The National Archives and Records Administration is expected to drop a trove of previously classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy later Thursday — including sensitive records pertaining to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
The document dump is expected to be the most significant since former President Donald Trump ordered thousands of documents to be released in 2017, the CIA and National Archives told Politico.
But the Trump administration held back some of the documents because of national security concerns.
In October 2021, President Biden directed all federal agencies, including the Archives, to release all government records to the public “except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise” by Dec. 15, 2022.
The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, signed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1992, required that records relating to the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination in Dallas be made available in 25 years.
The officials told Politico that the new tranche of information contains no bombshells — nothing that discounts Oswald as the shooter — but will be of interest to researchers and historians delving into details of the assassination 59 years ago.
Some of the more intriguing documents scheduled to be released cover the “personality” files the intelligence community compiled on Oswald before the assassination and what it learned about him afterward, Politico reported.
The file on Oswald was created in 1960, the CIA said, after the assassin’s failed attempt to defect to the Soviet Union in 1959.
The existence of the records, Politico noted, raises the possibility that the CIA was aware of Oswald and the threat he might pose to Kennedy long before that day in Dallas.
In all, the Archives holds approximately five million pages of records dealing with the Kennedy assassination, the vast majority of which has been released to the public.
Reporting from New York Post.
