By Steve Neavling
The FBI recently discovered thousands of records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination that were never submitted to the government board responsible for reviewing and releasing them, Axios first reported.
The 2,400 newly found records are part of 14,000 pages uncovered during a review prompted by a January executive order from President Trump directing the release of all assassination documents. The discovery comes 61 years after Kennedy’s death and decades after the government was required to release the full set of documents, which remain a source of conspiracy theories.
“This is huge. It shows the FBI is finally taking this seriously,” said Jefferson Morley, vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, which has the nation’s largest online collection of assassination records.
Morley has sued the federal government for failing to release more files.
The existence of the newly discovered records was revealed Friday in a report to the White House from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Their contents remain secret.
Experts say the documents are unlikely to settle lingering questions about whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the 1963 shooting or was part of a broader conspiracy.
The 1992 JFK Records Act required all assassination-related documents to be handed over to the National Archives by 2017. But officials recently determined that these records were never submitted to the Assassination Records Review Board for proper vetting.
In 2017, Trump delayed the release of some documents after the CIA cited national security concerns. Biden later ordered a limited release, but many records remain heavily redacted. Intelligence agencies have long argued that full disclosure could compromise sensitive sources or implicate people involved in the investigation.
Trump, who has since expressed regret for not releasing everything during his first term, promised on the 2024 campaign trail to make the files public. He also vowed to release documents related to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 killing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“President Trump is ending the endless delays,” read a White House fact sheet issued in January. “He promised to release these records to give Americans the truth.”
But despite Trump’s order, intelligence agencies are still pushing for redactions, sources said.
“When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he’s gonna hit the roof,” a White House official told Axios. Another added: “Don’t be surprised if these records just suddenly show up online. He wants to move on and call this a promise kept.”
The newly found records could become key evidence in an ongoing federal lawsuit. The Mary Ferrell Foundation sued the Biden administration in 2022, accusing federal agencies of withholding assassination-related documents from the National Archives.
The foundation believes the missing files include recordings of mobster Carlos Marcello, who allegedly claimed involvement in the assassination, and CIA documents on George Joannides, a covert operations officer with ties to a group that encountered Oswald multiple times before the shooting.
“The Joannides file sounds exactly like the newly discovered FBI files,” Morley said. “It’s something assassination-related that was never turned over to the Archives.”
