Nearly 1,500 documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released by the Biden Administration Wednesday. The release includes documents filed by the CIA, FBI, and other law enforcement agencies.
The documents reveal that Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald met with a Soviet ambassador linked with the KGB assassins before carrying out the murder. Oswald himself had lived in the Soviet Union for three years preceding the Presidents death.
Investigations also showed that Australian intelligence agencies had knowledge of a Soviet plot to kill Kennedy almost a year in advance, but decided that the information was “untrustworthy”.
CNN claims that most of the released documents were simply copies of already released and redacted documents and nothing new.
Historians argue that instead of fulfilling conspiracy theories relating to Kennedy, they seek transparency in government investigations. The assassination happened in 1963, making the investigation nearly 60 years old.
At this time, scholars are still largely unsatisfied with the amount of information released on the topic. CNN reported that more than 10,000 documents still have not been released.
Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor said, “The reason it’s so important is not so much that we’re going to find a smoking gun that changes the entire theory of who killed Kennedy. “The lack of transparency and the fact that getting these documents after 58 years is like pulling a whole mouthful of teeth, it tells you why we have so many conspiracy theories.”
Other researchers like Philip Shenon, note that Joe Biden is the first President to come close to acknowledging that there are more documents sealed away that have not, or will not be released to the public any time soon. Shenon emphasizes that unfortunately those who physically remember hearing the news on November 22nd, 1963 likely won’t live to know the full truth.