Thousands of Documents Related to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Declassified

Thousands of edited and uncensored documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, have been released. Donald Trump, the President of the United States, had promised during his election campaign that he would declassify all these documents. Now, less than two months after returning to the White House, he has fulfilled this promise. On the evening of Tuesday, March 18, nearly 2,200 files, comprising over 63,000 pages of documents, were made available to the public on the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The majority of the National Archives documents in this regard, which include over six million pages of text, photos, films, audio, and models related to the assassination of the former U.S. President on November 22, 1963, had previously been released. A day earlier, Trump had promised reporters that the release of the documents was imminent, although he estimated the number to be around 80,000 documents. In the early days of his return to the White House, Trump issued an executive order asking the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to develop a plan for the release of these documents, as well as the remaining federal documents related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. Trump then asked his assistant to deliver the pen he used to sign this order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Senator Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been nominated as Trump's Health Secretary, has always stated that he does not believe the assassination of his uncle was the work of just one person. There is a great eagerness to understand the details of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a topic that has fueled conspiracy theories over the years. On Friday, November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the Democratic President of the United States, was shot and killed while riding in an open limousine with his wife Jacqueline through a crowd in Dallas, Texas. The FBI arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who allegedly targeted the President from the sixth floor of a school building, but just two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, killed Oswald during his transfer from jail. A year after this incident, the Warren Commission, formed by Lyndon Johnson, the next President of the United States, to investigate this assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that no evidence of a conspiracy was found. However, this conclusion did not convince everyone and did not prevent the spread of conspiracy theories in the following decades. In the early 1990s, the federal government ordered that all documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy be collected in a single set and stored at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. It was stipulated that this collection would be opened and made public by 2017, and Presidents were prohibited from making exceptions regarding these documents. Donald Trump, who first assumed the presidency in 2017, promised to authorize the release of 'all' remaining documents; however, he ultimately kept some documents classified, arguing that they 'could harm national security.' Another portion of these documents was released during Joe Biden's presidency, but several remained inaccessible to the public. Researchers estimated that about 3,000 files were still either fully or partially unpublished; however, last month, the FBI announced that it had discovered about 2,400 new documents. This security agency emphasized that it is in the process of transferring these new documents to the National Archives for public release. Some of the documents previously released provide insight into the actions of security agencies around the time of the incident, such as CIA correspondence and notes regarding Oswald's contacts with the embassies of the Soviet Union and Cuba in Mexico City, just weeks before the incident. Lee Harvey Oswald, who also had a history of service in the U.S. Marine Corps, had previously fled to the Soviet Union but later returned to Texas. In one of the CIA's notes, details of Oswald's phone call with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City are mentioned, including that he had requested a visa to travel to the Soviet Union. Oswald also visited the Cuban embassy, apparently to obtain a visa for that country and then wait in Havana for the issuance and receipt of a Soviet visa. He then returned to Texas by car on October 3, about seven weeks before Kennedy's assassination. In another note, one day after John F. Kennedy's assassination, it is stated that based on intercepted phone calls in Mexico City, Oswald had contacted an agent or KGB liaison while at the Soviet embassy in September. The release of these documents, regardless of providing details about the assassination, has greatly aided researchers in understanding the situation during the Cold War. Researchers are now hopeful that with the release of new documents, they will also find answers to some of their other questions.