The National Archives has released thousands of records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. The release of 12,879 new files, the most since 2018, comes nearly six decades after Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas
In 1992, Congress passed legislation requiring that all records stored in those archives about the assassination be released by October 2017, unless they posed national security or intelligence risks. But Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden issued extensions.
That triggered a legal challenge from the Mary Ferrell Foundationa nonprofit organization that maintains an online collection of murder records, arguing that the extensions were illegal under 1992 legislation.
Biden issued the most recent extension, which lasted for a year on the grounds that the coronavirus pandemic impeded the agencies’ ability to review records before the deadline.
The president’s order Thursday called for publishing nearly 16,000 records with redactions. But an unspecified “limited” quantity remains under review and were not included in that batch.
Biden’s order gives federal agencies and the National Archives until May 1, 2023 to make recommendations on whether those documents should still be kept secret. And he arranged for the remaining records to be released by June 30, 2023 unless compelling reasons prevent it.
“Agencies shall not propose to continue to redact information unless such redactions are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or foreign relations that is of such severity as to outweigh the public interest. ”, says Biden’s order.
The National Archives have released several batches of documents in recent years. In 2021, 1,491 were published.
By Thursday, the Archives had released about 55,000 documents in total since the deadline originally imposed by Congress.
