discussing them. It’s a thing of the past, so let’s just leave it there.”

  While it is uncertain whether or not Trump will choose to release the confidential reports, it is unlikely conspiracy theories surrounding the investigation will ever end.