DALLAS (AP) — The FBI on Tuesday said it discovered 2,400 new records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy as federal agencies work to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order last month to release thousands of files.
The FBI said it's working to transfer the records to the National Archives and Records Administration to be included in the declassification process.
The federal government in the early 1990s mandated that all documents related to the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination be housed in a single collection at the National Archives. And while the vast majority of the collection — which includes over 5 million pages of records — has been made public, researchers estimate that 3,000 files haven't been released, either in whole or in part.
The FBI did not say in its statement what kind of information the newly discovered files contain. The FBI in 2020 opened a Central Records Complex and began a yearslong effort to ship, electronically inventory and store closed case files from field offices across the country. The agency said a more comprehensive records inventory along with technological advances allowed it to quickly search and locate records.
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination, called the FBI’s disclosure of the files “refreshingly candid.”
“It shows that the FBI is serious about being transparent,” said Morley, who is also editor of the JFK Facts blog.
Morley said it sets a precedent for other agencies to come forward with documents that haven’t yet been turned over to the National Archives.
Trump's order last month directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release classified records related to Kennedy’s assassination. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that as required by the order, a release plan has been submitted, but offered no details about the plan or a timeline for when records may be made available to the public.
The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. In his first term, Trump said he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back due to potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released under former President Joe Biden, some remain unseen.
The assassination fueled conspiracy theories for decades. Kennedy was fatally shot in downtown Dallas as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository building, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was positioned in a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
The Warren Commission, established by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, found that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that conclusion never quelled a web of alternative theories over the decades.
Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” which concludes that Oswald acted alone, said one possibility is that the newly discovered files are repeats of documents that are already in the National Archives’ collection.
“If they are really new assassination documents, then it raises a whole bunch of questions about how they were missed for all of these years,” Posner said.
He said the “wow” would be if they are related to Oswald or the investigation.
The documents released over the past several years from the collection have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
Morley said the CIA's surveillance of Oswald has been the “emerging story over the last five to 10 years." He said there could be information on that in the new files.
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and David Klepper contributed reporting from Washington.
Jamie Stengle, The Associated Press
