President Donald Trump is caught in a push-pull on new details of John F. Kennedy's assassination, jammed between students of the killing who want every scrap of information and intelligence agencies that are said to be urging restraint.
How that plays out should be known on Thursday, when long-secret files are expected to be released.
On one side is an alliance of sleuths and scholars pushing for Trump to honour the 1992 law that requires the release this week of all 3,150 still-secret files on Kennedy's killing on November 22, 1963. For them, Trump has tweeted his intent to "allow the release of the long blocked and classified JFK FILES."
But US intelligence agencies are apparently citing the same law to urge him to keep some files out of public sight on national security grounds. For this group, Trump's tweet offered a caveat that he intends to disclose the materials "subject to the receipt of further information."
Whatever details are released, they're not expected to answer the major - and for many, still-lingering - question of whether anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination, including the government.
The Warren Commission in 1964 reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved. But other interpretations, some more creative than others, have persisted.
In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which directed the National Archives to collect all information related to the assassination and release it within 25 years, barring exceptions designated by the president. The deadline is Thursday.
