CONSPIRACY theories have rumbled on through the decades as to who killed President John F. Kennedy. Now the White House has said it is delaying the release of long-awaited records related to the assassination, due to Covid, while a new documentary aims to shed light on the flashpoint moment in history.
What are the records exactly?
Every government record held that has not yet been released. According to the “President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992”, all Government files concerning the assassination “should be preserved for historical and governmental purposes” and "should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination”.
But this isn’t going to happen at the moment?
It was due to take place imminently, but the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said that “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and more time is needed to research the material and “maximise the amount of information released”.
And so?
President Joe Biden has signed a memo, released by the White House, saying the pandemic has meant the process of staff reviewing whether redactions continue to meet the “statutory standard” has been impeded and so, some files will be released later this year, but a “more comprehensive” release will come in December next year.
The assassination still draws interest?
Decades on, the death of JFK on November 22, 1963 - who was 46-years-old at the time and had been president for just 1,036 days - continues to intrigue, spawning books, movies and enduring debate. Former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested for the murder, but was shot two days later on live TV by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who died in 1967.
The files were highly-anticipated?
It had been hoped the documents would offer further insight into the dark moment in history. According to the White House memo, more than 94 per cent of the records in the NARA Kennedy collection already have been released, with the objective now "maximum possible disclosure of information by the end of 2022”.
Have any official files been released already?
In 2018, former President Donald Trump extended the deadline for the public release of the assassination files to this year, citing "identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs." But he also allowed the release of around 19,000 documents by the NARA in compliance with the records law, with many containing redactions.
There’s a new documentary?
Director Oliver Stone released his political thriller JFK in 1991, starring Kevin Costner as attorney Jim Garrison, who set out to unravel the mystery surrounding the assassination. Now Stone, 75, is releasing "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass", a documentary again exploring the assassination, based on the 1992 non-fiction book, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case. Stone has said the film is "an important bookend to my 1991 film" that "ties up many loose threads”. It screens in cinemas in November.
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