On Tuesday evening, the Trump administration disclosed tens of thousands of pages of government documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This significant release comes weeks after President Trump commanded government agencies to make their JFK files public.
The National Archives and Records Administration, the agency accountable for housing the government’s collection of records linked to the assassination, uploaded these documents. According to the Archives, all records previously withheld due to classification have now been released. However, not all of them are currently available online.
Soon after his inauguration in January, President Trump took executive action to establish a process for the declassification and release of any remaining documents related to Kennedy’s assassination. This action also encompassed the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The order directed the director of national intelligence and attorney general to present the president with a strategy for the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
In a subsequent development, the FBI announced last month that it had uncovered approximately 2,400 records related to the assassination during a search resulting from President Trump’s executive action.
President Trump estimated that the new files released contain roughly 80,000 pages. A team of reporters from CBS News is currently sifting through these records to identify what new information the documents contain.
A significant number of these records were predicted to be unredacted versions of documents that have been released in the past but were partially obscured. Researchers had estimated that there were about 3,000 records related to the case that hadn’t been previously released in full. The online release on Tuesday comprised 1,123 documents of varying lengths.
Several investigations into the JFK assassination conducted over the years, with some as recent as the 1990s, had captured classified information related to intelligence gathering methods and friendly foreign governments. However, these were not directly linked to the assassination. Portions of documents, and in some cases, entire records, had remained classified for decades to safeguard sources and methods.
David Barrett, a professor of political science at Villanova University who researches the Kennedy presidency, was examining the documents on Tuesday evening. He told CBS News that non-academics delving into these documents might find it challenging to understand what most of them have to do with the Kennedy or other assassinations. However, for scholars like him, this release is “certainly the most useful release of documents that has occurred because of the redactions being removed.”
Barrett shared that the documents now provide him with more clarity about who or what was being referred to in the past. He cited examples like a memorandum on CIA relations with the Miami newspapers. Details about three CIA officers conducting technical collection of intelligence in Cuba were also new to him.
Before the release, Barrett had stated that he didn’t expect any “earth-shaking information, either with regard to the assassination or more broadly.” However, he added that one could never entirely predict what the documents might reveal.
Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” told the Associated Press that his team is examining the released files in search of a “long, long list” of sensitive documents previously heavily redacted. He believes some of these passages may concern Cuba or “what the CIA did or didn’t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald,” Kennedy’s assassin.
The newly released JFK assassination files have been uploaded to a portal maintained by the National Archives. This portal can be accessed on the Archives’ website. The Archives also maintains the government’s trove of records, known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.
However, not all of the files are currently available online. Some can be accessed “in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats” at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that the records that are only available in person are being digitized and will be uploaded to the Archives in the coming days. Updates on this process will be posted on social media by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the records will also be available on the White House website.
Additional documents remain under court seal for reasons of grand jury secrecy. Other IRS-related documents must be unsealed before release. The Archives and Justice Department are working together to make these available.
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit that compiles historical government records about the JFK assassination and other events, stated that roughly 3,500 documents in the official collection contained redactions before the latest release. Approximately 75% of those records were produced by the CIA. More than 500 other records were withheld from public release altogether. The foundation maintains its own JFK documents repository on its website, which has deeper search functions for exploring the trove of records. The group typically adds new documents shortly after they are released by the Archives.
Mr. Trump campaigned on declassifying and releasing records related to the JFK assassination, partly due to his political alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long called for more transparency about the assassinations that killed his uncle and father.
In 1992, a law was passed by Congress requiring the government to release all of its records about the assassination by October 2017, while giving the president the authority to withhold records for national security reasons. In his first term, Mr. Trump unveiled thousands of documents. However, some of their contents were kept under wraps after lobbying by the CIA and FBI. Other records were withheld altogether.
During the course of 2021 and 2022, President Biden similarly released thousands of records but kept key portions redacted, which frustrated researchers and observers who had been calling for their full release for years.
Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, at the age of 46 while riding in a convertible in Dallas, Texas. Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, was soon arrested for the killing. However, Oswald was also shot and killed in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters two days later.
An investigation led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, but this probe has been widely criticized by academics and historians in the 62 years since the assassination.
Oswald had been on the government’s radar before the assassination. He defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and returned to the U.S. in 1962. As a self-described Marxist, he worked with a pro-Fidel Castro activist group and had contact with Soviet and Cuban consulates in the months leading up to Kennedy’s death.
In October 1963, the CIA intercepted a phone call he made to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, though the full implications of the conversation remain unclear. Some additional documents related to that wiretap operation were released in 2022.
Longtime JFK watchers have hoped that the documents that have been redacted or withheld by the government would reveal more information about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City and what else federal agencies knew about him before the shooting. They continue to eagerly await the release of the remaining documents and the potential insights they could provide.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The Associated Press and Andres Triay contributed to this report.
