US President Joe Biden has released more than 13,000 previously classified documents related to the assassination almost 60 years after the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy. This means that 97 percent of the Kennedy files are now publicly available, said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre. She initially spoke of more than 12,000 documents. The National Archives said there were 13,173 documents.
Biden is thereby fulfilling his promise to “disclose all information related to the assassination of President Kennedy to the greatest possible extent” insofar as this is consistent with national security, said Jean-Pierre.
Most of the documents have long been accessible
The US National Archives write on its website that a large part of the approximately five million documents, photos, videos, audio recordings and artefacts relating to the assassination have been fully accessible since the late 1990s. Since 2017, another 53,000 partially edited documents have been published.
According to the US National Archives, more than 3,000 documents are still under lock and key. Part of it is due to open to the public in six months, Jean-Pierre said. Biden has ordered all information related to Kennedy’s assassination to be released as soon as national security permits.
“It won’t change the story”
The political scientist Larry Sabato, author of the book “The Kennedy Half-Century” told the US news channel CNN that he did not expect any groundbreaking new insights from the published documents. “The story will not change because of this,” said Sabato. The US foreign intelligence service CIA, which some conspiracy theorists say was involved in the assassination, told US media that all the information the service has that is directly related to the Kennedy assassination has already been published.
Kennedy was shot dead in an open car in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The democratic politician was only 46 years old. The commission of inquiry set up by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, came to the conclusion that the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. To this day, the circumstances of the assassination and the murder of Oswald in front of live television cameras that followed shortly thereafter are the source of numerous conspiracy theories.
In 1991, the movie “JFK – Tatort Dallas” directed by Oliver Stone and starring Kevin Costner caused a sensation. It was based on a book by former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who tried to prove in court in the late 1960s that Oswald could not have been the sole shooter.
In part due to the film’s renewed public interest in the assassination, the US Congress passed legislation in 1992 mandating the release of all Kennedy files by 2017. For reasons of national security and the corona pandemic, the deadline was pushed back several times.
