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Thousands of unedited government JFK assassination files released

The White House has ordered the release of thousands of documents on the murder of US President John F Kennedy in full for the first time, the BBC reports.

With the publication of some 13,173 files online, the White House said more than 97% of records in the collection were now publicly available.

No huge revelations are expected from the papers, but historians hope to learn more about the alleged assassin.

Kennedy was shot during a visit to Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963.

A 1992 law required the government to release all documents on the assassination by October 2017.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order authorising the latest disclosure.

But he said some files would be kept under wraps until June 2023 to protect against possible “identifiable harm”.

The US National Archives said that 515 documents would remain withheld in full, and another 2,545 documents would be partly withheld.

A 1964 US inquiry, the Warren Commission, found that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a US citizen who had previously lived in the Soviet Union, and that he acted alone. He was killed in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters two days after his arrest.

JFK’s death spawned decades of conspiracy theories, but on Thursday the CIA said the US spy agency had “never engaged” Oswald, and did not withhold information about him from US investigators.

Long-time JFK academics and theorists have hoped the latest release would reveal more information about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City, where he met a Soviet KGB officer in October 1963.

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