New Delhi: The U.S. government has finally started releasing its last files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
President Trump ordered the release of more than 2,800 records related to the presidential assassination on Thursday. However, due to requests from executive offices and agencies the President has allowed the temporary withholding of certain information that would harm national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs. The President also ordered agencies to re-review their proposed redactions and only redact information in the rarest of circumstances where its withholding “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” These instructions will allow the National Archives to release as much information as possible by the end of the temporary certification period on April 26, 2018.
Historians and scholars believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who shot and killed Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963. Most Americans believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy.
In a poll conducted by Gallup, a clear majority of Americans (61%) still believe others besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved. Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby two days after the Kennedy assassination and therefore never stood trial, leaving many questions unanswered.
The President has also ordered that all remaining records governed by section 5 of the JFK Act be released, and thus additional records will be released subject to redactions recommended by the executive offices and agencies. NARA (The National Archives and Records Administration) will process these records for release as soon as possible on a rolling basis.
The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages of records. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.
The National Archives previously released 3,810 related records on July 24, 2017, including 441 records previously withheld in their entirety and 3,369 records previously withheld in part.
In addition, the National Archives is also releasing to the public the unclassified electronic records of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), including 52,387 emails and 16,627 files from the ARRB drives.
These records are available for download online.
