Darren Lyn
11 February 2025•Update: 11 February 2025
HOUSTON, United States
The FBI discovered about 2,400 records tied to US President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, according to a report by Axios on Monday.
The still-secret records are contained in 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found in a review prompted by President Donald Trump's Jan. 23 executive order to release all of JFK's assassination records. The records were never provided through a task force that was supposed to review and disclose the documents, Axios reported.
Conspiracy theories about Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963 assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas have been talked about for 61 years, fueled by the government's reluctance to release all of the documents.
The existence of the new JFK documents was disclosed to the White House on Friday, and a further review of those records could reveal more information as to what happened in one of the most scrutinized tragedies in American history. The release of the new documents could also change the federal procedures for vetting and releasing information related to government events.
"This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously," assassination expert Jefferson Morley told Axios.
Morley is also the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation's largest source of online records of Kennedy's killing.
"The FBI is finally saying, 'Let's respond to the president's order,' instead of keeping the secrecy going," added Morley.
Under the 1992 JFK Records Act, assassination records were supposed to be handed over to the JFK Assassination Records Review Board and then to the National Archives, which were to be fully disclosed in 2017 during Trump's first term in the White House. However, the Axios report revealed that the newly discovered records had not been submitted or vetted by either of those entities.
At the advice of the CIA in 2017, Trump delayed disclosure of the records that the government had identified. President Joe Biden then ordered a limited release of the records, which continued to promote the public's view of the government's shroud of secrecy.
Experts say that the remaining records to be disclosed are unlikely to definitively prove whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman who pulled the trigger or if he was part of a broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, but it could put to rest the cover-up of documents that critics have blamed on the government for more than a half century.
Despite Trump's order to release all of the JFK assassination records, sources told Axios that the various intelligence agencies with records of the assassination are still recommending redactions.
"When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he's gonna hit the roof," a White House official told Axios.
Trump's order also calls for the release of records related to the June 5, 1968 assassination of JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), as well as the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) on April 4, 1968. The records of both RFK and MLK are expected to be released by March 9.
