Thousands of documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy were made public on Thursday by the US National Archives, which acted quickly after President Joe Biden signed an executive order authorising the release while also keeping hundreds of other sensitive documents secret for up to another year.
It was not anticipated that the disclosure of 13,173 documents would lead to the discovery of any new shocking information or change the conclusion reached by the commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which was that Soviet-born former Marine and communist activist Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The most recent cache, however, will be helpful for historians studying the circumstances surrounding the assassination.
On November 22, 1963, at the age of 46, Kennedy was shot and killed while travelling through Dallas in his motorcade.
The idea that Kennedy’s death was the result of a sophisticated conspiracy has been covered in thousands of books, articles, TV shows, and movies. Although they continue to hold a significant cultural weight, none have provided concrete evidence that Oswald—who was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days after assassinating Kennedy—worked with anyone else.
Many of the documents that were made public on Thursday belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency, including a number that were concerned with Oswald’s contacts and movements. In other documents, requests from the Warren Commission’s assassination investigation are the main subject.
According to the records, Oswald’s “201 file” was started by the US government in December 1960—nearly three years before Kennedy was killed and following Oswald’s abortive attempt to defect to the Soviet Union in 1959.
According to a document from December 1963, Oswald called the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in October “using his own name” and in “broken Russian,” and the call was “intercepted” by CIA agents there. Documents reveal that Oswald was looking for a visa and planned to pass through Cuba on his way to Russia.
There were early concerns that Ruby, Oswald’s assassin, had a connection to Oswald. However, a newly released September 1964 memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination stated that “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 mandated in 1992 that all remaining sealed files pertaining to the investigation into Kennedy’s death be made available to the public through the National Archives within 25 years, by Oct. 26, 2017, with the exception of those authorised for further withholding by the president.
Then-President Donald Trump released a cache of documents in 2017, but decided to release the remaining documents in stages.
The remaining JFK records were initially scheduled to be made public in October 2021. After a rigorous one-year review, Biden announced that they would instead be released in two batches, one on December 15 of 2021 and the other on December 15 of 2022. He cited delays brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason for the postponement.
After a “intensive one-year review” of all previously unreleased information, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement that with Thursday’s release, 95% of the documents in the agency’s collection of JFK assassination records will have been made completely public. No documents will be redacted or completely withheld after that.
Biden ordered that the National Archives and relevant organizations “shall jointly review the remaining redactions in the records that have not been publicly disclosed” until May 1, 2023, according to a memo that was published on Thursday.” By June 30, 2023, “any information withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not recommend for further delay” will have undergone the necessary review.
