WASHINGTON: The U.S. National Archives released thousands of documents related to the assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy in 1963 on Thursday, following President Joe Biden's executive order authorizing the release, which also kept hundreds of other sensitive records secret for up to another year.
The release of 13,173 documents was not expected to reveal any new revelations or change the commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone. The most recent cache, on the other hand, will be useful for historians studying the events surrounding the assassination.
On November 22, 1963, at the age of 46, Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas.
Thousands of books, articles, TV shows, and films have been written about the possibility that Kennedy's assassination was the result of a complex conspiracy. None have produced conclusive evidence that Oswald, who was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after killing Kennedy, collaborated with anyone else, despite their cultural currency.
Many of the documents made public on Thursday belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency, including several concerning Oswald's movements and contacts. Other documents focus on requests from the Warren Commission, which is investigating the assassination.
According to the documents, the US government opened a so-called "201 file" on Oswald in December 1960, nearly three years before Kennedy's assassination and following Oswald's failed defection to the Soviet Union in 1959.
According to a December 1963 document, CIA officials in Mexico City "intercepted a telephone call" made by Oswald in October from Mexico City to the Soviet Embassy there "using his own name" and speaking "broken Russian." Documents show that Oswald planned to travel through Cuba on his way to Russia and was looking for a visa.
There were initial concerns that Ruby, Oswald's killer, might have had some connection to Oswald. However, according to a newly released September 1964 memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination, "there is no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any way."
Congress ordered in 1992 that all remaining sealed files pertaining to the investigation into Kennedy's death be fully opened to the public through the National Archives within 25 years, by Oct. 26, 2017, with the exception of those authorized for further withholding by the president.
Then-President Donald Trump released a cache of records in 2017 but decided to release the remaining documents in stages.
Originally, all of the remaining JFK files were supposed to be released in October 2021. Biden postponed the planned release, citing delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and announced that they would instead be released in two batches: one on December 15, 2021, and another on December 15, 2022, following a rigorous one-year review.
A CIA spokesperson said in a statement that with Thursday's release, 95 percent of the documents in the CIA's JFK assassination records collection will have been released in their entirety, and no documents will remain redacted or withheld in full after an "intensive one-year review" of all previously unreleased information.
In a memorandum issued Thursday, Biden stated that the National Archives and relevant agencies "shall jointly review the remaining redactions in the records that have not been publicly disclosed" until May 1, 2023. Following that review, "any information withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not recommend for further delay" will be made public by June 30, 2023.