Why have the JFK assassination files been kept secret for so long?

Thousands of classified documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy could finally be released this week after Joe Biden vowed to make them available to the public.

More than 15,000 files concerning the fatal shooting that took place in Dallas in 1963 remain locked away at the National Archives 59 years after the president’s death.

In October a lawsuit was filed against the Biden administration and National Archives demanding the release of all JFK-related documents amid reports that several government agencies, including the FBI and CIA, were desperately trying to keep at least some classified.

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Do we know what is in them?

While many of the remaining classified files may be “only indirectly related to the assassination”, reported Politico, some come “directly from the FBI’s ‘main investigative case files’ about the president’s murder”.

That includes the all-important case files on Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, and Jack Ruby, the Dallas strip club owner who murdered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

According to Jefferson Morley, vice-president of the historical archive, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, these would shed light on, among other areas, a covert Cuba-related CIA programme that involved Oswald less than four months before he shot the president.

The Daily Mail said experts believe this could be the “smoking gun” proving direct ties between Oswald and the CIA.

Why have they been kept secret?

That thousands of documents related to JFK’s murder remain under lock and key at the National Archives is “in clear violation of the spirit of a landmark 1992 transparency law that was supposed to force the release of virtually all of them years ago”, said Politico.

The news site argued that the fact that anything about the assassination is still classified nearly 60 years after it took place, “and that the CIA, FBI and other agencies have refused to provide the public with a detailed explanation of why – has convinced an army of conspiracy theorists that their cynicism has always been justified”.

Internal correspondence between the National Archives and several US government agencies obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal a furious bureaucratic tug-of-war between different departments, including the CIA, FBI and Pentagon, with several agencies “desperately trying to keep them under wraps”, said the Daily Mail.

The correspondence reveals the thinking behind some agencies wanting to keep documents classified. Of primary concern is that still-living intelligence and law-enforcement informants from the 1960s and 1970s could be at risk of intimidation or even violence if they were publicly identified.

So will they be released in full and on time?

Last year Biden ordered a review into the remaining files, issuing a memo delaying the documents’ release until this month unless federal agencies persuaded him to give them even more time.

His administration “is now facing a federal lawsuit from a New York-based lawyer who discovered that the CIA, FBI, DEA and other agencies are hell-bent on keeping the files secret”, said the Daily Mail, “lending more credence to the incredulity of conspiracy theorists with each passing year”.

If Biden makes the documents public on 15 December, as promised, “he would have broad bipartisan and bicoastal support”, said NBC News.

According to a survey of 2,000 US voters conducted by the Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi, seven out of ten want the president to honour his commitment made last year and release the final trove of JFK assassination records in full.

Half of voters believe the assassination involved multiple conspirators while 38% said Oswald was the lone gunman, the poll showed.

“There’s not a lot that unites a lot of American voters these days, but one of the few things that does is to see President Biden release the long-overdue JFK files as he promised,” said Amandi.