GETTY
JFK Files: The monumental documents will be released today by the National Archives
John F Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, was a pivotal moment that forever shaped the course of American history.
Many historians argue that President Kennedy’s death was the mother of all conspiracies, and 50 years later many questions have been left unanswered.
But today US President Donald Trump is expected to give the National Archives in Maryland, the greenlight to release well over 3,000 previously classified documents about the assassination.
Up until today, about 88 per cent of the files from the initial investigation were in the public domain – but a substantial chunk of redacted and classified files were hidden away.
When will the JFK files be released?
The National Archives have not specified a time of release for the files, other than indicating that it will take place on October 26.
Ultimately the decision to release the documents sits with Mr Trump. If any part of the document could in any way be seen to endanger national security, then it is within Mr Trump’s power to withhold them.
Earlier yesterday Mr Trump tweeted: “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!”
Last weekend he also tweeted: “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”
JFK: The Assassination in pictures
Wed, November 23, 2016
John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963.
1 of 18
President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline photographed just moments before Kennedy was assasinated. Nov 22, 1963.
The JFK files are being released on the behest of the John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which stipulated that they will be made public after 25 years.
The files will be made available for download on the official National Archives Website.
What is in the JFK files?
Today will very likely be a field day for conspiracy theorists who were never satisfied with the official record of the assassination.
President Kennedy was assassinated by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine and Soviet Union defector, during a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
But for decades conspiracists argued Oswald did not act alone, or that the shooting was part of a bigger CIA cover up.
GETTY
JFK Files: John F Kennedy was assassinated on Novermber 22, 1963
The 3,810 documents will consist of 441 formerly withheld documents and 3,369 files that have been previously redacted. All files originate form FBI and CIA investigations.
Either this tranche of material will include nuggets of information that fuel the suspicions of the suspicious, or it’ll end up primarily of interest to historians
Andrew Hoberek, who published “The Cambridge Companion to John F Kennedy”, argued in his book that the assassination was the definitive conspiracy theory.
He wrote: “The Kennedy assassination has haunted the American cultural imagination for the last half-century.
“The assassination is now routinely viewed as the mother of all conspiracy theories, the defining event responsible for a widespread and ongoing suspicion that the official version of things is a lie.
“According to an annual opinion poll three-quarters of Americans trusted their government in the early 1960s; by the early 1990s, three quarters of Americans distrusted their government.
“With respect to the assassination, the overwhelming majority of Americans now believe that it was not the work of a lone gunman but was part of a larger conspiracy.
In all likelihood, the documents will offer no major revelation, putting to rest all questions about what really happened in 1963.
The documents to be released on Thursday will likely focus on efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine what contact Oswald had with spies from Cuba and the former Soviet Union on a trip to Mexico City in September 1963, experts said.
Dr Alex Goodall, a senior lecture in international history at UCL, thinks that wild theories will remain regardless of what is revealed.
GETTY
JFK Files: The previously classified records are from the FBI and CIA investigations
He told Express.co.uk: “I think we can be pretty sure that, whatever emerges from these documents, the conspiracy theories will persist.
“Such theories are driven by the tremendous significance of Kennedy’s assassination, and the belief that the truth about it has been deliberately hidden from public eyes.
“Either this tranche of material will include nuggets of information that fuel the suspicions of the suspicious, or it’ll end up primarily of interest to historians.
“If it’s the latter, the conspiracy theorists will argue that the real story is yet to be uncovered.”