JFK assassination: National Archives releases previously classified documents

WASHINGTON — The National Archives on Wednesday released nearly 1,500 previously classified records connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

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The documents appeared online after President Joe Biden in October delayed their release to give officials more time to review them, a process slowed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In a memo, the president said the delay was “necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations” and that those concerns outweigh “the public interest in immediate disclosure.”

>> Related: White House delays release of JFK assassination files; cites ‘identifiable harm’

The release left more than 10,000 documents either partially redacted or unreleased in their entirety, CNN reported. Biden in October set a Dec. 15, 2022, deadline for a more “comprehensive release” of documents.

In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act aimed at making public records relevant to Kennedy’s assassination. Polls have shown that many Americans continue to believe Kennedy died Nov. 22, 1963, in a conspiracy that involved more than just Lee Harvey Oswald, the man charged in the former president’s death. A 2013 poll by Gallup found that only 30% of Americans believed Oswald was the lone gunman responsible for killing Kennedy.

>> See the full records released Wednesday

Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television before he could face a jury.

In 2018, President Donald Trump delayed the release of records related to Kennedy’s death until October 2021, citing national security concerns, according to The Washington Post.

In the decades since Kennedy’s assassination, officials have released more than 5 million pages of records related to the shooting.

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