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KM ANIK
24 UPDATE
KM ANIK
24 UPDATE
27/10/2017
Country Bases "CNN" in USA.
Reported in BANGLADESH
No one will remember in years to come where they were when they heard about the JFK assassination classified document dump of 2017.
In the end, what was supposed to be the final release of government secrets about the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy wasn't quite the blockbuster splash that President Donald Trump had been promising.
In fact, a day of intrigue and behind-the-scenes maneuvering by US intelligence agencies is likely only to feed the notorious conspiracy theories that the release of the historical trove was designed to quell once and for all.
It's 54 years since Kennedy died and a quarter century since Congress decreed Thursday as the day when all classified records related to the assassination should be thrown open to the public.
Trump, with an impresario's flair, had been building it up for days, as though he was promoting one of his Miss Universe pageants rather than a fresh perspective on one of the most traumatic moments in US history.
At the center of his own self-directed drama, Trump, a noted peddler of conspiracy theories and who is prone to secrecy himself, especially over his refusal to release his tax returns, was going to strike a famous blow for transparency and blow the lid off everything the government was still hiding over what happened in Dallas on November 22,1963.
"The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!" Trump had tweeted on Wednesday.
Once the 2,800 documents finally hit the website of the National Archives at just after 7.30 p.m., there were some fascinating historical nuggets surrounding Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, his murderer Jack Ruby and even a tantalizing walk-on part by Marilyn Monroe.
But the bigger story lay in what is still missing, unknown and secret.
The big reveal didn't live up to its billing because spy agency officials successfully pleaded with Trump to hold back 300 or so files, forcing him to set up yet another classified review process -- this one lasting six months.
The drama around the release of the documents was like so much of Trump's nine months in power, involving a big promise that he struggled to fulfill and a rush of last-minute chaos inside the White House.
There was also a glimpse of the tenacious bureaucratic blocking maneuvers favored by big centers of power in Washington -- in this case the CIA and the FBI -- that have made it so difficult for Trump to drain the swamp.
Friday, Trump couldn't commit to full disclosure of every file.
"JFK Files are being carefully released. In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about everything to public!" he tweeted.
Cynics have suggested all along that the spy agencies would intervene to leave at least some of the historical record surrounding the assassination obscured.
They were right. With the clock ticking down to the deadline on Thursday, the spooks jammed the White House with hundreds of last-minute requests for redactions, leaving the President with an impossible choice to either release everything and further alienate the espionage community, or allow himself to be strong-armed by his own spies.
Given that the FBI and the CIA have been able to see this moment coming for 25 years, it's difficult to see the last-minute requests for secrecy as anything but an attempt to perform an end run around the President.
"I think it's shameful," CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said. "This is something that the intelligence agencies have had not years, but decades to deal with."
He added, "This instinctive desire to keep things secret is so engrained, that even relating to events in the early 1960s, the idea that they can't be released at this point is absurd."
Defenders of the intelligence community argued that some of the information at issue could center on US informers and intelligence assets in places like Cuba and Mexico who could still be alive and at risk of reprisals.
It's also possible it could embarrass intelligence services which still have a relationship with the US clandestine community.
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