Philip Shenon, a former Washington and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is the author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, get ready for some bad news.

Trump administration and other government officials say privately that President Donald Trump is almost certain to block the release of information from some of the thousands of classified files related to the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy that are scheduled to be made public in less than a week by the National Archives.


Administration officials would not identify what specific information related to Kennedy’s murder might be kept secret on Trump’s orders, though they acknowledged concern over classified documents held at the Archives that were created decades after the assassination—specifically, in the 1990s.

The officials held out a slim possibility that the always-unpredictable Trump could decide at the last minute to release all the remaining JFK files held at the Archives—tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of pages of long-secret documents—but said it was highly unlikely, especially because of concern that documents from the 1990s might expose relatively recent American intelligence and law-enforcement operations. Some of those documents could be partially released, with some of the information blacked out, they said.

A previously released, bare-bones index of nearly 3,100 never-before-seen assassination-related documents scheduled for release next week shows that the vast majority were created in the 1960s and 1970s, and many, if not most, of them appear likely to be declassified. Only several dozen date from the 1990s, and most of those were created by the CIA; many are letters written at the spy agency to a special federal review board that, at the time, was trying to decide how much of the JFK record from the 1960s could be made public without damaging national security or U.S. foreign policy.

Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, told POLITICO Magazine that the White House was working “to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be released to the public” by next Thursday, Oct. 26—the 25-year deadline set by Congress under a 1992 law signed by President George H.W. Bush that was intended to try to tamp down conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination.

But there has been concern, she said, over classified assassination-related documents stored at the National Archives that were created decades after Kennedy’s murder. “Some of the records within this collection were not created until the 1990s” and they need to be closely reviewed to guarantee there would be no “identifiable harm” to national security if made public, she said. She was not more specific in identifying the documents in question.

A congressional official who has been closely monitoring the issue, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump had been under pressure from the CIA to block the release of some of the assassination documents on national security grounds, possibly to protect CIA tradecraft and the identity of agency informants who might still be alive.

With only days to go before the deadline, “everything is in flux,” the official said. “I guess the president could change his mind at the last minute. But unless there is a dramatic change of heart, there will not be an absolutely full release of this information. I think you’ll see a lot of the files next week. Just not all of them, unfortunately. And a lot of documents that should have been released in full won’t be—there will be deletions.”

The 1992 law, the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, was passed by Congress in response to the furor created by Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-laden hit film “JFK,” which was released the year before. As a result of the law, millions of pages of documents related to the assassination were made public in the 1990s—but not all.

A relatively small fraction—the 3,100 documents that the public has never seen, as well as the full text of more than 30,000 files previously released only in part—have been held back until now. Most of those documents were created inside the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department. Under the law, however, everything must be released, in full, by next Thursday unless Trump decides otherwise.

Until now, Trump, himself no stranger to conspiracy theories, including a seemingly bizarre theory offered during last year’s presidential campaign that connected JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has given no clue in public on his plans for the JFK documents. (Cruz and his father adamantly deny the allegations of a family tie to Oswald.)

Almost 54 years after Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, a White House decision to block the release of any of the documents will outrage historians, other researchers and the nation’s army of conspiracy theorists—who have been waiting for years for the release of the last of the assassination files. A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill has joined together in recent months to call for full disclosure of the JFK files.

In an interview this week, Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican who has led the effort, said he has yet to receive word from the White House on its plans for the documents. But he said he is working with Trump’s friend and adviser Roger Stone, the controversial Republican consultant who had recently become entangled in congressional investigations of possible collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, to pressure the president to agree to a full release.

Stone, author of a book alleging that President Lyndon B. Johnson was the mastermind of JFK’s assassination, has said that he had been told authoritatively that CIA Director Mike Pompeo is urging Trump to block the declassification of some of the agency’s files.

Jones said Stone “tells me he talks to the president regularly—and I think Roger Stone has real influence.” In an interview Thursday with radio talk show host—and ever-outraged conspiracy theorist—Alex Jones, Stone said that he had talked to Trump by phone Wednesday to urge the president to release all of the JFK documents. “He did not tip off his current decision,” Stone said. But Trump was “all ears,” he said, and “I am optimistic the president is going to do the right thing.” Stone said he was hopeful that Trump would decide to declassify the full library of documents “based on his general comments and on his long history of supporting transparency.”

A move to block any of the release would doubtless help keep alive conspiracy theories that have swirled around Kennedy’s murder virtually from the moment those gunshots rang out in Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Opinion polls in recent decades have shown consistently that the American people believe there was a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death, despite government investigations that concluded Oswald acted alone.

“If there is not full disclosure of the documents, I would be very disappointed,” said Judge John R. Tunheim, the federal judge in Minneapolis who led the Assassination Records Review Board, the temporary federal agency created by the 1992 law that was responsible for the initial declassification of assassination documents. “The time for full disclosure has long since passed.”

Tunheim thinks the White House could be referring to letters and other written communications from the CIA to the Review Board in which the spy agency referred to continuing American intelligence operations at the time that might be compromised if documents form the 1960s and 1970s were made public. The previously released index of the 3,100 never-before-seen files identifies dozens created by the CIA in the 1990s with the cryptic subject line referring to the Assassination Records Review Board: “CIA CORRESPONDENCE RE ARRB.”

Tunheim stressed that he has had no contact with the White House or the CIA on the issue, but he suspected those may be the documents that Trump is under pressure to keep secret. “This is just a guess, but maybe those are CIA documents in which the CIA argued that the release of a 1960s document would expose a 1990s intelligence operation,” he said. He said he suspects the CIA might argue that their release—even in 2017—could still do damage by revealing relatively recent CIA spy operations.

While that might be a “logical argument” for the spy agency to make, Tunheim said, he hoped the president would reject any appeals from the CIA and release everything next week. “It seems hard to believe that a 1990s intelligence operation is still something that’s going on today and needs to be protected,” he said.

Reached Thursday night, a CIA spokesman referred a reporter back to a statement from last week in which the spy agency said it “continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously unreleased CIA information.”

The National Archives has said that, once it has final approval from the White House, it will make available the full library of available documents on its website on in a single day sometime between now and next Thursday. That suggests that, whatever Trump’s final decision, JFK historians and conspiracy theorists had better get themselves ready for some serious eye strain in the days to come. They are about to be flooded with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pages of long-secret documents about a turning point in American history. But maybe not all of them.