DALLAS — The FBI on Tuesday mentioned it found 2,400 new information associated to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy as federal companies work to adjust to President Donald Trump’s government order final month to launch hundreds of information.
The FBI mentioned it’s working to switch the information to the Nationwide Archives and Information Administration to be included within the declassification course of.
The federal authorities within the early Nineteen Nineties mandated that every one paperwork associated to the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination be housed in a single assortment on the Nationwide Archives. And whereas the overwhelming majority of the gathering — over 5 million information — has been made public, researchers estimate that 3,000 information haven’t been launched, both in entire or partly.
The FBI didn’t say in its assertion what sort of data the newly found information include. The FBI in 2020 opened a Central Information Complicated and commenced a years-long effort to ship, electronically stock and retailer closed case information from discipline workplaces throughout the nation. The company mentioned a extra complete information stock together with technological advances allowed it to rapidly search and find information.
Jefferson Morley, vice chairman of the Mary Ferrell Basis, a repository for information associated to the assassination, known as the FBI’s disclosure of the information “refreshingly candid.”
“It shows that the FBI is serious about being transparent,” mentioned Morley, who can be editor of the JFK Details weblog.
Morley mentioned it units a precedent for different companies to return ahead with paperwork that haven’t but been turned over to the Nationwide Archives.
Trump’s order final month directed the nationwide intelligence director and lawyer normal to develop a plan to launch labeled information associated to Kennedy’s assassination. A spokesperson for the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence mentioned that as required by the order, a launch plan has been submitted, however provided no particulars in regards to the plan or a timeline for when information could also be made accessible to the general public.
The gathering was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. In his first time period, Trump mentioned he would enable the discharge of the entire remaining information however ended up holding some again on account of potential hurt to nationwide safety. And whereas information continued to be launched underneath former President Joe Biden, some stay unseen.
The assassination fueled conspiracy theories for many years. Kennedy was fatally shot in downtown Dallas as his motorcade handed in entrance of the Texas College Ebook Depository constructing, the place 24-year-old murderer Lee Harvey Oswald positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth ground. Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald throughout a jail switch.
The Warren Fee, established by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson to research the assassination, discovered that Oswald acted alone and that there was no proof of a conspiracy. However that conclusion by no means quelled an internet of other theories over the a long time.
Gerald Posner, creator of “Case Closed,” which concludes that Oswald acted alone, mentioned it’s potential that the newly found information are repeats of paperwork which might be already within the Nationwide Archives’ assortment or they may very well be paperwork the overview board for the gathering had beforehand mentioned it didn’t need.
“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 mentioned.
He mentioned the “wow” can be if they’re associated to Oswald or the investigation.
The paperwork launched over the previous a number of years from the gathering have provided particulars on the best way intelligence providers operated on the time, and embrace CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies throughout a visit to Mexico Metropolis simply weeks earlier than the assassination. The previous Marine had beforehand defected to the Soviet Union earlier than returning residence to Texas.
Morley mentioned the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald has been the “emerging story over the last five to 10 years.” He mentioned there may very well be data on that within the new information.