JFK files related to assassination released by Trump administration

Washington — The Trump administration on Tuesday evening released tens of thousands of pages of government documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, weeks after President Trump ordered government agencies to make their JFK files public.

The documents, totaling some 80,000 pages, had been released before, with sections redacted for national security purposes. The declassified versions did not appear to contain significant new revelations about the assassination, based on an initial review by CBS News. But the unveiling of key portions of the records was cheered by researchers and academics who had long argued that the details in certain reports by the CIA and FBI should have been disclosed years ago.

“This is the most positive news on the release of JFK files since the 1990s,” said Jefferson Morley, an investigative journalist and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which hosts a repository of JFK-related documents. He called the release an “encouraging start” while noting that other troves of documents still remain under wraps.

The records were uploaded by the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency responsible for housing the government’s collection of files related to the assassination. The Archives said Tuesday that “all records previously withheld for classification” have been released, but not all are available online yet. 

Shortly after taking office in January, the president took executive action to establish a process to declassify and release any remaining documents related to Kennedy’s killing, as well as the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The order instructed the director of national intelligence and attorney general to present the president with a plan for the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” 

What’s in the newly released JFK files?

The records are unredacted versions of documents that have been released in redacted form in the past. Agencies like the CIA and FBI have argued over the years that the release of the information would harm national security, even decades after the fact.

According to Morley, roughly 3,500 documents in the government’s official collection of JFK files contained redactions before the latest release. There were 1,123 documents of varying lengths unveiled Tuesday, meaning about a third of the remaining redacted documents have been released in full. About 75% of those records were produced by the CIA. More than 500 IRS records have been withheld from public release entirely.

“These new records shed new light on the events leading to JFK’s assassination, including his mistrust of the CIA, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and propaganda operations involving Oswald before and after JFK was killed,” Morley said in a statement referring to Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin. Oswald sought a visa to return to the Soviet Union in October 1963 while in Mexico City, and technical details of the CIA’s surveillance operations were revealed for the first time in Tuesday’s release.

Another notable document released in full is a memo prepared by Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr. about a potential reorganization of the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. The previously redacted section details the number of undercover CIA personnel stationed overseas, with Schlesinger expressing concern that covert CIA activities were encroaching on the State Department.

Various investigations into the JFK assassination over the years — some as recently as the 1990s — swept up classified information that dealt with intelligence gathering methods and friendly foreign governments but were not directly linked to the assassination. Portions of documents, and some entire records, had remained classified for decades to protect sources and methods.

David Barrett, a professor of political science at Villanova University who studies the Kennedy presidency, told CBS News that “non-scholars who dive into these documents are going to be baffled as to what most of them have to do with the Kennedy or other assassinations.” For scholars like him, however, he said it is “certainly the most useful release of documents that has occurred because of the redactions being removed.”

“Now I know who or what is being referred to. So a memorandum on CIA relations with the Miami newspapers, for example, and details on three CIA officers doing technical collection of intelligence in Cuba — I’ve never really had those details before,” he said.

Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” told the Associated Press that his team is going through the released files in search of a “long, long list” of sensitive documents that were previously heavily redacted. He believes some of those passages may concern Cuba or “what the CIA did or didn’t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Last month, the FBI said it had discovered roughly 2,400 records related to the assassination during a search stemming from Mr. Trump’s executive action. Those records did not appear in Tuesday’s release, according to Morley.

Where to read the new JFK assassination files

The documents have been uploaded to a portal maintained by the National Archives, which can be found here. The Archives maintains the government’s trove of records known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

Not all of the files are available online yet, however. Some are available “in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats” at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the records that are only available in person are being digitized and will be uploaded to the Archives in the coming days. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will post updates on social media, and the records will also be on the White House website.

Additional documents remain under court seal, including some for reasons of grand jury secrecy. The IRS-related documents must be unsealed before release, and the Archives and Justice Department are working on making these available.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation runs its own JFK documents repository on its website, which has deeper search functions for exploring the trove of records. The group typically adds new documents shortly after they are released by the Archives.

Why did Trump release these JFK files?

Mr. Trump campaigned on declassifying and releasing records related to the JFK assassination, in part due to his political alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long called for more transparency about the assassinations that killed his uncle and father.

In 1992, Congress passed a law requiring the government to release all of its records about the assassination by October 2017, while giving the president the authority to withhold records for national security reasons. In his first term, Mr. Trump unveiled thousands of documents, but some of their contents were kept under wraps after lobbying by the CIA and FBI. Other records were withheld altogether.

Over the course of 2021 and 2022, President Biden likewise released thousands of records but kept key portions redacted, frustrating researchers and observers who had called for their full release for years. 

When was JFK assassinated?

Kennedy was shot in the head on Nov. 22, 1963, at the age of 46 while riding in a convertible in Dallas, Texas. Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, was soon arrested for the killing. But Oswald was also shot and killed in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters two days later.

An investigation led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, but the probe has been widely criticized by academics and historians in the 62 years since the assassination.

Oswald had been on the government’s radar before the assassination, a fact that the CIA withheld from the Warren Commission. Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, and returned to the U.S. in 1962. A self-described Marxist, he worked with a pro-Fidel Castro activist group and had contact with Soviet and Cuban consulates in the months leading up to Kennedy’s death. 

In October 1963, the CIA intercepted a phone call he made to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and the documents released Tuesday detail some technical aspects of the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald and Cuban and Soviet officials.

contributed to this report.