Sixty-one years ago, President John F. Kennedy I had breakfast in Fort Worth and then took a short flight to Dallas Love Field. He had to travel — in a car made from an original 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible – through downtown Dallas to lunch at the Dallas Trade Mart.

His motorcade reached Dealey Plaza and was passing the Texas School Book Depository at 12:30 p.m. when he was shot. He was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital a little over an hour later.

Conspiracy theories still revolve around the JFK assassination, and any new insight into the fateful day of November 22, 1963 in Dallas continues to fascinate.

President-elect Donald Trump promised during his re-election campaign that he would declassify all remaining government documents surrounding the assassination if he returned to power. He made a similar commitment during his first term, but ultimately gave in to calls from the CIA and FBI to withhold certain documents.

In 1992, Congress set a 25-year deadline for the release of remaining documents stemming from Kennedy’s murder in Dallas.

At this stage, only a few thousand millions of government documents Information related to the assassination has not yet been fully disclosed, and those who have studied the documents released so far say that even if the remaining files are declassified, the public should not expect earth-shattering revelations .

“Anyone waiting for compelling evidence that will turn this case on its head will be sorely disappointed,” said Gerald Posner, author of Case closedwhich concludes that the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

For decades, debate has raged not only over whether Oswald acted alone, but also over whether the FBI and CIA could have stopped him.

When Air Force One carried Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy landed in Dallasthey were greeted by clear skies and an enthusiastic crowd. With a re-election campaign looming on the horizon the following year, they traveled to Texas for a political repair trip.

But as the procession finished its parade route through downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Oswald. He was never tried. shot two days later by Jack Rubynightclub owner, in the old Dallas City Hall building, now home to the University of North Texas-Dallas Law School.

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, whose president Lyndon B. Johnson charged with investigating the assassination, concluded that Oswald had acted alone.

Conspiracy theories still swirl, whether online, in books, or along Grassy Knoll. Some dispute that Oswald shot Kennedy from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, now the home of Dealey Plaza Sixth Floor Museum.

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In the early 1990s, the federal government required that all documents related to the assassinations be kept in a single collection within the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of more than 5 million documents was expected to be opened by 2017, unless exempted by the president.

Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had boasted that he would authorize the release of all the remaining documents, but ended up withholding some because of what he called potential harm to the public. national security. And even though the files continued to be published under the administration of President Joe Bidensome still remain invisible.

Documents released in recent years provide details of how intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing Oswald’s visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had already defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.

Some of the new documents don’t shed much light on the dozens of theories about the assassination itself, but they raise more questions about what the government knew, when it knew it and what the assassin had in the lead at the end of 1963.

Mark S. Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington, said what has been published so far has contributed to the understanding of the period, giving “a beautiful picture” of what was happening during the Cold War. and CIA activities.

Posner estimates that there are still about 3,000 to 4,000 documents in the collection that have not yet been fully published. Of these documents, some are still fully redacted while others have only small redactions, such as a person’s social security number.

“If you followed it, as I and others did, you kind of focus on the pages that you think might provide additional information about the story,” Posner said.

There are about 500 documents that have been completely withheld, Posner said, among them Oswald’s and Ruby’s tax returns. These records, the National Archives says on its website, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions this week about his plans once he takes office.

Early on, some thought there must be more to the story than Oswald acting alone, said Stephen Fagin, curator of Dealey Plaza’s sixth-floor museum, which tells the story of the assassination from the building where Oswald was killed. his sniper’s perch.

“People want to make sense of this and find the right solution to the crime,” said Fagin, who said that while questions remain, law enforcement has made “a pretty compelling case” against Oswald.

In 2021, dozens of QAnon believers have descended in Dealey Plaza, “in the hopes that John F. Kennedy Jr. would appear, announcing Donald Trump’s reinstatement as president.”

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said his interest in the assassination dates back to the event itself, when he was a child.

“It seemed so fantastical that a very disturbed individual could end up committing the crime of the century,” Sabato said. “But the more I studied it, the more I realized that it was a very possible hypothesis, maybe even probable in my opinion.”

Associated Press and Dallas Morning News archives contributed to this report.