Move FM Global News

WASHINGTON D.C.: In response to President Joe Biden issuing an executive order authorizing the early release of sensitive records, the US National Archives has released thousands of documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas on 22nd November, 1963 at the age of 46.

While the release of 13,173 documents is unlikely to change the conclusion reached by the commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, it could help historians conduct further studies on the assassination.

Many of the documents released this week belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency, including several on Oswald’s movements and contacts, and showed that the US government opened a file on Oswald in December 1960, nearly three years before Kennedy’s murder and after Oswald’s failed defection to the Soviet Union in 1959.

In 2017, former President Donald Trump released some records, but decided to release the remaining documents on a rolling basis.

Citing delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden postponed the release of the remaining JFK files, which were originally planned to have been released in October 2021.

In a memorandum, Biden said that until 1st May, 2023 the National Archives and relevant agencies “shall jointly review the remaining redactions in the records that had not been publicly disclosed.”