On Thursday, President Biden issued an executive order for the National Archives and Records Administration to release 13,173 previously classified documents that have been collected over time as part of the government’s investigation into former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963.
The Executive order excluded the release of highly sensitive records involving national security.
The release of thousands of documents is the second time the government has released documents related to JFK’s assassination. The latest release includes 97% of the Archives’ documents related to the assassination. The entire collection is comprised of around five million pages.
The White House said on Thursday that the assassination of President Kennedy continues to interest the American people and many Americans who were alive that day still remember it.
Biden’s administration is committed to maximizing transparency and will release all information in the records unless the advised otherwise for the “strongest possible reasons.”
President Biden said that he had directed all involved agencies to review the 16,000 documents previously released in redacted form, and they had determined that over 70% of them could now be released in full form without redaction.
What do the other 30% contain?
Biden said he gave the agencies until May 2023 to review the records and release the private documents they approve by June 30, 2023.
President Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963, while riding in his motorcade through Dallas, Texas. He was only 46 years old and was accompanied by his wife Jacqueline in the vehicle. His assassination prompted many questions from researchers and the public, including conspiracy theorists.
An investigation was carried out by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and it was determined that the man who shot and killed President Kennedy was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former marine and a Communist activist. The investigation concluded that he acted alone.
The conclusion that Oswald acted alone has been widely questioned by historians and researchers. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was shot and killed in the Dallas Police Department basement, by Jack Ruby, further fueling conspiracies that Oswald was not solely responsible for Kennedy’s death and that the CIA could be involved.
Although there are supposedly no Earth-shattering revelations in the newly released documents, since most of what is in the documents is already public, researchers noted that some of the documents discussed the CIA’s monitoring of Oswald’s communications with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico. The CIA and the Mexican President cooperated on a wiretap operation targeting the Soviet Embassy. Another document said that 28 records from the JFK collection are missing.
In October, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an NGO with a database of records related to JFK’s assassination, sued the US government for failure to abide by the deadline for releasing all the documents, which was supposed to happen in 2017.
In 1992, the government passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act, which required the government to release all JFK assassination documents by October 2017, except if releasing them would cause harm to national security or Intelligence sources.
President Trump released some of the documents during his term, but others were withheld due to national security concerns.
