WORLAND - Worland High School U.S. history teacher Randy Durr has a passion for the 1960s and President John F. Kennedy. With Kennedy's assassination 54 years in the past, he said it is time for all the documents surrounding the investigation to be released.

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump blocked the release of hundreds of records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, bending to CIA and FBI appeals, while the National Archives came out Thursday night with a hefty cache of others.

According to the Associated Press, Trump said in a memo, "I have no choice," citing "potentially irreversible harm" to national security if he were to allow all records to come out now. He placed those files under a six-month review while letting 2,800 others come out, racing a deadline to honor a law mandating their release.

The documents approved for release and made public late Thursday capture the frantic days after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, during which federal agents madly chased after tips, however thin, juggled rumors and sifted through leads worldwide.

They include cables, notes and reports stamped "Secret" that reveal the suspicions of the era - around Cubans and Communists. They cast a wide net over varied activities of the Kennedy administration, such as its covert efforts to upend Fidel Castro's government in Cuba.

Most of the documents surround Oswald's trip to Mexico City where he attempted to get a visa to Russia from the Cuban Embassy and the Russian Embassy. Oswald eventually went back to Texas.

He said there are about 3,000 documents that were scheduled to be released with President Donald Trump opting to hold out about 200. The documents, he said are basically CIA documents.

CONSPIRACY

"The conspiracy theorists believe that those 200 are the ones that are going to make the difference on four shooters at the knoll or whatever," Durr said.

Durr said one of his friends is David Perry, one of the top researchers in the world on the assassination, began trying to prove conspiracy theories and has since found more evidence there is not a conspiracy.

As for those held back, Durr said, "I think they should release them all. If there is a second gunman on the grassy knoll ... I'd love to know that. I'd love to put this thing to rest. If there's anything that points to other than Lee Harvey Oswald shooting the president I would love to know that and love to reteach that. They should release everything. It was 54 years ago. Even if it is an embarrassment to the CIA, it was 54 years ago."

"I never, ever in my years taught conspiracy. I think that's dangerous for us to teach conspiracy to kids. I think we got to give them the historical facts and then let them decide," Durr said. "I like to tell the kids for 54 years conspiracy theorists have been trying to get non-conspiracy theorists to prove there was not a conspiracy. But in the same 54 years the conspiracy theorists have never been able to come up with concrete evidence that there was."

He added, "Probably the biggest disservice to American history as far as John F. Kennedy, is when Oliver Stone put out the movie "JFK." It was the biggest shame in the world because people watch that movie and think it's true."

He said when the documents were released last week he received text messages from former students asking his thoughts.

He spoke to Perry on Saturday regarding the release of the documents. Durr said, "The reason these 200 other documents haven't been released, according to Dave Perry, is that they are going to make the CIA look incompetent for not letting the FBI know that this guy was on his way back to the United States, because three months later he shoots the president," Durr said.

Whether that proves to be true or not, Durr said he believes the documents that have been withheld are "not the smoking gun of two shooters on the knoll. It's not going to present a plot to kill the president."

Durr said through his own research, in his opinion, he is 100 percent sure that Oswald is the one who shot the president and there was no help.

He added, however, that he believes there were three shots, but they were not in the order subscribed to by the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission said the first shot his Kennedy and Gov. John Connelly, second missed and third hit the president. Connelly has always maintained the first shot hit the president only.

Durr said one year he and three former students went to the rifle range to simulate the assassination. Durr said he has the exact same rifle and at 100 yards all four were able to hit two of three in the target.

"People say he couldn't have made those shots are out of their minds, here's four knuckleheads out there doing it," Durr said.

MOTIVE

Durr said another friend, Clint Hill, a former Secret Service agent, who was on duty in Dallas behind the limousine, said last week that he hopes the documents would reveal a motivation behind Oswald assassinating President Kennedy.

"I would tell you the same thing. There's no question in my mind Oswald shot the president, but I don't know what his motives were, but I really believe he did that to get back to Russia. That's my opinion."

"Oswald was looking for something to go back to Mexico City and say 'hey, look what I did here I want to go back to Russia.'"

His first attempt at doing something was the attempted assassination of a retired right wing general, Edwin Walker.

According to the Warren Commission, "Based on (1) the contents of the note which Oswald left for his wife on April 10, 1963, (2) the photographs found among Oswald's possessions, (3) the testimony of firearms identification experts, and (4) the testimony of Marina Oswald, the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to take the life of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker (Resigned, U.S. Army) on April 10, 1963."

With the failed attempt on Walker, Durr said he believes Oswald then turned his attention to President Kennedy. Durr said in his opinion, Oswald, after shooting the president, was on his way to a bus station before being confronted by Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.

"If he doesn't get stopped by Tippit, it's my opinion that he goes to the bus station, gets on a bus, goes to Brownsville, Texas, jumps the border, goes to the Mexican Embassy and says 'hey what more can I do to prove my worth, I want to go to Russia.'"

"If you don't know the Edwin Walker story, you don't know anything, in my opinion, because if he's successful there, the president's never in the picture, that's my opinion," Durr said.

Durr said one thing he thinks fuels the conspiracy theorists, along with no known motivation, is "no one want to believe that a wretched loser like Lee Harvey Oswald could kill, alone, the president of the United States."

PASSION FOR THE 1960s

Durr said When I was young he would go visit his Catholic grandmother. He said she had two photos in her bedroom, one of Jesus Christ and one of John F. Kennedy. "This was after his assassination, so you can see how he was revered even in death," Durr said.

She also gave Durr his first JFK poster.

Durr was just 5 years old when Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 23, 1963. He doesn't remember the day, but his mother tells the story about him watching television and coming into the kitchen to tell his mother someone had shot the president. Initially he was scolded for saying such a thing, until his mother could tell by Durr's face something was wrong.

He said his mother, then, like many in the country, spent the next four days glued to the TV, watching the coverage of the assassination, Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby, and the burial.

He remembers at age 10 when his father came in and told him that Robert Kennedy had been shot.

Durr said he had some interest in Kennedy and the 60s while in high school, but the problem with most U.S. history classes is that they don't delve much into the lives of the presidents, or much into history after World War II.

He noted that's one reason he has the advanced junior and senior history classes so he can focus on history in more detail from the 1750s to the 1980s.

His interest in the 1960s and Kennedy blossomed while attending Rocky Mountain College when he took the course, "The Topics: the 1960s."

Another influence was Russ Davidson, whom he student taught under in Colstrip, Montana.

"My emphasis or goal was to try and develop a specialty class just on the 1960s as an elective. I did that for several years when I was teaching [in Montana].

1960s RESEARCH

"When you teach you have to research. Every day when I get done with a lecture I re-evaluate myself and see if there was something else I could add. My notes are ever changing," Durr said. He has notes for the past 35 years on moving toward independence to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. And more notes on World War II to music in the 1970s. Just on JFK, Durr has sections on the election, the early years of the presidency, Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy and civil rights, Kennedy and the Texas tour, the assassination and post assassination, interrogation, burial and controversy.

"I have 38 years on this topic. I have the utmost detail, if you're talking specifically about the 1960s. It's just been a passion I have researched and taught for a long, long time," Durr said.