Washington — The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released the 12,879 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Thursday, shortly after President Biden issued an executive order authorizing their full disclosure while keeping hundreds of other sensitive records under wraps.
“Pursuant to my direction, agencies have undertaken a comprehensive effort to review the full set of almost 16,000 records that had previously been released in redacted form and determined that more than 70 percent of those records may now be released in full,” Mr. Biden wrote in his order. “This significant disclosure reflects my Administration’s commitment to transparency and will provide the American public with greater insight and understanding of the Government’s investigation into this tragic event in American history.”
Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, at the age of 46. An investigation led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone in shooting Kennedy, but the probe has been widely criticized by academics and historians in the nearly 60 years since the assassination. Oswald was shot and killed in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters two days after Kennedy’s death, further fueling conspiracy theories about whether he was solely responsible.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the files released Thursday, thousands of which were previously released with redactions, contained significant new revelations. Longtime JFK-watchers hoped the trove would shed more light on what the U.S. government knew about Oswald before Kennedy’s assassination, particularly his activities in Mexico City in the weeks before he opened fire in Dallas.
One document detailing the CIA’s interception of Oswald’s communications with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and the reaction by the U.S. Embassy after Kennedy’s death, was released without two prior redactions. A comparison with the previously released version shows the redactions obscured the fact that the wiretap operation targeting the Soviet Embassy was a joint effort with the office of the Mexican president, an arrangement that was “highly secret and not known to Mexican security and law enforcement officials.”
Under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992, the government was required to release all documents related to the assassination by October 2017, unless doing so would harm national security or intelligence sources. Then-President Donald Trump released thousands of documents over the course of his presidency but withheld others on national security grounds.
In October 2021, Mr. Biden released nearly 1,500 more documents while delaying the release of the most sensitive records until Dec. 15, 2022, saying further review was necessary to “protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”
The president wrote in his Thursday order that federal agencies “have identified a limited number of records containing information for continued postponement of public disclosure,” some of which would be concealed by redactions, while others would remain unreleased. Mr. Biden also noted that the acting archivist identified some records that still need to be reviewed.
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit group that maintains an online database of records related to the assassination, sued the Biden administration in October, accusing the government of failing to abide by the 2017 deadline for the release of all documents.
“These failures have resulted in confusion, gaps in the records, over-classification, and outright denial of thousands of assassination-related files, five years after the law’s deadline for full disclosure,” the organization said in a statement at the time, asking a judge to compel the documents’ release or establish a more transparent national-security review process under the guidelines set by the 1992 law.
The Archives said last year that “[a]ny information currently withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not propose for continued postponement” beyond Dec. 15 would be released, which left open the possibility that federal agencies could seek to further delay the unveiling of some of the outstanding records.
The executive order set a new deadline of May 1, 2023, for the Archives and relevant agencies to propose and review redactions beyond June 30, 2023. The agency said at least 4,900 documents have not been released at all and some 2,500 others have been partially withheld under exceptions included in the 1992 law.
