JFK Assassination Records – 2022 Additional Documents Release

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is processing previously withheld John F. Kennedy assassination-related records to comply with President Joe Biden’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, requiring disclosure of releasable records by December 15, 2022. The National Archives has posted records online to comply with these requirements.

Accessing the Release Files

The table below displays metadata about all the released documents. You can also DOWNLOAD PDF that has LIVE LINKS to EVERY DOCUMENT RELEASED download the spreadsheet as an Excel file cited https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release2022?page=36

The assassination of John F. Kennedy

For Americans of a certain age, Nov. 22, 1963, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, joined Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, as dates that “live in infamy,” never to be forgotten.

President Kennedy’s death, shot from the Texas schoolbook depository by Marxist sharp-shooter Lee Harvey Oswald during a Dallas motorcade, stunned the nation and the world.

In Greenville, which had voted overwhelmingly for Richard Nixon three years earlier (the state went Democratic), the news brought flags lowered to half-mast across the city, tolling bells from St. Mary’s, and sobbing mourners in offices, schools, and factories.

During the weekend that followed, people picked up special editions of The Greenville News and sat glued to their television sets as the drama continued to unfold. They saw strip club owner Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald on live television. They watched film of Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin being carried into the Rotunda of the Capitol and mourned with thousands of visitors from around the world.

On Monday, when newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson declared a day of national mourning, they watched, many with tears in their eyes, the almost 19th century pageantry of Kennedy’s funeral procession and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery. cited

Background

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot twice while riding in a motorcade on the way to give a speech. His alleged killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested that same day but was shot to death a few days later while in police custody.

The Assassination

Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were in Texas on a fundraising trip. After visiting San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth, the couple traveled to Dallas. Riding in an open car in the presidential motorcade, the Kennedys were accompanied by Texas governor John Connally and his wife. Vice president Lyndon B. Johnson was in a separate car.

As the president’s car passed through Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m., he was shot first in the neck and then in the head by bullets that appeared to be fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Connally was injured by the same bullet that passed through Kennedy’s neck. The motorcade rushed to the hospital, where Kennedy was declared dead at 1 p.m. Vice President Johnson was sworn into office as president at 2:38 p.m. on board Air Force One.

Lee Harvey Oswald

A little over an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by police as the main suspect. In between Kennedy’s assassination and the arrest, Oswald had also allegedly shot and killed Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit.

Oswald, a Marxist and former Marine, proclaimed his innocence, but two days later (November 24), he was shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television as he was being transferred to the county jail.

Committee Investigations

Kennedy’s funeral was held on November 25. Almost immediately after Kennedy’s death, conspiracy theories began circulating. Johnson created the Warren Commission on November 29, 1963, to investigate the shooting. After 10 months, the commission determined that Oswald had acted alone.

In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was created to reevaluate Kennedy’s death (as well as that of Martin Luther King Jr.). In 1979, this committee reported that there was likely more than one shooter. However, afterward, the reliability of the evidence, and thus the committee’s conclusions, were questioned.

Learn more about the Assassination of John F. Kennedy through historical newspapers from our archives. Explore newspaper articles, headlines, images, and other primary sources below. cited 

JFK assassination: Thousands of records of President Kennedy’s killing in 1963 made public

The US National Archives has released more than 13,000 documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

But the White House, citing national security concerns, has blocked the release of thousands more. A batch of archives on the case had already been declassified in December 2021.

According to the National Archives, 97% of the approximately five million pages of the file are now available to the public.

The release of the latest documents was not expected to include any new bombshells or change the official conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone.

However, the latest cache will be useful for historians focusing on the events around the assassination.

Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas on November 22, 1963, at the age of 46.

Thousands of books, articles, TV shows and films have explored the idea that Kennedy’s assassination was the result of an elaborate conspiracy. None have produced conclusive proof that Oswald worked with anyone else.

Many of the released documents belonged to the CIA, including several that focused on Oswald’s movements and his contacts. Other documents focus on requests from the Warren Commission investigating the assassination.

The documents show that the US government opened a file on Oswald in December 1960, nearly three years before Kennedy’s murder and after Oswald’s failed defection to the Soviet Union in 1959.

In Mexico City, they “intercepted” a phone call Oswald made from the Mexican capital to the Soviet Embassy “using his own name” and speaking “broken Russian”. The documents show that Oswald was hoping to travel through Cuba on his way to Russia and was seeking a visa.

