By: Margo Rawlings

Editor-in-Chief

On Jan. 23, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to release remaining classified documents related to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and activist Martin Luther King Jr. On Mar. 18, the National Archives released almost 80,000 pages of previously classified records regarding JFK’s 1963 assassination, as well as 21 documents connected to RFK and 14 documents associated with MLK’s assassination. In 1992, although Congress voted to publish the records by 2017, neither the Biden administration nor the first Trump administration declassified them due to national security concerns.

It is currently unclear how much information within the newly released documents is actually new; however, the National Archives unredacted text from a 1961 memo on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that President Kennedy received. The memo always generated speculation from conspiracy theorists who believed the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s assassination due to the length of the redactions. The memo, which now contains all redactions, included Arthur Schlesinger’s, one of Kennedy’s aides, critical view of the CIA. Schlesinger condemned the CIA’s involvement in foreign affairs, calling for a decrease in undercover agents in foreign countries. Now declassified areas of the memo include the numbers and locations of CIA agents stationed around the world. 

Additionally, the National Archives released pages relating to JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, who many believe to have had connections with the KGB, the USSR’s equivalent to the CIA. They include information regarding a KGB official who determined Oswald was never a member of the KGB. This reinforces the often questioned theory that Oswald acted independently in his assassination, without the influence of a greater power. 

Various other newly released pages include specific directions to wiretap, information on the CIA’s assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, and other directives that the CIA previously kept classified to protect their methods.                                                     

Jefferson Morley, a member of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, posted on X that “We now have complete versions of approximately a third of the redacted JFK documents held by the National Archives (1,124 of approximately 3,500 documents ). Rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document.” While there are few redactions in the documents, many of the pages are ineligible due to poor photocopying. 

All released documents are now available on the National Archives website for public viewing. 

(Sources: ABC News, BBC, Reuters, USA Today)