JFK Assassination Records - 2021 Additional Documents Release

Anonymous 12/15/21 (Wed) 12:30:08 da18bc (4) No.15197457

JFK Assassination Records - 2021 Additional Documents Release The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is processing previously withheld John F. Kennedy assassination-related records to comply with President Joe Biden’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, requiring disclosure of releasable records by December 15, 2021. The National Archives has posted records online to comply with these requirements. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk

Anonymous 12/15/21 (Wed) 12:30:08 da18bc (4) No.15197457

Anonymous 12/15/21 (Wed) 12:31:40 80971c (2) No.15197462

The release of almost 1,500 documents still leaves more than 10,000 either partially redacted or withheld entirely. It is expected to prolong the bitter debate between the federal government and JFK researchers, who have argued that the CIA, the FBI and other national security agencies have continually stonewalled a congressionally mandated release.

Longtime JFK researchers say the release likely does not include a smoking gun that would substantively change the public understanding of the circumstances surrounding Kennedy's death – nor, historians argue, does one likely exist elsewhere.

But for many lawmakers and transparency advocates, releasing all of the remaining documents, as mandated by Congress in 1992, is about restoring faith in the functioning of government. Public polling has long shown that a majority of Americans do not believe the Warren Commission's official finding that Kennedy was killed by a single man, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

"Because it has taken [the government] so long to get these records out, no matter what comes out, no one is going to believe that that's it," said one official familiar with the classification concerns related to the documents.

In October President Joe Biden delayed a scheduled release to "protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in the immediate disclosure."

He set two deadlines: Wednesday, for any documents that national security agencies have not proposed be withheld, and Dec. 15, 2022, to allow for the remaining documents to undergo a rigorous security review and then be released.

Some transparency advocates argue that another filing the government is expected to make on Wednesday will be more significant than the documents release – and, in fact, is a significant step toward transparency.

Agencies that wish to continue to withhold particular documents past December 2022 are scheduled to provide to the White House "an unclassified index identifying for each such record the reasons for which the agency is proposing continued postponement of information in such record," according to Biden's October order. That order dictated that those indexes should be made public along with the remaining documents in 2022.

Anonymous 12/15/21 (Wed) 12:56:42 20b6de (12) No.15197615