JFK assassination documents: Edwards will introduce measure to let people read 95% of files, maybe even all of them, at least briefly
US politics: After years of waiting, cajoling and suing, Donald John Trump could become the poster president for non-disclosure. On Monday, he almost guaranteed he would be judged by history as a president who put government transparency in reverse or at least quickly reneged on his pledge to maximize it.
Mr Trump on Monday signed a law mandating that all classified records relating to former President John F Kennedy’s assassination be released in full within six months and all others in a year’s time. However, Mr Trump will be the one to decide whether he lets the American people and the world see the most sensitive chunks of the material related to the 1963 killing. But records Mr Trump wants to continue to keep confidential will be entrenched in the National Archives for at least 25 years under the deferred release program, The Washington Post reported.
After a years-long battle in courts, Mr Trump’s advisers had handed him recommendations about how to handle the trove of JFK new material, the New York Times reported. The administration’s position, according to the Times, is that most of those records should remain hidden or nearly so. Agency lawyers had vocalised concerns the material could expose human-intelligence sources and methods or contain other unwieldy disclosures, according to the Times.
Newly elected US Senator Ted Cruz signed off on the JFK records movement Monday, something the Texas Republican, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had warmly endorsed on April 22 last year. “Every American deserves to see these documents and learn the truth about President Kennedy’s assassination,” Senator Cruz, 45, said in #Texas Today.
Responding to questions from The Texas Tribune, Cruz spokesman Phil Novack said early Tuesday that the senator’s position had not changed since the campaign. Should he become president, Crus said he would follow the letter of the law requiring disclosure and therein is where the issue bears scrutiny. The statute signed on Monday by President Trump was written by Cruz and several other lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader, then-Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev. and Rep. Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, and both houses passed it this spring.
However since Mr Trump may be tempted to delay the for-public consumption release of some material as some current and former intelligence officials may counsel him to do, there are a couple of political avenues to prod or provoke him into unafraid disclosure once The December 15, 2017, deadline is fast approaching. One of the tactics is a bid to tie nearly all funding authorised for the Central Intelligence Agency’s 2018 budget rider to the JFK probe – a gambit Sen Cruz came to champion early last spring, well before most Americans had heard Trump’s name in any campaign context.
Cruz’s fellow Republican Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee since January last year, also is signalling a deal brokered by him between the committee and the White House which would use an appropriations bill to secure accommodation to make sure that a privacy waiver is obtained in connection with information released online involving assassination-related deaths of the president, as well as attempts in the past to assassinate him, according to The Hill.
Regardless, Cruz has lobbied for the matter to be handled outside the complex world of annual, omnibus, continuing resolutions, and the “process” known as the appropriations cycle,
Creekmore‐Abbotts, A (2017, February 24) Cruz Pushes to Unearth Untold JFK Stories. Retrieved from http://www.texastribune.org/2017/02/24/cruz-pushes-unearth-untold-jfk-stories/
Martin, E A, Perlstein, C D and Popp, L (2017, March 23) JFK Assassination Documents: Edwards Will Introduce Measure to Let People Read 95% of Files, Maybe Even All of Them, at Least Briefly. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/us/politics/jfk-assassination-documents-trump.html
Ringuette, R, Once and Future President? How Ted Cruz’s Texas Campaign Still Shapes His 2016 White House Run. Retrieved from https://www.texastribune.org/2016/02/18/ted-cruzs-texas-campaign-still-shapes-2016-white-house-run/
Smith, P (2017, February 21) Ted Cruz vs. Ted Cruz. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/21/ted-cruz-houston-convention-protesters-civil-rights-activists-trump-republicans
Sullivan, T (2017, March 20) Why Cruz can’t make up his mind on Trump. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/20/ted-cruz-trump-president-2020-tx-senate-race
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