The public has waited nearly 26 years for the last classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to be released. But it looks like we’ll have to keep waiting, due to a decision by the Trump administration to withhold some material in the archive for extra review.
On April 26, in compliance with the deadline set by President Trump last October, the National Archives released 19,045 additional documents from the JFK assassination files. Instead of a full reveal, however, some material will still be kept from the public due to “identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns,” according to a White House memo. The president said he was ordering agencies to “re-review each of the redactions over the next three years,” and set a deadline for further release of documents of October 26, 2021.
In October 2017, 2,800 files about the 1963 murder were made public for the first time, bringing to the fore revelations that an alleged Cuban intelligence officer met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, and praised his shooting ability, and that the Soviet spy agency KGB believed then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson may have conspired to assassinate Kennedy.
But despite the 25-year deadline established by the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act, not everything came out. Citing national security concerns, President Trump then elected to halt the release of some of the remaining classified files for an additional six months. Now that deadline has passed, and it’s still unclear how many records (or portions of the records) still remain under wraps, whether they will be ever released in full, and what—if any—new information they may contain.
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Aerial view of Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. Kennedy was in an open-top convertible limousine during a campaign visit. As the president’s car passed the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out.
President Kennedy was struck by bullets in the neck and head at 12:30 p.m. By 1 p.m. he was pronounced dead. Shown is the interior of the Presidential limousine after Kennedy assassination. John F. Kennedy became the fourth U.S. President to be assassinated, following Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.
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A diagram of the president’s head wound from the autopsy is shown, stained with blood. After being struck, Kennedy slumped over onto his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. Texas Governor John B. Connally Jr., who was also in the limo with his wife, was shot once in the chest but recovered from his injuries.
This was the bullet found on the stretcher in Parkland Memorial Hospital. According to the Warren Commission, the bullet was the second shot taken by the gunman that fatally struck Kennedy. Investigators said the bullet then exited Kennedy to hit Connally breaking a rib, shattering his wrist and ending up in his thigh. Critics have sarcastically referred to this as the "magic-bullet theory" and claim that a bullet responsible for this much damage couldn’t possibly be as intact as it was.
Authorities reported that the shots were fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas along Kennedy’s motorcade route. The Warren Commission claimed three shots were fired in the span of 8.6 seconds. However, skeptics have disputed that assessment and presented their own theories. Among the widely circulated theories is that there had been a second shooter on a grassy knoll ahead of the president, on an elevated area to his right.
Authorities also identified finger and palm prints on boxes inside the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination. They were in a secluded area where boxes had been stacked by a window.
Former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department just over an hour after the shooting for possible involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination and the murder of a police officer. Oswald had recently started working at the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald killed Officer J.D. Tippit who questioned him on the street near his Dallas rooming house. Some 30 minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect. This is the gun and bullets used by Oswald to kill the officer while resisting arrest.
A bus transfer was found on Oswald upon his arrest. Oswald allegedly used the transfer ticket to leave the scene of crime after the assassination.
This photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and newspapers in a backyard was collected during the assassination investigation in 1963. On October 26, 2017 the National Archives made more than 2,800 files relating to the investigation public.
Here is a detailed view of the Italian-made rifle, with telescopic mount, allegedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
This photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald distributing "Hands Off Cuba" flyers on the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana was also used in the Kennedy assassination investigation. Oswald traveled to Mexico City in September 1963, just two months before he shot Kennedy. During his visit, Oswald went to the Cuban embassy and met with officials in an attempt to get a visa to travel to Cuba, and then on to the Soviet Union. There has been speculation that this was connected to a larger conspiracy involving Fidel Castro to assassinate Kennedy as revenge for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
These images were submitted as evidence in the Kennedy assassination case. The men were suspected of being possible conspirators after being seen visiting the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the same time Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico.