There were initial concerns that Jack Ruby — a nightclub owner who fatally shot Oswald two days after the assassination — might have had some connection to Kennedy’s killer. But a memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination in September 1964, newly released, said the CIA had “no indication” that they had ever been “connected in any manner”.

In 1992 the US Congress ordered that all remaining sealed files on the investigation should be made public by October 2017, except for those the president authorised for further withholding.

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump released some, but decided to release the remaining documents on a rolling basis.

All remaining JFK files were originally supposed to have been released in October 2021, but President Biden postponed the move, citing delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.They were then meant to be disclosed in two batches: in December 2021 and another by December 15, 2022, after undergoing an intensive one-year review.

The CIA said that with Thursday’s release, 95% of the documents in its JFK assassination records collection have been released in their entirety. No documents will remain redacted or withheld in full after an “intensive one-year review” of all previously unreleased information, the intelligence agency said.

Biden said a review of still undisclosed documents would continue until 1 May 2023, after which date any withheld information would be released by 30 June — unless agencies recommended continued postponement cited 

 

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JFK assassination: National Archives releases nearly 1,500 confidential documents

Many of the documents relate to Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald

By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi | Fox News

The National Archives and Records Administration on Wednesday released nearly 1,500 confidential documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The government agency released the files via their website. Historians, political scholars and believers in a wide range of theories about Kennedy’s assassination immediately began poring over the documents.

Many of the documents relate to Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Many files also reference tensions between the United States and Cuba, evaluating statements from leader Fidel Castro that allude to the possibility of Kennedy being in danger due to escalating aggression between the two nations.

NARA explained in a brief statement on their site that the institution was “processing previously withheld John F. Kennedy assassination-related records to comply with President Joe Biden’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, requiring disclosure of releasable records by December 15, 2021.”

The records are scanned and available individually as PDF files. The site also offers a text search for readers looking for key subjects or phrases.

“The National Archives has posted records online to comply with these requirements,” the site explains.

Many unanswered questions remain about the Kennedy assassination which took place on Nov. 22, 1963. In the decades since, conspiracy theories and speculation of all kinds have surfaced, adding to the swell of allure surrounding the single event that changed – and continues to mystify – the country.

Fox News legal analyst and host of ‘JFK: The Conspiracy Continues’ Gregg Jarrett joined ‘Fox & Friends’ in August, telling co-host Will Cain that the government is to blame for the skepticism — asserting that most Americans don’t believe the beloved 35th U.S. president was shot and killed by a lone gunman.

“The government, to this day, continues to hide thousands of assassination records,” said Jarrett.

US unseals thousands of classified JFK assassination documents

The documents cover a CIA surveillance operation against Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK’s assassination

By Anders Hagstrom , Adam Sabes | Fox News

The National Archives unsealed thousands of formerly classified documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

President Biden ordered the release of 12,879 documents relating to the attack, including many from the CIA’s personality file on Lee Harvey Oswald that it maintained both before and after JFK’s killing.

Conspiracies surrounding JFK’s killing have piqued the curiosity — and sometimes obsession — of Americans for decades. Nevertheless, White House officials have reportedly indicated that nothing in the documents will support the two most popular conspiracies: That Oswald was not the shooter and that JFK’s killing was a government conspiracy.

The release is the largest since December of last year when the Biden administration released 1,500 documents, most of them related to Oswald; 12,879 documents were released on Thursday. Fox News is reviewing the files.

In ordering the release of the documents, Biden said that some documents are being withheld “to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The president said he directed government agencies to review “the full set of almost 16,000 records that had previously been released in redacted form” and added that they “determined that more than 70 percent of those records may now be released in full.”

“This significant disclosure reflects my Administration’s commitment to transparency and will provide the American public with greater insight and understanding of the Government’s investigation into this tragic event in American history,” Biden said in the order.

Last year’s release was disappointing for many interested in the issue, with Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett stating at the time that the government had much more to release.

“There are some surprising results and information in those documents,” Jarrett said. “But, thousands more are yet to be released.”

“The government, to this day, continues to hide thousands of assassination records,” he added.

Jarrett went on to assert that most Americans do not believe the official story that Oswald operated as a lone gunman in the attack, as was found in the 1964 Warren Commission.

