The public has waited nearly 26 years for the last classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to be released. But it looks like we’ll have to keep waiting, due to a decision by the Trump administration to withhold some material in the archive for extra review.
On April 26, in compliance with the deadline set by President Trump last October, the National Archives released 19,045 additional documents from the JFK assassination files. Instead of a full reveal, however, some material will still be kept from the public due to “identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns,” according to a White House memo. The president said he was ordering agencies to “re-review each of the redactions over the next three years,” and set a deadline for further release of documents of October 26, 2021.
In October 2017, 2,800 files about the 1963 murder were made public for the first time, bringing to the fore revelations that an alleged Cuban intelligence officer met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, and praised his shooting ability, and that the Soviet spy agency KGB believed then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson may have conspired to assassinate Kennedy.
But despite the 25-year deadline established by the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act, not everything came out. Citing national security concerns, President Trump then elected to halt the release of some of the remaining classified files for an additional six months. Now that deadline has passed, and it’s still unclear how many records (or portions of the records) still remain under wraps, whether they will be ever released in full, and what—if any—new information they may contain.
