On Tuesday, previously classified documents regarding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were made available to the public, following an order from former President Donald Trump shortly after he assumed office. These documents can be found on the official website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The majority of the National Archives’ extensive collection, which encompasses over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and artifacts related to the assassination, has already been released in earlier phases.
In a statement made on Monday, Trump informed reporters that his administration planned to release a total of 80,000 files, although it remains unclear how many of these files are part of the millions that have already been disclosed to the public. During his visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Trump remarked, “We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading.”
Researchers have estimated that around 3,000 records had not been released in full or in part prior to this latest disclosure. In a significant development last month, the FBI announced that it had identified approximately 2,400 new records related to the assassination. Despite the ongoing public interest in these documents, many experts who have scrutinized the previously released materials caution that the new information may not yield any groundbreaking revelations.
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while visiting Dallas. As his motorcade was concluding its route through downtown, shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police apprehended Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old man who had taken position as a sniper on the sixth floor. Just two days later, Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby during a transfer to jail.
In the aftermath of the assassination, the Warren Commission was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the events surrounding Kennedy's death. The commission concluded that Oswald acted alone and found no evidence of a conspiracy. However, this finding did little to quell the numerous conspiracy theories that have emerged over the decades.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all documents related to the assassination be consolidated into a single collection at the National Archives and Records Administration. This collection was required to be opened to the public by 2017, unless specific exemptions were granted by the president.