Adding fuel to the fire was Oswald’s own assassination in 1963 at the hands of a Texas nightclub owner.

The chief topic in Thursday’s release is Oswald’s 80-volume “personality file,” a document containing essentially everything the CIA knew about Oswald both before and after the attack, according to Politico.

The documents also offer insight into the CIA’s surveillance operation against Oswald in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.

JFK assassination files:
Gregg Jarrett breaks down public skepticism over document reveal

Fox Nation’s ‘JFK: The Conspiracy Continues’ breaks down the wider story and offers proper context to the conspiracy theories and speculation fueled by the assassination

By Yael Halon | Fox News

The National Archives and Records Administration on Wednesday released nearly 1,500 confidential documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

The tranche of documents comes amid public demands for transparency about the November 22nd, 1963 assassination, which has fueled conspiracy theories and speculation of all kinds in the decades since.

Fox Nation revisited that tragic day in Dallas in a special titled, ‘JFK: The Conspiracy Continues,” which outlined some unanswered questions and public skepticism historians hope to finally clarify in light of Wednesday’s document release, with thousands more yet to be disclosed.

Fox News legal analyst and host of the Fox Nation show Greg Jarrett said in August that the government is to blame for the skepticism — asserting that most Americans don’t believe the beloved 35th U.S. president was shot and killed by a lone gunman.

“There are some surprising results and information in those documents,” Jarrett said. “But, thousands more are yet to be released.” “The government, to this day, continues to hide thousands of assassination records.”

President Biden in October delayed their release until this month, giving federal agencies more time to review the documents and make the necessary redactions.

Many of the newly released documents relate to Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Many files also reference tensions between the United States and Cuba, evaluating statements from leader Fidel Castro that allude to the possibility of Kennedy being in danger due to escalating aggression between the two nations.

“He denied killing the president, was paraded before reporters and told them he was a patsy,” Jarrett said.

Almost immediately after the Warren Commission in 1964 ruled that Oswald had been the lone gunman, conspiracy theories began to circulate over whether he had been the only shooter and if the CIA had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.

“For some Americans,” the Warren Commission was part of the conspiracy, drawn in by Johnson and FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover days after Kennedy was shot,” Jarrett explained.

But before authorities were able to fully question Oswald, the former U.S. Marine was shot and killed on Nov. 24, 1963, by Texas nightclub owner Jack Ruby – adding more fuel to the speculative fire that the U.S. government was hiding what it knew about the assassination.

“The questions were swirling about Lee Harvey Oswald, why he did it, who motivated him to do it, was he alone or was there some shadowy conspiracy involved?” Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera says in the Fox Nation show. “What the hell happened that day in Dallas Texas?”

Now, with the help of award-winning director Oliver Stone, Jarrett’s four-part deep-dive takes on the issue, striving to give the American people the whole story and offer proper context as historians and political scholars analyze the latest trove of documents. Fox News’ Laura Carrione contributed to this report.

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Thousands of JFK assassination files finally released – will bombshells emerge?

Material not expected to rebut Warren commission conclusion that president was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone

Historians and conspiracy theorists have been given an early Christmas present: the release from US National Archives of 13,173 documents relating to the official investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.

From barely legible memos filled with the crabby handwriting of CIA agents, through reports on secret meetings with Russian diplomats, to painstaking detective work on the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald, the trove of documents will keep JFK assassination obsessives busy for months. Few expect bombshells among the pile, however.

The newly declassified materials are unlikely to disturb the conclusion of the 1964 Warren commission charged with getting to the bottom of the outrage. It found that Oswald, a former Marine and communist who defected to the Soviet Union, had killed Kennedy, acting alone, by firing three shots as the 46-year-old Democratic US president rode in an open-top limousine through Dealey Plaza in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

One of the newly released documents, dating from September 1964, underlines that point. At the request of the commission, the CIA had searched its own files for any connection between Oswald and Jack Ruby, the local nightclub owner who shot and killed Oswald on live television in the basement of Dallas police headquarters two days after the Kennedy assassination.

“Examination of Central Intelligence Agency files has produced no information on Jack RUBY or his activities,” the document states. “The Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that RUBY and Lee Harvey OSWALD ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner.”

