Nearly 1500 Documents Related to Kennedy's Assassination Declassified

The U.S. National Archives has released nearly 1500 documents related to the investigation of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The declassification of secret memos, operational records, and other documents aligns with a deadline set by Joe Biden for the end of October and is consistent with federal law requiring the release of governmental records.

Additional documents are expected to be released next year. There are no direct indications that the records contain revelations that could fundamentally alter the public's understanding of the events surrounding Kennedy's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963.

The documents include CIA communication and operational records discussing Oswald's previously disclosed visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico, as well as discussions about Cuba's potential involvement in the assassination in the days following the event.

One CIA memo describes how Oswald called the Soviet embassy while in Mexico City to request a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban embassy, apparently seeking a tourist visa to allow him to travel to Cuba and await a Soviet visa there. On October 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back to the U.S. through a Texas border checkpoint.

Another record, dated the day after the assassination, states that, according to a wiretapped conversation in Mexico City, Oswald had spoken to an officer of the KGB at the Soviet embassy in September of that year.

Following Kennedy's assassination, Mexican authorities arrested a Mexican employee of the Cuban embassy with whom Oswald spoke. She said that Oswald presented himself as a 'communist and a supporter of Castro,' according to the memo.

One CIA document mentions a conspiracy by the U.S. government to assassinate Cuba's then-leader Fidel Castro, including a 1960 plot that 'involved the use of the criminal world to establish contacts within Cuba.'