The Nationwide Archives on Wednesday made public almost 1,500 paperwork associated to the U.S. authorities’s investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The disclosure of secret cables, inside memos and different paperwork satisfies a deadline set in October by President Joe Biden and is consistent with a federal statute that requires the federal government to launch information in its possession in regards to the Kennedy assassination. Extra paperwork are anticipated to be made public subsequent yr.
There was no speedy indication that the information contained new revelations that would radically reshape the general public’s understanding of the occasions surrounding the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of Kennedy in Dallas by the hands of gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
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However the newest tranche of paperwork was nonetheless eagerly anticipated by historians and others who, many years after the Kennedy killing, stay skeptical that on the peak of the Chilly Battle, a troubled younger man with a mail-order rifle was solely liable for an assassination that modified the course of American historical past.
The paperwork embody CIA cables and memos discussing Oswald’s beforehand disclosed however by no means absolutely defined visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico Metropolis in addition to dialogue, within the days after the assassination, of the potential for Cuban involvement within the killing of Kennedy.
One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet embassy whereas in Mexico Metropolis to ask for a visa to go to the Soviet Union. He additionally visited the Cuban embassy, apparently concerned with a journey visa that might allow him to go to Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, multiple month earlier than the assassination, he drove again into america by a crossing level on the Texas border.
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One other memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that based on an intercepted cellphone name in Mexico Metropolis, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer whereas on the Soviet embassy that September.
After Kennedy was killed, Mexican authorities arrested a Mexican worker of the Cuban embassy with whom Oswald had communicated, and he or she stated Oswald had “professed to be a Communist and an admirer of Castro,” based on the memo. That’s a reference to Fidel Castro, the Cuban chief on the time and an adversary of the Kennedy White Home.
One CIA doc marked “Secret Eyes Solely” particulars what it says have been U.S. authorities plots to assassinate Castro, together with a 1960 scheme “that concerned using the legal underworld with contacts inside Cuba.”
One other doc made public Wednesday exhibits the U.S. authorities evaluating whether or not Oswald, whereas residing in New Orleans, could have been swayed or affected in any method by the publication within the native newspaper of an interview an Related Press correspondent performed with Castro during which Castro warned of retribution if the U.S. have been to attempt to assist take out Cuban leaders.
The brand new information embody a number of FBI studies on the bureau’s efforts to research and surveil main mafia figures like Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana, who are sometimes talked about in conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination. The information additionally embody a number of FBI studies displaying the bureau stored common tabs on anti-Castro teams working in southern Florida and Puerto Rico within the Sixties.
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Aside from the Kennedy investigation, a number of the materials could be of curiosity to students or anybody within the trivialities of Sixties counterespionage, with pages and pages of arcane particulars on things like the strategies, tools and personnel used to surveil the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico Metropolis.
In blocking the discharge of a whole lot of information in 2017 due to issues from the FBI and the CIA, President Donald Trump cited “probably irreversible hurt.” Even so, about 2,800 different information have been launched at the moment.
The Warren Fee in 1964 concluded that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and one other congressional probe in 1979 discovered no proof to help the speculation that the CIA had been concerned. However different interpretations have persevered.
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Related Press writers Ben Fox and Nomaan Service provider in Washington and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
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