More than 61 years after President John F Kennedy was killed, the final files are being unsealed this week, and Chuck Goudie has more on what they’re revealing.
Investigators have long concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, but new files have been released this week could shed new light on the killing.
While Kennedy was killed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, there were multiple plots being hatched against him in the weeks leading to his death, including one based in Chicago.
Despite the findings of the Warren Commission and previously released documents, questions remain about how Oswald managed the murder plot, and whether anyone else was involved.
Those questions have been fed by the U.S. government's refusal to make the entire case file public, but President Donald Trump is following through on a pledge to completely release the last of the 80,000 pages of documents pertaining to the assassination.
As experts continue to pore over the documents, NBC 5 Investigates asked a prominent JFK researcher at Northwestern University whether he expects there to be any earth-shattering news in the new documents.
“I suppose you never know. But no, I don't expect there to be” said NU history professor Kevin Boyle. “It's a possibility there's something in there, but I'd be really surprised.”
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Boyle says that 99% of the JFK file has already been released to the public, and that the final files were held back to protect sensitive information that may not even be related to the Dallas attack of Nov. 22, 1963.
While the assassination itself will be a focus, mobwatchers in Chicago will be looking for additional information from a different day: November 2, 1963.
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On that date, President Kennedy was to attend the Army-Air Force football game at Chicago's Soldier Field. Before he traveled however, JFK reluctantly canceled his trip to Chicago that day. Previously released Secret Service records say a Cuban exile had provided evidence of a plot to attack the president's motorcade as it departed O'Hare International Airport, and investigators found an arsenal of weapons in a motel room along the route.
That Chicago plot followed the separate arrest of ex-U.S. Marine Thomas Vallee, who was caught with high-powered rifles and ammo in his car trunk. When he was taken into custody, he was en route to a job that would have given him direct aim at JFK's presidential motorcade.
While it's not clear if that conspiracy is mentioned in the voluminous files, the plot's sophistication is enough to warrant questions.
“If it was a conspiracy at all, the two most likely avenues for that run through organized crime, which then gives you that Chicago connection you're mentioning, or through Cuba," Boyle said. “And of course, those two pieces are connected because Cuba had been a major center for organized crime before the Castro revolution. Havana was a major gambling center back in the days when the United States didn't have many major gambling centers.”
Some federal investigators believe there were more than a half-dozen separate plots targeting JFK in 1963, including the one that resulted in his death in Texas on that fateful November day.
“There's always a part of me that will wonder whether there was a conspiracy behind this," stated Boyle. “I think that's just a natural thing to do in the case that is as complex and takes so many odd turns as this one took, particularly Lee Harvey Oswald assassination. Quite frankly....I might be wrong, but I don't expect that the documents are going to answer those questions for me.”
