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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Will Maule

Thousands of files on JFK assassination released by White House but some to stay secret

The White House has ordered the release of a tranche of documents on the murder of US President John F Kennedy.

More than 13,000 files have been published online, with the White House confirming that more than 97% of the records are now publicly available.

JFK was shot dead during a visit to Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

A law passed in 1992 stipulated that the government must release all documents on his assassination by October 2017.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order authorising the latest batch of records to be released.

Some files must remain confidential until June 2023 to protect against possible "identifiable harm", he said.

The US National Archives confirmed that 515 documents would remain fully undisclosed, while another 2,545 documents would be partly withheld.

Biden said he hoped the release of the latest documents would help the public develop a greater understanding of the lengthy investigation into the assassination (Getty Images)

JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was found to be acting alone.

Oswald was shot dead in the basement of a police station in Dallas two days after his arrest.

Conspiracy theories have swirled around the fact Oswald had previously lived in the Soviet Union.

But on Thursday, the CIA said the US spy agency had "never engaged" Oswald and did not hold back information about him from US investigators.

Researchers into the assassination were hoping that the latest release of documents would shed more light on Oswald's activities in Mexico City, where he met with a Soviet KGB officer in October 1963.

But the CIA said that all the information relating to his trip had previously been released, saying: "There is no new information on this topic in the 2022 release."

President John F Kennedy was shot dead at the age of 46 (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a non-profit organisation that sued the government to get them to release the files, said that the CIA has withheld information about Oswald's trip to Mexico.

The foundation claims that some CIA records were never submitted to the achives and were therefore not included int the latest release.

One of the newly released documents shows that the president of Mexico assisted the US in placing a wiretap on the Soviet embassy in Mexico without the knowledge of other Mexican government officials

The assassination of JFK remains one of the most dramatic and widely-discussed events in history (Bettmann Archive)

The White House said that the release of the latest documents would help the public develop a greater understanding of the lengthy investigation into the assassination.

President Biden wrote in his executive order that "agencies have undertaken a comprehensive effort to review the full set of almost 16,000 records that had previously been released in redacted form and determined that more than 70 percent of those records may now be released in full".

The Trump administration released thousands of documents over the course of his presidency but withheld others due to national security concerns.

Mr Biden released a further 1,500 documents in October 2021.

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