The FBI is Releasing 2,400 New Documents on the JFK Assassination. That's 14,000 Pages That Were Kept Secret Until Now.

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It's been almost three weeks since Trump signed the highly-anticipated Executive Order to release all the information pertaining to the assassinations of the 1960s, most notably JFK's:

Just by way of background, the JFK records were supposed to be released during Trump's first term due to a law passed by Congress during the Clinton Administration. That statute kicked the can down the road 25 years, requiring whoever was President in 2017 to declassify everything, thereby giving everyone who might be named in those files to do the decent thing and drop dead. 

As it happened, Trump failed to comply with the law, later claiming that then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told him not to. Pompeo apparently cited the same concerns Egon gave to Ray and Venkman about why they shouldn't cross the streams. "It would be … bad." 

Biden then spent his four years in office giving the whole issue a good leaving alone as well. Bringing us to 60-plus years, 10 different presidents, both political parties running the country, and the subsequent dropping-dead of everybody remotely involved in the assassination and the investigation, and not one more answer than we had in November of 1963. 

But hopefully that news blackout has finally ended thanks to Trump's EO:

Source - The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy's assassination that were never provided to a board tasked with reviewing and disclosing the documents, Axios has learned.

• The still-secret records are contained in 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found in a review triggered by President Trump's Jan. 23 executive order demanding the release of all JFK assassination records.

Why it matters: The discovery — 61 years after Kennedy was killed in Dallas — follows decades of government reluctance to release all documents related to the assassination, which fueled a mountain of conspiracy theories.

• The existence of the new documents was disclosed Friday to the White House, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted its plan to disclose the assassination records under Trump's order.

Zoom in: The contents of the newly found records are closely held secrets. The three sources who relayed their existence to Axios said they hadn't seen the documents.

• But the discovery of thousands of records on one of the most scrutinized events in U.S. history is likely to raise questions about the procedures for vetting and releasing information across the entire government.
• "This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously," said Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination and vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation's largest source of online records of Kennedy's killing. He sued the U.S. government for more records.
• "The FBI is finally saying, 'Let's respond to the president's order,' instead of keeping the secrecy going," Morley said.

Just as an aside, Jefferson Morley just had this 30-minute discussion with Tucker Carlson that is very much worth your time if you're interested in a deeper dive on what the release of this information could mean. Now back to our show.

Now a cynical person might question how big a revelation this will actually be. Six decades of coverups by 10 different administrations will do that to anyone who thinks Americans have the right to know exactly how a popular, transformational, duly-elected President of the United States could have his brains turned to pink mist with only one guy held responsible for it. And have that guy get eliminated while in police custody just 48 hours later. And how that "assassin" just happened to be very involved with both the CIA and the FBI without them mentioning that fact and allowing everyone to believe he was just some random asshole who worked at a schoolbook warehouse.

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So sure, you can be forgiven for questioning the validity of any documents coming out all these years later. The idea that the FBI suddenly happened to come across 2,400 records spanning 10,000 pages like they were in the attic behind the box of Christmas lights strains credulity after we've been outright lied to for generations. 

But personally, I'm choosing to approach this news with cautious optimism. I choose to believe that the Powers That Be have finally declared that enough is, in fact, enough, and there's no reason to keep covering this information up. There's no one left to protect. That the American public has lost the capacity to be shocked about what our shadowy government agencies are capable of. Not after we've learned about programs like MK Ultra, domestic wiretapping, overthrowing governments, assassinations, the Iraq War, the plot to blow up a passenger jet to start a war with Cuba, and a thousand others. Hell, we've known forever that we got to the moon thanks to the rocket science of actual Nazis. At this point we can handle a little thing like a coup at the highest level of our government. 

At least that's what I'm hoping they're thinking. Whatever you're political leanings, you have to acknowledge that Trump's Administration feels like they've been sent to Washington to flip over all the tables. And releasing files whose very existence the government has denied for 60 years will do exactly that. Consequences be damned. When you're own President was millimeters away from meeting the same fate as JFK, I imagine you approach this from a much different perspective than past White Houses.

We're very much at a fork in the road on this whole mystery. If we stick to this road, we might get something very close to full disclosure. 

But if this just turns out to be a nothingburger, a useless dump of irrelevant documents timed with the Friday of Super Bowl weekend so someone can claim they've complied with the order while never speaking of it again, than we may never know the truth. That road will just circle back around, lead us back to where we came from, and keep us permanently in the dark about something we all have a fundamental right to know. 

Now we wait while smarter people than us, and experts like Morley, pour through this trove of old files and hope they reveal something. It's long overdue.