Recently declassified documents concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were unveiled on Tuesday, following an order from President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration.
These documents have been made accessible on the official website of the US National Archives and Records Administration.
The National Archives holds a vast collection of over six million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and artifacts pertaining to this historic event, most of which have already been disclosed to the public.
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Trump informed reporters that his administration intends to release 80,000 files, although it remains unclear how many of these are included among the millions already made public.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump remarked while visiting the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington.
Researchers estimate that around 3,000 records have not been released in full or are only partially available.
Recently, the FBI reported the discovery of approximately 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Although many scholars who have examined the released documents suggest that significant revelations are unlikely from the newly released files, public interest in the assassination and its surrounding circumstances remains high.
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Trump’s directive in January tasked the national intelligence director and attorney general with formulating a plan to make these records public.
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas.
As his motorcade was concluding its parade route downtown, shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository building.
The police apprehended 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had taken position from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor.
Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a transfer between jails.
A year post-assassination, the Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and found no evidence of a conspiracy.
However, this did not silence the myriad of alternative theories that have emerged over the years.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all documents related to the assassination be consolidated in a single collection at the National Archives and Records Administration.
This collection was required to be opened by 2017, unless the president designated exemptions.
Trump, who began his first term in 2017, had indicated he would permit the release of all remaining records but ultimately withheld some, citing potential threats to national security.
While files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, a number remain undisclosed.
