Records of President Kennedy's assassination made public
Sylvie Claire / December 16, 2022
The U.S. National Archives on Thursday released some 13,000 documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that has caused worldwide shock and countless speculations to this day.
But the White House, citing national security concerns, has blocked the release of thousands more. A batch of archives on the case had already been declassified in December 2021.
According to the National Archives, 97% of the approximately five million pages of the file are now accessible.
Democratic chairman Joe Biden said in a memo that a "limited" number of documents could not be made public, a measure "necessary" to "prevent damage to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement or foreign policy.
The assassination of the popular U.S. president on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, has given rise to numerous conspiracy theories, fueled by hundreds of books and films such as Oliver Stone's "JFK" (1991).
They reject the conclusions of the so-called "Warren Commission" which had determined in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who had lived in the Soviet Union, had acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy. He was killed two days later.
Some believe that Oswald was used by Cuba or the USSR. Others believe that the assassination was ordered by the Cuban anti-Castro opposition with the support of the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, or by opponents of JFK in the United States.
In 2017, Donald Trump had released files in this case, in accordance with a 1992 congressional law requiring that all documents related to President Kennedy be released within 25 years.