THE US National Archives has released the last batch of files related to the assassination of president John F Kennedy, a case that continues to fuel conspiracy theories more than 60 years after his death.
The release follows an executive order issued by president Donald Trump in January, which directed the unredacted disclosure of the remaining files connected to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert F Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
"In accordance with president Donald Trump's directive... all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released," the National Archives said in a statement on its website.
Millions of pages of documents on Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 have been made public over the years. However, thousands were held back at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), citing national security concerns.
The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination, concluded that former Marine sharpshooter Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy.
Despite this, speculation about a larger conspiracy has persisted, with the slow release of government files fuelling various theories.
Kennedy scholars have said that the documents still held by the archives were unlikely to reveal any new information or resolve conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination.
Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on 24 November 1963—two days after Kennedy was shot—while being transferred to a county jail.
Many of the records already released consist of raw intelligence, including numerous FBI reports on leads that did not result in any findings. Much of the information was already known, such as CIA plots against Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 before returning to the US in 1962.
Books and films, including the 1991 Oliver Stone movie JFK, have continued to fuel conspiracy theories, pointing to various suspects, including the Soviet Union, Cuba, the Mafia, and Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Johnson.
The release of these files follows a 1992 act of Congress that required all unredacted assassination records held by the National Archives to be made public after 25 years.
(With inputs from AFP)
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