By Alan McGuinness, News Reporter

More than fifty years after Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots towards John F Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas and killed America's 35th president, conspiracy theories about the events of 22 November 1963 have refused to go away.

To this day, a majority of Americans do not believe the official story that Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the US, acted alone.

Now, thousands of secret files on the assassination are due to be released, potentially giving us a fresh insight into an event that shocked the world.

:: How many files are there?

Image: JFK's motorcade speeds away from Dealey Plaza moments after the president was shot

The collection includes more than 3,100 documents, totalling hundreds of thousands of pages that have never been seen by the public. Around 30,000 documents were previously released with redactions.


The files will be posted on the website of the National Archives on Thursday, although a specific time has not been given.

:: Will all of them be released?

Image: The presidential limousine outside Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas

It is not clear at this stage exactly how many will see the light of day.

President Donald Trump has the final say over which documents can be released, and there have been reports he has been lobbied by the likes of the CIA to keep some files private on national security grounds.

On Saturday he pledged that "subject to the receipt of further information" he will allow the "long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened".

In a tweet on Wednesday he said: "The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!"

:: Why release them now?

Image: President Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy arrive in Dallas less than an hour before his assassination

President George HW Bush signed a law in 1992 requiring all documents on the assassination be released within 25 years, unless doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.

The move was driven in part by the furore caused by Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, which claimed there was a vast conspiracy to kill the president.

:: Will there be any bombshell revelations?

Image: The view from the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald shot JFK

The chances are slim, according to the judge who led the independent board that reviewed and released thousands of assassination documents in the 1990s.

Judge John Tunheim said the files that were witheld in full were those that the Assassination Records Review Board deemed "not believed relevant".

But he said it is possible the files will contain information the board did not realise was important two decades ago.

:: So what will the files show?

Image: Oswald was arrested but then shot dead by Jack Ruby while being transferred from jail

Some are believed to be related to Oswald's mysterious six day trip to Mexico City a few weeks before the assassination.

Oswald visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies - which he claimed was to get a visa - but much about his time there remains unknown.

Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: the Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination, said there could be "a lot of new information" about how much the US government knew about Oswald before the assassination.

He said: "We know from previously declassified files that while he's (in Mexico City) he's meeting with Cuban spies and Russian spies and other people who at the height of the Cold War have reason to want to see Kennedy dead or might have.

"He's being closely watched by the CIA. The question is 'What did the CIA know in real time - weeks before the assassination?"

:: Will the conspiracy theories be put to bed?

Image: A common theory is that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza (seen here on the left)

Thousands of books, films and TV shows have been produced over the decades, pointing the finger at the likes of the Soviet Union, Cuba, the Mafia and even JFK's vice president at the time, Lyndon B Johnson.

And experts say the conspiracies will continue to rage, despite the release of these files.

Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed - which determined that Oswald did act alone - said: "Many people think they'll be opened and they'll have the solution to the case that everyone can settle on.

"That's not going to happen. No one's going to abandon their belief in a conspiracy because the release of the files doesn't prove it.

"They'll just say it must have been destroyed or hidden."

Larry Sabato, who wrote The Kennedy Half Century, said if documents are withheld it will only "feed more conspiracy theories".

"Anybody who thinks there's a document in there headed 'Members of the Conspiracy to Kill President Kennedy' is going to be waiting a long time."