Scholars and historians are likely to spend months sifting through records for answers about former US president’s killing.
United States President Donald Trump’s administration has released thousands of pages of government files about the assassination of John F Kennedy (JFK), setting historians and internet sleuths on a mad dash to uncover new information about one of the most seismic moments in US history.
The National Archives said on Tuesday that “all records previously withheld for classification” had been released and were available to access either online or in person.
The archives uploaded about 63,000 pages of documents on its website in two initial tranches, with more files to be posted online as they are digitised.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, said the release consisted of approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified records.
The release comes after Trump in January signed an executive order calling for the release of all remaining files on the assassination of the former president, in addition to records about the killings of former US Senator Robert F Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
Scholars and historians are likely to spend months sifting through the documents for new clues about the circumstances of JFK’s death, which has been the focus of popular intrigue and conspiracy theories for more than six decades.
In a 2023 Gallup poll, 65 percent of Americans said they did not believe the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine, acted alone in killing the president during his visit to Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Among those surveyed, 20 percent said they believed Oswald conspired with the US government, while 16 percent said he collaborated with the CIA.
Scholars who reviewed Tuesday’s release did not report any deviation from the dominant narrative about Oswald in their initial assessment of the files.
During his first term, Trump pledged to release all outstanding records but ultimately withheld thousands of files after federal agencies, including the CIA and FBI, asked for additional time to review sensitive materials.
Former US President Joe Biden’s administration released thousands more documents in 2022.
Before Tuesday’s release, more than 99 percent of some 320,000 documents reviewed under the JFK Records Act had been released to the public, according to the National Archives.
The 1992 law mandated the disclosure of all remaining records by October 26, 2017, unless the president determined their release would cause “identifiable harm” to national defence or other government functions of such gravity that it “outweighs the public interest in disclosure.’”