This Sept 26, 2013 file photo shows historic front pages from US newspapers on the assassination of President John F Kennedy at the Newseum in Washington, DC. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
WASHINGTON – The US National Archives on Thursday released thousands of documents related to the 1963 assassination of then-President John F Kennedy, acting shortly after President Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing the release that also kept hundreds of other sensitive records secret for up to another year.
The release of 13,173 documents was not expected to include any new bombshells or change the conclusion reached by the commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone. However, the latest cache will be useful for historians focusing on the events around the assassination.
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Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas on Nov 22, 1963, at the age of 46.
With Thursday’s release, 95 percent of the documents in the CIA’s JFK assassination records collection will have been released in their entirety
Thousands of books, articles, TV shows and films have explored the idea that Kennedy’s assassination was the result of an elaborate conspiracy. None have produced conclusive proof that Oswald – who was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after killing Kennedy – worked with anyone else, although they retain a powerful cultural currency.
Many of the documents released on Thursday belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency, including several that focused on Oswald's movements and his contacts. Other documents focus on requests from the Warren Commission investigating the assassination.
The documents show that the US government opened a so-called 201 file on Oswald in December 1960, nearly three years before Kennedy’s murder and after Oswald’s failed defection to the Soviet Union in 1959.
In this Nov 22, 1963 file photo, President John F Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade in Dallas. Riding with him are First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (right), Nellie Connally (second from left), and her husband, Texas Governor John Connally (far left). (JIM ALTGENS / AP)
A December 1963 document described how CIA officials in Mexico City “intercepted a telephone call” Oswald made in October from that city to the Soviet Embassy there “using his own name” and speaking “broken Russian”. Oswald was hoping to travel through Cuba on his way to Russia and was seeking a visa, documents show.
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There were initial concerns that Ruby, Oswald's killer, might have had some connection to Oswald. But a newly released September 1964 memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination said "the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner."
In this Nov 23, 1963 file photo, surrounded by detectives, Lee Harvey Oswald talks to the media as he is led down a corridor of the Dallas police station for another round of questioning in connection with the assassination of President John F Kennedy. (PHOTO / AP)
Congress in 1992 had ordered that all remaining sealed files pertaining to the investigation into Kennedy’s death should be fully opened to the public through the National Archives in 25 years, by Oct 26, 2017, except for those the president authorized for further withholding.
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump released a cache of records, but decided to release the remaining documents on a rolling basis.
In this Aug 14, 1964 file photo, the bipartisan presidential commission to investigate the assassination of President John F Kennedy sits for an official picture, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars office on Capitol Hill, in Washington. From left, are: Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich.; Rep. Hale Boggs, D-La.; Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga.; Chief Justice Earl Warren, chairman of the group; Sen. John Sherman Cooper, R-Ky.; John J. McCloy, a New York banker; Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the commission. (PHOTO / AP)
All of the remaining JFK files were originally supposed to have been released in October 2021. Biden postponed that planned release, citing delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and announced they would be instead disclosed in two batches: one on Dec 15, 2021, and another by Dec 15, 2022, after undergoing an intensive one-year review.
Roses lie on a marker outside the home where President John F Kennedy was born 100 years ago on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2017. (BRIAN SNYDER / REUTERS)
With Thursday’s release, 95 percent of the documents in the CIA’s JFK assassination records collection will have been released in their entirety, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement, and no documents will remain redacted or withheld in full after an "intensive one-year review" of all previously unreleased information.
In a memorandum Thursday, Biden said that until May 1, 2023, the National Archives and relevant agencies “shall jointly review the remaining redactions in the records that had not been publicly disclosed.” After that review, “any information withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not recommend for continued postponement” will be released by June 30, 2023.
