Perspective | Behind Americans’ continued fascination with John F. Kennedy’s assassination

Blurring the lines between fact, fiction and pure speculation, the film also distorts our understanding of the historical record, one that is incredibly well documented. In the wake of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 — federal legislation that was spurred by the compelling but largely unverifiable theories Stone presented in “JFK” — Congress created an independent body called the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Over four years, its members reviewed and then succeeded in prying more than 60,000 documents from federal intelligence agencies, declassifying and making them available to researchers at the National Archives facility in Maryland. Today, the JFK Records Act exceeds 5 million documents of various types.

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