More JFK assassination docs released

Yesterday, the National Archives released a trove of more than 13,000 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

With the document dump, the government’s largest since 2018, officials say more than 97% of the roughly 5 million pages of records it has regarding JFK’s assassination have now been released.

And while there aren’t any obvious bombshells in this latest batch – ​​like that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the gunman or there was a conspiracy in Kennedy’s death (as many believe) – here’s what the drop, which is still being combed through, purportedly contains:

• New info about the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald in Mexico. Just weeks before Kennedy was killed, Oswald visited Mexico City to meet with Soviet and Cuban spies, including a KGB assassinations specialist.
• More documents comprising Oswald’s 80-Volume 201 “Personality” File. Much of this file was made public in the past, but portions have been kept secret or redacted.
• Additional info on George Joannides, a CIA operative during the Kennedy administration and the agency’s liaison to a special House committee in the 1970s that re-investigated Kennedy’s murder.

📝 Bottom line: Under the JFK Records Act of 1992, every assassination-related document in government possession was supposed to be released in full by October 2017. But the law also allows the gov’t to indefinitely postpone the release of any document for national security or foreign relations reasons – and many are still heavily-redacted or withheld in full.