And what they say about Lee Harvey Oswald.
Nearly 1,500 previously classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy have finally been released. Here’s what we know so far about the files.
What new information was released about JFK’s assassination?
On Wednesday, the National Archives declassified 1,491 documents related to the JFK investigation, including memos and reports from the CIA, FBI, State Department, and other federal agencies. You can see them for yourself here.
Buried within the trove is a report that Lee Harvey Oswald, the former U.S. Marine who was arrested for the assassination, had visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico in attempts to obtain a visa before JFK’s death in Dallas. While there, Oswald made contact with a USSR consul connected to the KGB’s “assassination department,” per a CIA document. (This detail had previously been disclosed.)
Why are these JFK documents being published now?
In 1992, Congress mandated that all the classified records be released by 2017 after Oliver Stone’s film JFK revived interest in the assassination. A large portion of the files was made public by that deadline, but former President Trump postponed the release of the rest, saying he was told: “certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.”
In October, President Biden delayed the release again for similar concerns (and partly because of the pandemic). The final set of 10,000 documents is expected to be declassified in December 2022.
What do JFK researchers think of the new documents?
They’re largely underwhelmed, CNN reports. The majority of the nearly 1,500 files released this week appear to be duplicates, and in some cases, the new revelations are merely a couple of words that had been redacted in previous versions.
“The reason it’s so important is not so much that we’re going to find a smoking gun that changes the entire theory of who killed Kennedy,” said University of Virginia professor and JFK scholar Larry Sabato. “The lack of transparency and the fact that getting these documents after 58 years is like pulling a whole mouthful of teeth — it tells you why we have so many conspiracy theories.”
Philip Shenon, another prominent researcher in the field, discussed the records released in a recent Politico op-ed. He noted its role in fueling distrust of the government, pointing to QAnon’s recent obsession with the former president. Last month, hundreds of QAnon followers gathered at the site of JFK’s assassination, believing that John F. Kennedy Jr., who died 20 years ago, would return.
