The National Archives and Records Administration on Thursday released 13,173 previously classified documents collected over time as part of the government’s investigation into former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.
President Biden issued an executive order for the National Archives to make the documents public with the exemption of other sensitive records.
The release of thousands of documents is the second time the government has dumped documents related to JFK’s assassination. The latest release has seen the Archives release 97% of its documents related to the assassination to the public. The entire collection adds up to around five million pages.
The White House said on Thursday that the assassination of President Kennedy continued to resonate in the memories of many Americans alive that day and in American history. The memo noted that the need for the government to protect the documents about the assassination had weakened as time passed.
The White House said Biden’s administration was committed to maximizing transparency by releasing all information in the records unless the “strongest possible reason counsel otherwise.”
President Biden said that he had directed all agencies to review the 16,000 documents previously released in redacted form comprehensively, and they had determined that over 70% of them could now be released in full.
What does the other 30% contain?
He added that he gave the agencies until May 2023 to review the remaining records and release the private documents they deem unnecessary to keep hiding by June 30, 2023.
President Kennedy was shot dead on November 22, 1963, while riding his motorcade through Dallas, Texas. He was only 46 years old. His assassination prompted many questions from researchers and the public, and many conspiracy theories emerged.
An investigation into the assassination led by Chief Justice Earl Warren determined that the man who shot and killed President Kennedy was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former marine and a communist activist. The investigation also concluded that he acted alone.
For almost 60 years, the conclusion that Oswald acted alone has been widely questioned by historians and academics. Just two days after the assassination, Oswald was shot and killed in the Dallas Police Department basement by Jack Ruby, which further fueled conspiracies that he was not solely responsible for the President’s death and that the CIA was somehow involved.
Although there are reportedly no Earth-shattering revelations in the newly released documents, since most of what is in the documents is already in the public domain, researchers noted that some of the documents discussed the CIA’s interception of Oswald’s communication with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico. The agency and the Mexican President cooperated on the wiretap operation targeting the Soviet Embassy. Another document said they could not locate 28 records in the JFK collection.
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, an NGO with a database of records related to JFK’s assassination, sued the US government in October for failing to abide by the deadline for releasing all documents, which was set for 2017.
In 1992, the government enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act, which required the government to release all JFK documents by October 2017, except if releasing them would cause harm to national security or intelligence sources.
President Trump released some documents during his tenure, but others were withheld due to national security concerns.