JFK files: Secret files on president’s assassination released

Secret files on the 1963 assassination of former US president John F. Kennedy have been made public. See what they reveal.

A new trove of secret files related to the November 1963 assassination of US president John F. Kennedy has been released, but the White House held back thousands of documents, citing national security concerns.

The Warren Commission, which investigated the shooting of the charismatic 46-year-old president, determined that it was carried out by a former Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

That formal conclusion has done little, however, to quell speculation that a more sinister plot was behind Kennedy’s November 22, 1963 murder in Dallas, Texas, and the painstaking release of the government files has added fuel to various conspiracy theories.

President John F Kennedy in the presidential limousine before his assassination. His wife Jacqueline is next to him and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie sit in front. Picture: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The National Archives said a total of 13,173 documents had been made public on Thursday US time in the latest release, and that 97 per cent of the Kennedy records – which total about five million pages – had now been made public.

US President Joe Biden said in a memorandum that a “limited” number of documents would continue to be held back at the request of unspecified “agencies.”

Previous requests to withhold documents have come from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

John F. Kennedy in 1953.

“Temporary continued postponement of public disclosure of such information is necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations,” President Biden said.

Kennedy scholars have said the documents still held by the archives are unlikely to contain any bombshell revelations or put to rest the rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination of the 35th US president.

Oswald was shot to death two days after killing Kennedy by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, as he was being transferred from the city jail.

KEY REVELATIONS

A significant number of the files related to Oswald, his international travel and contacts in the weeks, months and years ahead of the Kennedy assassination.

Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 but returned to the US in 1962.

The files delve further into Oswald’s trip to Mexico as well as a CIA veteran’s alleged conflict of interest, according to POLITICO.

Oswald traveled to Mexico weeks before Kennedy’s death.

He tried to obtain a visa to defect to Cuba and made contact with Soviet and Cuban spies, including a KGB assassinations specialist.

POLITICO reports the documents suggest the CIA office in Mexico bungled evidence that could have prevented the president’s assassination.

The documents also look into a CIA veteran who hid a potential conflict of interest while serving as the agency’s liaison to a special House committee that looked into Kennedy’s murder in the 1970s.

George Joannides never revealed that he was involved in the Kennedy administration’s efforts to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

One document from 1990 recounts the debriefing of a former KGB officer who said Oswald was recruited by the KGB after defecting, but he was considered “a bit crazy and unpredictable.”

Lee Harvey Oswald, centre, is taken into custody by police after President John F Kennedy’s assassination. Picture: Archive Photos/Getty Images

The officer said the KGB had no further contact with Oswald after he returned to the United States suffering from depression and homesickness, and the KGB “never tasked him to kill President Kennedy”.

Another document, from 1991, cites a different KGB source as saying that Oswald was “at no time an agent controlled by the KGB” although the KGB “watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.”

Hundreds of books and movies such as the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK have fuelled the conspiracy industry, pointing the finger at Cold War rivals the Soviet Union or Cuba, the Mafia and even Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Johnson.

The release of the documents is in compliance with an October 26, 1992 act of Congress which required that the unredacted assassination records held in the National Archives be released in full 25 years later.

Thousands of Kennedy assassination-related documents from the National Archives were also released while Donald Trump was in office, but the former president also held some back on national security grounds.