President Joe Biden's administration declassified more than 13,000 records relating to President John F. Kennedy's assassination on Thursday, the second of two JFK assassination-related document dumps ordered by the White House last year when a public release was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the National Archives, which manages the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, with Thursday's decision, about 98% of the documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination have now been published, with only 3% of the records remaining redacted in whole or in part.
"[T]he profound national tragedy of President Kennedy's assassination continues to resonate in American history and in the memories of so many Americans who were alive on that terrible day; meanwhile, the need to protect records concerning the assassination has weakened with the passage of time," the White House said in a memorandum Thursday.
"It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency by disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise."
In the memo, Biden stated that the National Archives and other government agencies have until May 2023 to assess the remaining private records. Following that, "any information withheld from public discourse that agencies do not recommend for continued postponement" will be made public by June 30, 2023.
The documents contain additional information about accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald and his time in Mexico City.
However, according to the CIA, over 4,300 documents remain redacted in part - with no record totally blacked out - and experts say there is no rationale for keeping them to preserve national security or intelligence gathering.
Researchers have indicated that it will probably take days to thoroughly look through the hundreds of documents to make sure there are no fresh leads regarding the murder or unexpected details concerning CIA and FBI actions in the 1960s.
However, for many lawmakers and proponents of transparency, making all of the remaining documents public is about regaining confidence in how the government is run. Public polling has long demonstrated that the majority of Americans do not concur with the Warren Commission's official conclusion that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy.
According to an assessment made by JFK historians with the Mary Ferrell Foundation, 44 of the documents are related to a shadowy CIA man, George Joannides, and a clandestine Cuba-related program he ran that came into contact with Oswald fewer than four months before Kennedy was slain.
The organization alleges the CIA is concealing most of the records at issue. According to the foundation, many of the Joannides records were never included in the National Archives' JFK collection.
All assassination-related records were expected to be made public by 2017 in accordance with the JFK Records Act. But then-President Donald Trump postponed the complete release of all records, ultimately leaving it in Biden's hands. In 2021, Biden postponed the full release until this Thursday.
