[The Epoch Times, December 16, 2022](Epoch Times reporter Takasugi compiled and reported) The National Archives of the United States has newly released 12,879 confidential documents related to the assassination of former President Kennedy. The scale of unsealing is the largest since 2018 .
Nearly 60 years ago, John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, making him the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated while in office. President Biden ordered the release of the documents earlier in the day ahead of a Thursday (Dec. 15) deadline.
The U.S. Congress passed a “President Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act” in 1992, requiring the federal government to release all remaining records about the Kennedy assassination by October 2017, unless these documents pose certain risks to national defense or intelligence . But Biden had signed an order to postpone the release.
That led to a legal challenge from the Mary Ferrell Foundation over the matter. The foundation is a nonprofit organization that collects records of plotted assassinations online. The group argued that President Biden’s extension order was illegal under the 1992 legislation.
Biden’s latest extension order extended the unblocking period by another year. The reason given was that the pandemic had hampered the ability of agencies to review the records by the deadline.
According to the newly released memo, nearly 16,000 records related to Kennedy’s assassination were still classified in the National Archives, and Biden approved the release of at least 70% of them.
However, an unknown number of “limited” classified documents were not included in the batch of unsealed records. Biden’s order also directs federal agencies and the National Archives to make recommendations by May 1, 2023, on whether those remaining records must remain classified.
Biden also ordered that the remaining records be publicly released by June 30, 2023, unless they meet a limited number of exceptions.
“Agencies may not propose to continue redacting information unless the redaction is necessary to protect the conduct of military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or diplomatic relations from identifiable harm, and the harm is serious,” Biden’s order said. outweighs the public interest that would result from the disclosure of documents to the outside world.”
In recent years, the National Archives has unsealed multiple batches of documents. The most recent release of 1,491 documents was exactly a year ago.
Before this Thursday, the National Archives had released about 55,000 documents since the original deadline set by Congress.
According to reports, the main content of the unsealed Kennedy file is the 80-volume “Personality File” produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the assassin of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald (Lee Harvey Oswald). Personality File).
The documents also include information the CIA gathered around the time of Kennedy’s assassination, about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, and possibly information about a CIA veteran who had an apparent conflict of interest in the case.
White House officials also stressed that nothing related to conspiracy theories was disclosed in the unsealed documents.
Responsible Editor: Ye Ziwei#