US releases cache of secret JFK assassination files
December 16, 2021
US officials have released thousands of pages of documents from investigations into the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. The files show investigators cast their net wide.
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The US National Archives on Wednesday published nearly 1,500 hitherto secret documents about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The documents — released in line with a federal statute — highlight how the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the Italian mafia were all placed under suspicion.
Can the files shed light on anything new?
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was fatally shot by a lone gunman — Lee Harvey Oswald — on November 22, 1963.
Investigators concluded that Oswald worked alone when he shot at the president in an open-top limousine as he and First Lady Jacqueline were driven through the streets of Dallas, Texas.
However, the case still fuels conspiracy theories, and polling has long suggested many Americans have their doubts.
Amond the myriad explanations is the theory that Oswald had backing from Cuba or the Soviet Union. The killing came just over a year after the Cuban missile crisis.
Others claim that anti-Cuba activists had Kennedy killed, possibly with support from US intelligence or the FBI.
There is also the notion that Kennedy's political rivals at home somehow hatched a plot to assassinate him.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: for the western world, his murder was a shot through the heart.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A shot through the heart of the Western world
At 12:31 Dallas time, several gunshots hit the US president in the heart and in the head — in front of running cameras. His wife, Jackie Kennedy, was with him at the time, as was his host, the governor of Texas, John Connally, with his wife Nellie. Connally, too, was seriously wounded. It is still not known how many shots were fired or in what order they were fired.
Image: Getty Images/Three Lions/Hulton Archive
A day that changed history
It was a sunny Friday morning when the US president and the first lady arrived at the airport in Dallas. It was the second day of Kennedy's election trail in the conservative state of Texas. JFK himself suggested opening the top of the limousine for the motorcade through the city.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
The president is dead
An hour after his arrival, the 35th president of the United States was hit by gunshots on Dealey Plaza. When he arrived at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, his heart was still beating, but the bullet that had pierced his head made any attempt to save him impossible. Kennedy died at the age of 46.
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
Return to Washington
When Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president on board Air Force One, Jackie Kennedy was right next to him. Kennedy's coffin was also on board at the time, since his body was returned to Washington for a post-mortem. Four days later, Johnson appointed a commission to examine the assassination. The results released by the Warren Commission have remained disputed, however.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
The suspect Lee Harvey Oswald
The shots fired at the president had apparently come from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The gun belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was originally arrested as a suspect in the murder of a policeman an hour and a half after the assassination. Only in the course of Oswald's interrogation did police begin suspecting him of JFK's murder as well. Oswald denied both murders.
Image: Reuters
Silenced forever
On November 24, a camera crew from a national TV station was filming Oswald's transfer to another prison when night club owner Jack Ruby appeared in front of the suspected assassin and took him down with a single gunshot. Millions of people witnessed the murder on screen. Oswald, too, was brought to the Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he then died.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A shocked population
When the president was buried on November 25 at Arlington National Cemetery, millions of people lined the roads to accompany JFK on his final journey. The memorial service became an international media event.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
Final journey
After JFK's death, Jackie mourned her husband, while a nation mourned a politician who had inspired so many. After the memorial service in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, Kennedy's two brothers and his veiled widow accompanied the president's coffin to his final resting place. Five years later, Robert Kennedy was also the victim of an assassination.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
He was a "Berliner"
Germany, too, was shaken by John F. Kennedy's death. Especially in West Berlin, JFK had become an idol after his legendary declaration of "Ich bin ein Berliner" during a speech in August 1963, in which he expressed his solidarity with the divided city. After JFK's death, thousands of people expressed their sorrow by writing in condolence books or by laying flowers or wreaths at the Berlin Wall.
Image: picture-alliance/akg
What if?
The peak of Cold War hostilities came during Kennedy's term as Democratic president from 1961-63. Those years witnessed the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war. A young, charismatic president, for many "Jack" — as JFK was often known — embodied a new age for the United States. His assassination was a terrible blow to US consciousness.
Image: Getty Images/Keystone/Hulton Archive
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What do the files show?
The tranche of documents doesn't appear to immediately throw up significant revelations about Kennedy's murder.
However, the release was eagerly anticipated by historians and many others interested in arcane details of 1960s counterespionage, with pages listing methods, equipment, and personnel used to surveil targets.
The 1,491 files, many of them lengthy reports, include CIA cables and memos discussing Oswald's previously disclosed but never fully explained visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico.
It also details discussions immediately after the assassination of the potential for Cuban involvement in Kennedy's murder.
One CIA document marked "Secret Eyes Only" also gives information about US government schemes to assassinate Castro, including a 1960 plot involving the use of the "criminal underworld with contacts inside Cuba."
The files include FBI reports on efforts to investigate and spy on major mafia figures like Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana who are often mentioned in conspiracy theories about the assassination.
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Why are they being released now?
A 1992 law — partly prompted by a furor surrounding the Oliver Stone film "JFK" — stated that all records being held back on the assassination should be publicly disclosed by October 2017.
Former President Donald Trump declassified more than 53,000 documents, taking the proportion of the entire assassination archive available to the public to 88%.
However, Trump left thousands of others under wraps on the grounds of national security.
President Joe Biden pledged to honor the law, but in October postponed more releases until now.
At the time, he said, the delay was "to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations."
It is expected that additional documents are to be made public next year.