Thursday, December 16, 2021
Researchers are disappointed
More papers released on Kennedy murder
In November 1963, US President Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet. Numerous conspiracy theories have grown up around the murder. Washington is now releasing further documents relating to the attack. But the research is disappointed with the publications.
More than 58 years after the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, the US government has now released almost 1,500 documents about the attack. The US National Archives announced. Researchers at CNN said they were disappointed with the documents. They contained little new and sometimes appeared to be duplicates of previously released documents in which only a few blackened words had now been published. Thousands of documents are still partially blackened or withheld entirely.
Most of the documents now published come from the US Federal Police FBI and the CIA. For decades, politicians and researchers have been pushing for the documents to be fully released – also to stop conspiracy myths. In 2017, a release process stalled after then President Donald Trump failed to meet a legal deadline for publication. The CIA, FBI and other authorities had protested to Trump that the documents contained national security secrets that were still too sensitive to be released. US President Joe Biden announced the release in October. However, according to Politico, he admitted that there were documents that might never be published.
Doubts about the lone perpetrator Lee Harvey Oswald
John F. Kennedy was shot dead in an open car on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Investigations after the crime had led to the result that the – later murdered – Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Nevertheless, all sorts of conspiracy myths have persisted over the years: That maybe the mafia pulled the strings, Cuba, the Soviets, the military-industrial complex, maybe also the Kennedy successor Lyndon B. Johnson in connection with the CIA, organized crime and Oil advocacy groups.
Almost 30 years after the assassination, in 1992 Congress enacted a law that would place all material related to the assassination in a single collection in the National Archives. The collection consists of more than five million pages with recordings, photos, films and sound recordings from the attack. Most of these records are available for research.
The reason for the law was the fuss about the Oliver Stone film “JFK” with its rampant conspiracy myths. More than 14,000 documents that have been blocked so far are to be checked for publication by December 15, 2022, as the US federal agency further explained.