US President Donald Trump, on Tuesday evening, ordered the release of over a thousand previously classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
According to The Associated Press, the 1,123 files were posted on the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Previously, a collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and artifacts related to the assassination have been released.
On Monday, Trump announced that his administration would be releasing 80,000 files. Back in January, Trump ordered the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. “We have a tremendous amount of paper. You've got a lot of reading,” Trump said while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
About The JFK files
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million pages of records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
In February, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.
There are still some documents in the JFK collection that researchers don't believe the president will be able to release. Around 500 documents, including tax returns, weren't subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
Kennedy's Assassination On November 22, 1963
On November 22, 1963, Air Force One was carrying JFK and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas. Ahead of a reelection campaign the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip. When the President's motorcade was finishing its parade, bullets were fired from the Texas School Book Depository building.
Following the assassination bid, police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper's perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
A year after the assassination that shook the nation, the Warren Commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy.
Details On Lee Harvey Oswald, The Assassin
The declassified documents revealed details on the modus operandi of the intelligence services. The discussions included CIA cables and memos on Oswald's visit to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.
As per the Associated Press, a CIA memo described how Oswald phoned the Soviet embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa.
On October 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy's assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet embassy that September.
The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.
(With AP inputs)
