A trove of secret government files about JFK’s assassination will finally be made public today by the Biden administration.
The files will be released at noon on Wednesday by the National Archives, after months of delays by Biden who had promised to make them public but then stalled, claiming COVID backlogs was the reason.
They are not expected to include any bombshells about the 1963 Dallas assassination, but will shed more light on what happened that day and the government’s investigation into it.
The files were collected by a review board that was established by Congress in 1992. Their investigation was finalized in 1997 and they issued a report, but thousands of documents were held back by the government.
The Kennedy family is among those who have repeatedly called for the documents to be made public.
Earlier this year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s nephew, fumed that some of the files would remain secret until next year.
JFK and Jackie Kennedy are pictured in his car in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, moments before he was assassinated. Government files about his death that have been kept secret for 58 years will today be released
Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, was arrested for the assassination. He was then killed two days later while being transported by police. He was shot by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby
The files will be made public by the National Archives at noon on Wednesday
The files that will remain secret until next December have been flagged by national security agencies for further review.
‘It’s an outrage. It’s an outrage against American democracy.
‘We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government.
How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?’
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
‘How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?’ RFK Jr. told Politico in October.
Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of longtime Biden friend late Sen. Ted Kennedy, also slammed the decision to hold some of the files back.
‘I think for the good of the country, everything has to be put out there so there’s greater understanding of our history,’ he said.
Kennedy said it was a time of ‘a lot of conspiracy theories’ and noted there is ‘a tendency to distrust government in general.’
Conspiracy theorists continue to question why the government wants to keep some of the files redacted.
JFK was sitting in the backseat of a convertible with First Lady Jackie Kennedy when he was shot in the neck at 12.30pm.
President Biden (pictured this morning) had promised to make the files public in October, but he delayed the release citing COVID backlogs at the National Archives
He was taken to the hospital but was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a theater a short time later. He denied shooting Kennedy in police interviews, and was also charged with shooting police officer J.D. Tippit.
Oswald, a former Marine and Marxism enthusiast, was shot and killed two days later while being transported by police.
He was killed by local Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, and the murder was witnessed by the media and policemen.
He claimed that his rage over Kennedy’s assassination is what motivated him.
The files were always meant to be made public within 25 years of the assassination under the JFK Records Act, but Biden delayed their release earlier this year, citing COVID back-logs as the reason.
President Trump agreed to make 10,000 public when he was in office, but they were mostly redacted.
Historians and experts do not believe that Wednesday’s dump of files will contain any bombshells or revelations about the assassination but because of the secrecy that has surrounded them, there is still suspicion that the government isn’t telling the public everything.
‘Because it has taken [the government] so long to get these records out, no matter what comes out, no one is going to believe that that’s it,’ one official told CNN on Wednesday ahead of the release.
