A nonprofit group that hails the most comprehensive collection of archival records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination is suing the National Archives and Records Administration after the agency delayed the release of records pertaining to JFK’s death.
The Mary Ferrell Foundation filed a lawsuit against the National Archives and President Joe Biden on Wednesday claiming the postponement violates the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which intended to have the documents available to the public by 2017. The White House was poised to make the documents public last year but delayed the release in October 2021, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION RELEASES NEARLY 1,500 CLASSIFIED JFK DOCUMENTS
In that decision, Biden called on the National Archives to conduct a one-year review of the records to ensure they didn’t contain sensitive materials. He later released 1,500 documents pertaining to Kennedy’s assassination in the interim.
The lawsuit calls on the judge to void that postponement to make roughly 15,000 more documents related to Kennedy’s death available to the public. The foundation also alleges the federal government redacted crucial documents involving the CIA and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, among other things.
The National Archives said it has already finished the “document-level review and a redaction-level review of information not yet released” and plans to make “the results of those reviews” public in December “in accordance with the memo,” according to a statement obtained by Axios.
The final documents that have yet to be released are expected to be the most sensitive about Kennedy’s death, the foundation told NBC News.
Kennedy was killed nearly three years into his presidency on Nov. 22, 1963, after he was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. His death is one of the most famous political assassinations of the last century.
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U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald is considered to be responsible for the shooting, according to a federal investigation. However, the details surrounding Kennedy’s death have never been clear, prompting several to propose conspiracy theories about who was really responsible for his death.
Rumors about an alleged government cover-up prompted Congress to pass the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992, which mandated the government to release all documents related to his death.
