Historian reveals the burning question he’d ask JFK’s killer amid release of thousands of classified documents

Thousands of pages of previously classified documents on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy have been released, but a burning question still remains unanswered.

For one JFK expert, there is a burning question that no amount of declassified documents will ever be able to answer – would Lee Harvey Oswald still have committed the crime that changed the world if he’d been able to salvage his marriage the night before?

Hours before settling himself by a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository from where he would fire the fatal shot that killed the 35th President of the United States, 24-year-old Oswald paid a visit to his estranged wife Marina.

Inside the little white Texas ranch house, Oswald promised to buy the mother of his two children a washing machine if she would stay with him.

While there, he also collected the rifle he had hidden in the garage and that he would ultimately use to assassinate John F Kennedy the following day.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th US President at the time he was shot. Picture: AP Photo/William J. Smith

Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody shortly after being arrested for assassinating President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Picture: AP Photo/File

This week’s release of tens of thousands of documents relating to JFK’s murder sparked a feeding frenzy among historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists alike, all hoping to find new information about what really happened that November day in Dallas.

Anyone looking for a smoking gun to disprove the official investigation’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone was left disappointed.

But what the documents have uncovered is a trove of information about the inner workings of intelligence services at the height of the Cold War, and raised questions about whether the President’s assassination could have been prevented if the CIA and FBI had better cooperated.

Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist and author of the Pulitzer-nominated book Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, has already pored over more than 20,000 of the 80,000 pages released by President Donald Trump in fulfilment of his election campaign promise.

President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as he tours the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Monday, March 17. Picture: AP

“There’s nothing that jumps out at you and you say ‘oh my god this changes the way I look at the assassination’,” he said.

“But there are a lot of interesting little titbits that come out about the Cold War and the CIA.

“The real question that keeps lingering in the back of my mind is why did they keep these secret for 62 years because keeping them sealed has fed so much public suspicion…”.

Mr Posner said the unnecessary classification of some of the documents gave the impression the government was keeping a “tremendous diabolical secret” when in fact much it was mundane operational information like staffing numbers.

For example, historians had long wondered what was written on a page redacted from a 1961 memo from one of Mr Kennedy’s brightest aides Arthur Schlesinger to the President about the CIA.

The working theory was Mr Schlesinger was warning the President about the CIA and arguing the agency could not be trusted.

But when the unredacted page was finally released this week, it simply discussed overstaffing in the CIA’s Paris Bureau.

“It’s what bureaucrats do but it’s absolutely maddening because they protected themselves at the expense of getting to the truth much earlier,” Mr Posner said.

“I think that one of the reasons the CIA withheld information was to protect their own bureaucratic asses.”

Jackie Kennedy shown on the back seat of the car after her husband is shot in Dallas, Texas.

Mr Posner said the most interesting detail he had uncovered in the new release raised concerns about the extent to which the CIA knew how “unhinged” Oswald was behaving in the weeks before the assassination, including instances in Mexico City when he was under CIA surveillance while trying to reach Cuba.

“The question becomes, which I haven’t seen the answer to yet, why didn’t the CIA then tell the FBI when Oswald came back to America only five weeks before the assassination, why didn’t they say to the FBI you’ve got to make this guy a priority,” he said.

“Was the assassination preventable? Maybe.”

Mr Posner, who initially believed the theory the mafia was involved in JFK’s assassination when he set out to write his book, said he firmly believed Oswald acted alone.

But after decades of investigating the case, his biggest lingering question is whether Oswald would have followed through if his attempts to reconcile with his wife had been successful the night before.

“He has this long discussion with her for over an hour of ‘come back with me, come back with me I’ll buy you a washing machine’, it may not seem like a big thing but they had very little money,” Mr Posner said.

“But she was a very insistent no she refused, and I’ve often wondered – I’d like to find this question out from Oswald – if she had said yes, would he have decided not to go ahead and kill the president of the United States the next day.

“Or was it a fake thing where he was saying please come back with me and if she had said yes he was still going to murder the president.”

Hours before firing the fatal shot, Oswald paid a visit to his estranged wife Marina.

Lee Harvey Oswald's Dallas Police mug shot. Picture: AFP

The document release has drawn the ire of some of Mr Kennedy’s closing living relatives, including his only grandson Jack Schlossberg who said the family was given no warning by the Trump administration.

It has also sparked privacy concerns with the sensitive personal information including social security numbers of living former congressional staff released unredacted.

For six decades, the JFK case has continued to hold the interest of the world and fuelled conspiracy theories that Oswald was part of a wider plot.

Historian and author David J Garrow said much of the American public expected a bigger explanation to such a crucial history event than a “random nutcase” acting alone.

“A significant percentage of Americans do presume that there was some sort of wider conspiracy,” he said.

Newspapers report on Lee Harvey Oswald after he was charged with the assassination of US President John F Kennedy.

But Mr Garrow said both old and new information did not support any other conclusion than Oswald working alone.

Mr Garrow said the fresh documents provided more information about how the CIA ran its Cuban informants at the time, and added context to the strained relationship between the CIA and FBI but there was “virtually nothing new” about JFK’s death.

He said the disorganised rollout which lacked the usual accompanying data to help navigate the information made it difficult to comb through.

“It’s completely impenetrable,” he said.

Experts will continue to comb over the documents for fresh clues but say for many people, the assassination of JFK is a case that will never truly be solved.

Originally published as Historian reveals the burning question he’d ask JFK’s killer amid release of thousands of classified documents