US National Archives releases more than 12,000 documents on JFK assassination

The US National Archives on Thursday released thousands of documents related to the 1963 assassination of then President John F Kennedy shortly after Joe Biden issued an executive order authorizing the release that also kept hundreds of other sensitive records secret.

The release of 12,879 documents was not expected to include any new bombshells or change the conclusion reached by the commission led by chief justice Earl Warren 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 22 November 1963, at the age of 46.

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

All of the remaining JFK files were originally supposed to have been released in October 2021. Biden postponed that planned release, citing delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and announced they would be instead disclosed in two batches: one on 15 December 2021, and another by 15 December 2022, after undergoing an intensive one-year review.