Week in Review: A Year to Remember
We marked the first anniversary of the big March 2025 National Archives release of JFK files
One year ago this week, the Trump administration released 77,000 pages of once-secret records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Information that had been concealed for decades was revealed for the first time.
JFK Facts editor Jefferson Morley reported on what is important in the 2025-2026 (so far) document releases, and why they had been withheld for eight years after the presumed release date.
The point is that the JFK documents released last year should have been released, by U.S. law, in October 2017. Presidents Trump and Biden, and the National Archives, ignored the Final Determination Notices. They flouted the explicit provisions of legislation that were approved unanimously by the House of Representatives and by the Senate, a law that was signed by a Republican president and implemented by his Democratic successor. There could be no clearer demonstration of the will of the people in enacted law.
What was the government so determined to hide? What was hidden the longest? What’s truly new in the JFK files?
According to Morley, eight revelations stand out. Not all of them are directly from the Trump releases, and not all of them happened in the past year. But the Trump executive order added context and corroboration to revelations from the past decade, while also prompting other new disclosures.
Read about them here.
Cuba’s Future and JFK Secrets: In English and en español
On March 13, the Cuban government acknowledged for the first time that negotiations are underway with the U.S. According to two USA Today sources “familiar with the administration plans,” the discussions have considered “a relaxation on Americans’ ability to travel to Havana” and “an off-ramp for President Miguel Díaz-Canel,” allowing the Castro family to remain on the island, and “deals on ports, energy and tourism.”
A possible transition in Havana matters directly to the Kennedy assassination story. In the Cold War nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, Cuba became the geopolitical theater of American politics in which JFK’s assassination took place.
If the Cuban government collapses or transitions to a more friendly regime, the change could unlock the archives of the Cuban foreign ministry, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (MINREX), which are known to contain witness reports, intelligence analyses, and other documents that have remained inaccessible for more than six decades.
Morley and analyst-professor Fernand Amandi reported (in English and Spanish) on Cuba’s secret JFK documents, which will certainly shed light on one of the worst moments in U.S.-Cuban relations — the death of a peace-seeking president and the attempts to implicate Cuba in the crime.
That’s what makes the JFK story relevant to what one hopes is the coming reconciliation of the two countries. However, after recent comments from President Trump about “taking Cuba,” the nation’s deputy foreign minister told NBC’s “Meet the Press”:
I don’t know what they’re insisting among themselves, but I can tell you in conversations with the United States and in dialogue with the United States, the nature of the Cuban government, the structure of the Cuban government, and the members of the Cuban government are not part of the negotiation. That is something that no sovereign country negotiates.
Reconciliation may be achieved through negotiation, but threats won’t help.
Whoops!
On Monday, President Trump casually blew up a U.S. policy and created a legal problem for the U.S. government as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids party nations from aiding nations with undeclared nuclear weapons.
At a press conference at the White House, when asked about Israel’s possible contemplation of the use of a nuclear weapon, Trump answered:
Israel wouldn’t do that. Israel would never use — do that.
JFK Facts’ Chad Nagle wrote:
On the verge of saying, “Israel would never use its nuclear weapons,” Trump caught himself. But he didn’t say, “Israel couldn’t do that,” which would have been the natural response concerning nuclear weapons use if in fact Israel did not possess them.
U.S. officials and the U.S. government are required, by law, to be opaque on the question of Israel’s arsenal.
Trump’s comment Monday was not the first time he effectively trashed the policy of opacity. The declassification of JFK files last year also revealed the U.S. government’s long-censored knowledge of Israeli deceptions to conceal its nuclear ambitions.
Nagle’s report on Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear weapons is here.
Fact Check on New YouTube Video
Morley fact-checked YouTube commentator Ted Yacucci’s latest video identifying William K. Harvey and E. Howard Hunt as the organizers of the Dealey Plaza ambush, writing:
I would say that might be true, but it is not proven.
While lauding Yacucci’s presentations as “forceful and Informative,” Morley cautioned that more care with details would make the videos stronger.
Additional JFK Facts fact-checks are here and here.
Tweet of the Week
Chase Gallagher paid tribute to the memorable interview of attorney and Warren Report skeptic Mark Lane on the “Firing Line” show of conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. in 1966, the year Lane published his seminal Warren Commission critique, “Rush to Judgment.” We think it’s worth recognizing too.
Watch at the link: https: //x.com/chaseg1698/status/2033312252812468243
Lane smoked Buckley in that debate.