Revelations since October 2018 about JFK’s assassination
After that initial release in October, the National Archives madefour additional releases in November and December, totaling around 35,000 files published in 2017, many of which were partially or mostly redacted. One of the more intriguing disclosures related toOswald’s attempts to get a Soviet or Cuban visa during his visit to Mexico City (which the CIA thought might mean he was planning ahead for a quick escape after murdering Kennedy).
Meanwhile, dozens of other memosshed light on the controversy surrounding James Angleton, the CIA’s chief of counter-espionage, who did not tell the Warren Commission about the agency’s involvement in an effort to overthrow or kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. His failure to do so has fueled later conspiracy theories concerning a CIA cover-up of Cuban involvement in JFK’s murder.
Another batch of documents revealed the doubts CIA officials had about thetestimony of Yuri Nosenko, a former KGB agent who claimed that the spy agency made no attempt to recruit Oswald while he was in the Soviet Union.
This is a copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s visa application, released by the Cuban government in 1978. (Credit: Charles Tasnadi/AP Photo)
There were also interesting tidbits unrelated to Kennedy, such as anFBI dossier on Martin Luther King Jr., dated just weeks before the 1968 assassination of the civil rights leader. In addition to attempts to link King to various Communist organizations, the document contained accusations concerning King’s private life, both of which were known fixations of Hoover. It’s unclear why the dossier was included in JFK’s assassination file, where it remained secret for 50 years.
In December 2017, the Archivesclaimed that only 86 records remained, in cases “where additional research is required by the National Archives and the other agencies.” Yet according to an estimate by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a non-profit organization that hosts the Web’s largest collection of documents related to JFK’s assassination, some 21,980 documents, totaling more than 368,000 pages, are still being withheld in full or in part.
In anopen letter to U.S. Archivist David Ferreiro sent in March 2018, the foundation’s officers urged the National Archives to release all the JFK files “in their entirety” and require all agencies to “provide and publish in the Federal Register reasons for each postponed document (or portion of a document) before you certify that all JFK records have been released.”
And in another accounting of the still-missing records, released in January 2018 to John Greenewald ofthe Black Vault website through a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Archives itself put the total number at 22,933 documents (or 442,606 pages).
The Warren Commission handing over their voluminous report on the Kennedy assassination to President Johnson. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
What is contained in the remaining JFK assassination files?
No one knows for sure. Many of the still-unreleased or redacted documents are thought to have originated at the CIA’s office in Mexico City, where Oswald traveled in September 1963, two months before Kennedy’s assassination. Records that were made available in the late 1990sshowed that the CIA and FBI knew about Oswald’s activities in Mexico, including his visits to the Cuban consulate and Soviet embassy and the fact that he had talked openly of killing Kennedy while there. But the agencies didn’t share this information with the Warren Commission, the official investigation into the assassination, prompting accusations of a cover-up.
Among those reportedly urging President Trump to allow the release of the long-secret records in full are the family members of a U.S. diplomat, Charles Thomas, who committed suicide in 1971. As Philip Shenonreported in the Guardian, previously declassified records have shown that Thomas tried repeatedly to open an investigation in order to find out whether the Warren Commission had missed evidence of a conspiracy between Oswald and Cubans loyal to Fidel Castro’s regime. Thomas had uncovered evidence about Oswald’s time in Mexico, including an alleged affair with a Mexican woman, Silvia Duran, who worked at the Cuban consulate.
Shortly after his last attempt, in 1969, Thomas was denied a promotion and forced out of the State Department, leading him to become despondent and, eventually, to take his own life. The department later said that misfiled personnel records had led to the denial of his promotion, but Thomas’ family members believe senior State officials were in fact trying to shut down his attempts to further investigate JFK’s assassination. His youngest daughter, Zelda Thomas-Curti, told Shenon she had written to Trump to urge him to release all of the remaining records in full, as she wanted “my three children to know that their grandfather was a real-life hero.”
But until the JFK files are released in their entirety, Thomas’ family—and the rest of the world— will have to wait.
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