JFK Assassination: National Archives Releases Previously Classified Documents

DALLAS — On Tuesday evening, previously confidential documents pertaining to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 were made public, following an order issued by President Donald Trump shortly after assuming office.

Over 1,100 files, totaling more than 31,000 pages, were uploaded to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration website. The majority of the National Archives’ collection, which includes over 6 million pages of documents, photographs, films, audio recordings, and artifacts related to the assassination, had been previously disclosed.

Larry J. Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” mentioned that his team has begun reviewing the documents, but it may take some time to fully understand their importance.

“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he stated.

Trump announced the release on Monday while at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, noting that his Administration would release approximately 80,000 pages.

“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump commented.

The National Archives stated on its website that the release, as per the President’s directive, would include “all records previously withheld for classification.”

Researchers estimate that around 3,000 files had not been fully or partially released. Last month, the FBI indicated that they had found about 2,400 new documents connected to the assassination.

Many who have examined the already-released materials suggest that the public should not expect any major revelations from the newly released documents. However, there remains significant interest in the specifics of the assassination and related events.

Trump’s January order instructed the national intelligence director and attorney general to create a plan for releasing the records.

Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas. As his motorcade proceeded through downtown, shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Police apprehended 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself on the sixth floor as a sniper. Two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. However, numerous alternative theories have persisted over the years.

Oswald was a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union before returning to Texas.

The newly released files contain a memo from the CIA’s St. Petersburg station, dated November 1991, stating that a CIA official befriended an American professor who mentioned a friend working for the KGB. The memo reported that the KGB official had reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald and was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”

The memo further stated that the KGB official doubted “that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KGB watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.” The file also indicated that Oswald was a poor shot during target practice in the Soviet Union.

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all documents related to the assassination be compiled in a single collection at the National Archives and Records Administration. These documents were to be made public by 2017, unless the President designated exemptions.

Approximately 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.

Trump, who began his first term in 2017, initially stated he would release all remaining records but later withheld some, citing potential harm to national security. Although document releases continued during President Joe Biden’s Administration, some remained confidential.

Sabato stated that his team has a “long, long list” of sensitive documents that previously had significant redactions they are seeking.

“There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,” he said. “Some of it’s about Cuba, some of it’s about what the CIA did or didn’t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Some previously released documents have provided details about intelligence service operations at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing Oswald’s visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City weeks before the assassination.

—Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kansas.