On November 24, 1963, just two days after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and hours after the killing of his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, then FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, dictated a memo.

It was clear Hoover had doubts that the American public would buy the version of events that said Oswald acted alone and so did his killer, nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby.

“The thing I am concerned about,” Hoover wrote, “is having something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

He was right about that. Almost 54 years on, most Americans still doubt Oswald was the only person involved in the assassination and the just-released JFK files – which include the Hoover memo – are unlikely to relieve their skepticism.

President Donald Trump, something of a conspiracy theorist himself, had built up expectations this week about the release of the files by promising to withhold nothing that had previously remained secret.

But in the end, after representations by the CIA, FBI and other agencies, about 300 files were indeed held back, no doubt fuelling entirely new conspiracies.

The files made public include references to CIA kill plots, suspected sex parties involving Frank Sinatra’s ‘Rat Pack’, even an affair between Sen Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.  (You can read the files here.)

The release of the files comes 53 years and 11 months after the assassination of Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

The 2,891 records released yesterday are intriguing rather than particularly revealing. But they provide plenty of titillating tidbits and insights into the drama charged days that surrounded the assassination and the desperate search for answers that continues today.

Documents so far uncovered by The New Daily and other media outlets include:

• A 1964 memo recounting a meeting where Cuban exiles discuss an appropriate price for killing Fidel Castro. “It was felt that the $150,000.00 to assassinate FIDEL CASTRO plus $5,000 expense money was too high,” the memo says.
• A 1960 FBI memo that revealed an approach had been made to a “high-priced Hollywood call girl” by a Los Angeles private investigator, wanting information about sex parties involving then Senator John Kennedy, his brother-in-law actor Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. The call girl said she was unaware of any.
• The Hoover memo goes on to say that it was “inexcusable” that Dallas police had ignored FBI warnings to tighten security around Oswald and this had allowed Jack Ruby to access and kill him so easily.
• A July 15, 1964 letter from the FBI to then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy advised him that a soon-to-be published book would allege that he was having an affair with actress Marilyn Monroe.
• CIA notes on a May 1964 conversation with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev quote him saying he didn’t believe American security was so “inept” that Kennedy was killed without a conspiracy. The Dallas Police Department had to be an “accessory” to the assassination.
• In the days after the assassination, the US Communist Party feared they’d be attacked by the ultra-right because of links to Oswald.
• An informant told the FBI the Ku Klux Klan had proof that President Johnson had once been a Klan member in Texas. No proof was produced.
• A note dismissing a wild claim that US Chief Justice Earl Warren would be assassinated at Kennedy’s funeral. He wasn’t. In fact, he went on to head the seven-member commission of inquiry that concluded Oswald acted alone.

Journalists, scholars and conspiracy theorists began sifting through the uncensored documents as soon as they were released at 7.30 pm Thursday (US time).

They had been expected much earlier in the day and as time passed there was growing doubt that the October 26 deadline for release – set by President George Bush Senior in 1992 and reinforced by Trump tweets this week – would actually be met.

Indeed, at one point in the afternoon The New Daily rang the National Archives in Washington to learn when the documents might finally be made public. “Sir,” a press officer replied. “We have absolutely no idea.”

The delay was caused by agency demands that some files be withheld in the national interest.

In the end, President Trump begrudgingly agreed to the demands but set a final deadline for the release of all documents – in 180 days, unless a federal agency can make the case against release of any specific document.

“JFK files are being carefully released,” President Trump tweeted Friday morning here. “In the end there will be great transparency. It is my hope to get just about everything to the public!”

During last year’s presidential campaign the President suggested the father of Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, was involved in the Kennedy assassination. There was nothing in the documents to support the wild accusation.

Neither was there anything to support the claims of Trump’s longtime adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. – he wrote a book blaming the killing on President Johnson.