With an April 26 deadline looming, federal agencies must inform the National Archives later this month about their plans to release the historic documents or continue withholding them.
The Archivist is scheduled to make a recommendation by September 26 about the disposition of the records. Some 15, assassination-related documents remain partially or wholly classified, according to the National Archives.
They include contemporaneous reports related to the murder of the 35 th president in Dallas on November 22, , files of CIA officers who knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and interviews conducted by congressional investigators in the s.
The legal timetable was established by an executive memo issued by President Donald Trump on October 26, The act created the Assassination Records Review Board ARRB , which oversaw the declassification of some four million pages of material related to the assassination of JFK and the various investigations into his murder.
The law also allowed government agencies to continue withholding material deemed too sensitive to make public. More than 34, unique documents were released, or re-released with fewer redactions, in seven batches in and But thousands of pages of material remained out of public view.
Martin Luther King, Jr. That could change in , depending on Congress and the White House. In October , 2, files about the murder were made public for the first time, bringing to the fore revelations that an alleged Cuban intelligence officer met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, and praised his shooting ability, and that the Soviet spy agency KGB believed then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson may have conspired to assassinate Kennedy.
Citing national security concerns, President Trump then elected to halt the release of some of the remaining classified files for an additional six months. After that initial release in October, the National Archives made four additional releases in November and December, totaling around 35, files published in , many of which were partially or mostly redacted.
Another batch of documents revealed the doubts CIA officials had about the testimony of Yuri Nosenko, a former KGB agent who claimed that the spy agency made no attempt to recruit Oswald while he was in the Soviet Union. In an open letter to U.
Learn more. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. The releases to date are as follows:. This is due to the fact that the files were scanned in batches. Roughly 35, documents were declassified but many were still partially redacted, meaning the entire document was not released for public view. Then in April , the declassification fell short of promise again.
Some 19, documents were released, but 15, had some information that could be withheld through In a statement ,Trump left the door open for earlier release of complete information. At any time during that review period, and no later than the end of that period, agencies shall disclose information that no longer warrants continued withholding.
There is nothing to prevent an earlier release, but the National Archives have added no new public documents since April The Kennedy assassination documents must be fully declassified by Oct.
That would allow the incoming Biden administration to be the one that boasts it made the JFK files completely open to the public more than 57 years after the fateful day in Dallas on Nov. Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? It would upset the CIA and some other agencies if he did it. McClatchy and the Miami Herald are not alone in wondering if Trump will leave it to his successor to complete the release of documents.
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