WASHINGTON – Almost three-quarters of of voters want President Joe Biden to comply with a Dec. 15 deadline to release the full records on the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, according to a recent poll.
Nearly 60 years after Kennedy was killed while on a political trip to Dallas, nearly 16,000 records related to the assassination have yet to be released due to pandemic delays and requests from involved agencies.
The remaining records were initially scheduled to be released in 2017 in accordance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. However, former President Donald Trump first delayed the records release in 2017 after lobbying from involved agencies.
Between July 2017 to April 2018 the National Archives released over 53,000 records that mainly related to organized crime probes with no clear ties to the Kennedy assassination. Trump then set a new deadline for the remaining partially released files to be released in 2021, which Biden later delayed due to the pandemic.
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, an online resource of JFK assassination records, sued Biden in October to disclose the records after the 2021 delay. Representatives from the group discussed the desire among Americans for transparency during a presentation at the National Press Club Tuesday.
Jefferson Morley, author and vice president of the foundation, said there are 44 records that demonstrate the CIA approved a covert operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the Kennedy assassination.
“This is an extraordinarily serious claim, and it has profound implications for the official story,” Morley said. “The CIA knew far more about the lone gunman than they are admitting even today.”
The poll, conducted by Florida based research firm Bendixen & Amandi International, surveyed 2,000 U.S. voters on the records and beliefs relating to the JFK assassination. The majority of respondents from both major U.S. parties – 71% overall – supported the release of the records while 10% felt it should be postponed.
The results also show that 50% of respondents believe other people in a possible conspiracy played a role in the assassination while 38% said they believe Oswald acted alone.
This is generally consistent with nearly 60 years of Gallup polling, which shows the highest belief in a lone gunman theory during the 1960′s shortly after the incident. Between 1975 and 2000, the belief in a greater conspiracy fluctuated between 74 and 81%.
While there was bipartisan approval for releasing all the records and a greater conspiracy theory, more young people and Republicans signaled support in the poll.
