More than 60 years since former US President John F Kennedy was shot dead in 1963, unredacted documents related to the assassination in Dallas, Texas, have been released.Â
Around 2,200 files consisting of more than 63,000 pages were posted on the US National Archives and Records Administration’s website on Tuesday evening.
The release was prompted after President Donald Trump signed an executive order back in January calling for unredacted files in the case to be made public.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Mr Trump said on Monday, claiming that 80,000 pages would be made available to the public – a slight overestimate on the actual amount that was released.
It is the second time the US leader has ordered the release of Kennedy papers, doing so during his first time in office in 2017, where he ended up holding some back because of what he said was potential harm to national security.
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While files continued to be released during Joe Biden’s administration, some remained unseen.
Before Tuesday, researchers had estimated that 3,000 to 3,500 files were still unreleased, either wholly or partially. This is on top of 2,400 newly discovered records by the FBI last month.
Researchers and conspiracy theorists have had an intense interest in the case for years, so here is everything we know so far from the newly released files.
No new blockbuster details
In short, no major new details about the assassination have been found so far.
What has been learnt are some details concerning 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who was believed to have carried out the assassination.
Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
The former Marine from Texas, who defected to the Soviet Union, is believed to have fired multiple shots from the Texas School Book Depository building as a motorcade carrying Mr Kennedy and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy made its way through the crowd-lined street on 22 November 1963.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which was established to investigate the event, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that a singular bullet had struck the former president from behind before exiting from the front of his throat and hitting Texas governor John Connally Jr (this would become known as the ‘magic bullet theory’).
The newly released files contain memos from the CIA that describe how a KGB official had reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald and was “confident” that he was at “no time an agent controlled by the KGB”.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September.
The releases have also contributed to the understanding of the period during the Cold War, researchers said.
One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called ‘Operation Mongoose’ or simply ‘the Cuban Project’ which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorised by Mr Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the regime led by Fidel Castro.
Historians remain optimistic
So far, the files provide no further information to debunk or prove the main JFK assassination conspiracy theories, which include everything from pointing the finger directly at the US government to more than one gunman being involved.
But as historians carefully review every document – a process that is expected to take a serious length of time – they remain cautiously optimistic that more information will crop up.
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“We should prepare to be surprised,” Fredrik Logevall, a historian at Harvard University, told the New York Times, while Jefferson Morely, vice president of charity the Mary Ferrell Foundation, added it was an “encouraging start”.
Historian Alice L George said American’s curiosity about assassinations and questions about government transparency add “to a sense that there must be important evidence hidden away in these files”.
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She said government records were unlikely to resolve questions people still have, but expects more record releases.
“I seriously doubt that any will include great revelations. The Warren Commission report was done well, but it was done when many of the key players were alive. It’s much harder to find the truth when most of the people involved are dead,” she said.
