Documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy that were previously classified were released on Tuesday evening after an order by President Donald Trump.
More than 1,100 files of over 31,000 pages can now be found on the website of US National Archives and Records Administration.
The majority of the National Archives' collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have been released earlier.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said a team was working on the files but might take a while to determine their full significance.
“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he told AP.
On Monday, Trump had announced the release while visiting John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.
On its website, the National Archives said that in accordance with the president's directive, the release would encompass “all records previously withheld for classification.”
Researchers estimate that about 3,000 files had not been released, either partially or in whole. The FBI last month had said it discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Many who have studied what has already been released by the government say that nothing significant must be expected from the new documents by the public. However, there is still interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
Trump had passed an order in January directing national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while visiting Dallas. He was shot dead as his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown. Shots were heard from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, Oswald was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a jail transfer.
A year later, The Warren Commission, which was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. However, it did not stop the alternate theories that have made rounds for decades.
Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
The new release include a memo from CIA's St. Petersburg station from November 1991 saying that earlier that month, a CIA official befriended a US professor who told the official about a friend who worked for the KGB.
The memo said 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 says 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.” It further mentions that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the Soviet Union.
The federal government, in the early 1990s had mandated, all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
In 2017, when Trump took office for the first time, he said he would release all the remaining records but held some back because of national security reasons. Files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration but some remained withheld.
“There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,” Sabato 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.”
Previously, documents have revealed details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.
(With AP inputs)
More than 1,100 files of over 31,000 pages can now be found on the website of US National Archives and Records Administration.
The majority of the National Archives' collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have been released earlier.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said a team was working on the files but might take a while to determine their full significance.
“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he told AP.
On Monday, Trump had announced the release while visiting John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.
On its website, the National Archives said that in accordance with the president's directive, the release would encompass “all records previously withheld for classification.”
Researchers estimate that about 3,000 files had not been released, either partially or in whole. The FBI last month had said it discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Many who have studied what has already been released by the government say that nothing significant must be expected from the new documents by the public. However, there is still interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
Trump had passed an order in January directing national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records.
The Kennedy assassination
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while visiting Dallas. He was shot dead as his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown. Shots were heard from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, Oswald was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a jail transfer.A year later, The Warren Commission, which was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. However, it did not stop the alternate theories that have made rounds for decades.
Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
What do the new files include?
The new release include a memo from CIA's St. Petersburg station from November 1991 saying that earlier that month, a CIA official befriended a US professor who told the official about a friend who worked for the KGB. The memo said 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 says 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.” It further mentions that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the Soviet Union.
The federal government, in the early 1990s had mandated, all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
In 2017, when Trump took office for the first time, he said he would release all the remaining records but held some back because of national security reasons. Files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration but some remained withheld.
“There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,” Sabato 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.”
Previously, documents have revealed details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.
(With AP inputs)