Thursday’s release of thousands of documents means that 95% of the CIA’s records on the assassination are now available to the public. As a final step there will be an “intensive one-year review” of any remaining closed files before a complete opening of the books by 30 June 2023.

The unveiling of the CIA documents has been delayed for years. In 1992, Congress ordered their full release by October 2017, but the deadline was pushed back by presidential decrees from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Such postponements have allowed conspiracy theories to flourish. Some of the most instantly intriguing material in the newly-released stash concerns the proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation around the assassination. Over the years there have been umpteen lurid suggestions of who was responsible, ranging from the Cubans, the Soviet Union and the Mafia to the Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa – and the CIA itself.

A file marked “secret” from September 1964 gives clues as to how lurid stories spread quickly in the months after Kennedy died. CIA agents in Stockholm reported back to HQ on their quizzing of an unnamed subject who had been reported in the Swedish newspapers to have said that he had lived in Cuba for many years and had advance knowledge of the assassination.

The agents wrote: “When asked whether he had foretold assassination of Kennedy, he denied quote ascribed to him and said could not recall any similar statements. Said he knew nothing of assassination before it happened … Appeared slightly embarrassed as if ashamed of statements he made while drunk.”

A separate document also from September 1964 described a meeting between a Soviet diplomat in Helsinki, Felix Karasev, and US officials. The encounter began with the US-Soviet officials waging a couple of bets on the Olympics which were to be held the following month in Tokyo.

“Will necessitate two drinking parties,” the official memo drily noted.

Talk then turned to the Oswald case. The US officials suggested to Karasev that maybe there was Soviet involvement behind Oswald’s actions, and he replied: “This would have been possible if Oswald had been in China, but not in the Soviet Union.”

Karasev then counter-attacked that “he could not help but believe that Ruby was tool of ‘reactionary forces’”, and that it would have been impossible for him to shoot Oswald “without assistance of some US officials”. The Americans “tried debunk this impression, but Karasev held to his views”.

The new files also record conspiracy theories swirling years after the Warren commission. A secret document from March 1978 refers to an article in the Guardian reporting on a BBC documentary.

The film explored the possibility that the assassination was a spinoff from a CIA/mafia plot to murder Cuba’s Fidel Castro. It claimed links between Oswald, the CIA and the Soviet KGB.

The US officials who wrote the memo warned that the documentary had been “presented in prestigious [BBC current affairs program] ‘Panorama’ slot which has wide and large audience. Will have considerable impact on viewers.”

Fast forward to today, and the “who killed JFK?” industry remains in robust health. Hours after Biden released the new files, Tucker Carlson, Fox News’s conspiracy theorist-in-chief, began his primetime show by telling his 3 million viewers that the CIA did it.

Carlson had talked to an “unnamed source” with direct knowledge of the JFK files the CIA was still hiding. The informed view of the “source” was that “the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”

Lest anyone had any doubts, Carlson emphasised the credibility of the “source”. “This is not a ‘conspiracy theorist’ we spoke to. Not even close,” he said. cited

The Secret Service may have been ‘impaired’ the day JFK was assassinated

Some of the Secret Service members in charge of protecting President John F. Kennedy might have been impaired the day he was killed. That’s what author Susan Cheever says in her new book “Drinking in America: Our Secret History.” Following is a transcript of the video.

Susan Cheever: The Secret Service men who were guarding the presidential motorcade, who are in the follow-up car to JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy during the Dallas motorcade in 1963, had been out drinking until 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning. So those guys who were responsible for saving the lives of JFK and Jacqueline were clearly impaired.

What happened was the night before they were all in Fort Worth with the president. They hadn’t gotten anything to eat all day. So after the president and first lady went to bed seven of the Secret Service men went out looking for food. And first they went to the Fort Worth Press Club where they had heard there would be some food, but there wasn’t any. So they had a beer, a couple scotches. whatever, and then some of them went back to the hotel and a few of them went on to another club called the Cellar Coffee House.

Which Chief Justice Earl Warren was furious about this when he found out. And in the Warren Commission report there is Chief Justice Earl Warren exploding about this and he calls the Cellar Coffee House some hippie joint, right.

So some of them stayed at the Cellar Coffee House until 5 in the morning for a 8:48 call. So you know, if you’re up until 5 in the morning, if you’ve had anything to drink, you’re not your best self at noon or 1230 the next day. cited