The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said it has discovered 2,400 new files related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy as federal agencies work to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order last month to release thousands of files about the case.
The FBI said it is turning the files over to the National Archives and Records Administration for declassification.
The U.S. government ordered in the early 1990s that all documents related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, be kept in a single file at the National Archives. While the vast majority of the documents, including more than 5 million pages of records, have been made public, researchers estimate that 3,000 documents remain unreleased, in whole or in part.
The FBI opened a records center in 2020 and began a multiyear effort to transport, electronically inventory and store case files from offices across the country. The agency said a more comprehensive records repository, coupled with technological advances, allows it to quickly search and locate records.
President Donald Trump last month directed the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan to release classified records related to the Kennedy assassination. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said a release plan had been submitted at the president’s request, but did not provide details about the plan or a timeline for releasing the records to the public.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy has fueled conspiracy theories for decades. Kennedy was shot dead in downtown Dallas as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where 24-year-old assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the sixth floor. Two days after Kennedy was assassinated, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald.
The Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, found that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that conclusion never quelled decades of skepticism.
