On Wednesday, the National Archives released over 1,500 documents linked to the US government's investigation into President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination public.
The release of classified cables, internal memoranda, and other papers meets a deadline established by President Joe Biden in October and is consistent with a federal statute requiring the release of records in the government's possession. Next year, further documents are anticipated to be made public.
There was no indication immediately that the papers contained new information that would fundamentally alter the public's view of the circumstances surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, by gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
However, historians and others who, decades after the Kennedy assassination, remain doubtful that a troubled young man with a mail-order gun was alone responsible for an assassination that altered the course of American history were eagerly anticipating the latest tranche of records.
The documents include CIA cables and memos discussing Oswald's previously disclosed but never thoroughly explained visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, as well as discussion of the possibility of Cuban involvement in the assassination of Kennedy in the days following the assassination.
According to one CIA cable, Oswald called the Soviet embassy in Mexico City to request a visa to visit the Soviet Union while in Mexico City. He also paid a visit to the Cuban embassy, possibly seeking a travel visa that would allow him to visit Cuba and wait for a Soviet visa while there. He returned to the United States on Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, via a border crossing in Texas.
Another report, dated the day after Kennedy's killing, states that Oswald interacted with an identified KGB officer at the Soviet embassy in September, based on an intercepted phone call in Mexico City.
Following Kennedy's assassination, Mexican police apprehended a Mexican employee of the Cuban embassy with whom Oswald had talked. She stated that Oswald had "professed to be a Communist and a Castro admirer in the cable."
One classified CIA document labeled "Secret Eyes Only" details US government schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader at the time, including a 1960 plot "that involved the use of the criminal underworld with contacts inside Cuba."
Another document made public Wednesday shows the US government evaluating whether Oswald was swayed or influenced in any way while living in New Orleans by the publication in the local newspaper of an interview with Castro conducted by an Associated Press correspondent in which Castro warned of retribution if the US attempted to assist in the assassination of Cuban leaders.
The new files include multiple FBI reports on the bureau's efforts to investigate and surveil prominent mafia members such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana. They are frequently referenced in conspiracy theories surrounding the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Additionally, the papers contain multiple FBI reports indicating that the bureau maintained a close eye on anti-Castro groups operating in southern Florida and Puerto Rico during the 1960s.
Apart from the Kennedy probe, some of the data will interest researchers and anybody interested in the minutiae of 1960s counter-espionage, including pages upon pages of arcane details about the procedures, equipment, and personnel employed to surveil the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City.
Former President Donald Trump invoked "potentially irreversible harm" in 2017 when he blocked the release of hundreds of records due to FBI and CIA concerns. Despite this, approximately 2,800 additional records were released at the time.
The Warren Commission decided in 1964 that Oswald was the lone gunman, and another congressional investigation concluded in 1979 that there was no evidence to support the theory that the CIA was involved. However, alternative interpretations have persisted.
