The United States National Archives on Thursday made public thousands of documents in connection with the 1963 assassination of then-President John F Kennedy, immediately after President Joe Biden issued an executive order sanctioning the release while keeping hundreds of other confidential records hidden for another year.
New documents reveal a single assassinator
However, the coming out of 13,173 documents did not bring out any surprising fact or a change in the inference made by the commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and communist activist who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone. However, the latest information will be important for historians considering the events around the assassination.
John F Kennedy was 46 when was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Books, TV shows, films, and articles have curated the content around Kennedy’s assassination such that it concludes a huge conspiracy behind it. No such content has come up with any evidence concluding that Oswald was joined by any other person. For the record, nightclub owner Jack Ruby lethally shot Oswald two days after the latter killed Kennedy.
Many of these documents are owned by the Central Intelligence Agency and include Oswald’s whereabouts and contact information. Some documents also show permissions asked by the Warren Commission investigating the case.
What more do the new documents reveal?
According to the records, Oswald’s “201 file” was started by the American government in December 1960—nearly three years before Kennedy was killed and following Oswald’s abortive attempt to flee to the Soviet Union in 1959.
A document dated December 1963, explained how CIA officials in Mexico City “intercepted a telephone call” Oswald made in October from the same city to the Soviet Embassy “using his own name” and speaking “broken Russian.” Oswald was wanting to travel through Cuba on his way to Russia and was looking for a visa, the latest documents suggest.
There were initial concerns that Ruby, Oswald’s killer, might have had some connection to Oswald. But a newly released September 1964 memo to the presidential commission investigating the assassination said “the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated or might have been connected in any manner.”
Except for those that the president approved for prolonged withholding, Congress had mandated in 1992 that all unopened sealed files relating to the investigation into Kennedy’s death be made freely accessible to the public through the National Archives in 25 years, or by October 26, 2017.
When Oswald was killed, there were immediate worries that Ruby might have been somehow connected to Oswald. The Central Intelligence Agency has no proof that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were affiliated or might have been related in any way, according to a newly revealed September 1964 memo to the presidential commission looking into the assassination.
