Biden and National Archives sued over JFK assassination records
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit organization and online database containing the most comprehensive archive of records pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, has sued President Biden and the National Archives and Records Administration for postponing the release of roughly 15,000 documents concerning the former president's murder.
2022-10-19 16:10:25 - VI News Staff
The claim, filed in San Fransisco federal court on Wednesday, alleges that federal officials have acted outside the law in their failure to make those redactions available to the public, thereby "depriving" researchers and historians of opportunities to learn about the JFK assassination. Almost three years into his presidency, Kennedy was fatally shot on live television while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, in what is considered the most infamous and widely discussed political assassination of the 20th century.
A lengthy federal investigation found former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald solely responsible for the shooting, but murky details about the circumstances of JFK's death invited a number of conspiracy theories and ongoing conjecture from academics, authors and filmmakers as well as the general population. Rising public interest in the assassination records, plus speculation about a rumored government cover-up, prompted the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992, mandating the eventual publication of all unreleased documents.
That law, which was signed by former President George H.W. Bush, originally established an October 2017 deadline for the federal government to publish all remaining documents related to the assassination. That initial deadline was effectively pushed by then-President Donald Trump, who at the time ordered the release of about 2,800 previously unseen files but withheld thousands of others for national security reasons, saying they needed further review.
Then, in a memo issued last October, Mr. Biden announced another delay and set a new deadline for the records' release, which now falls on Dec. 15. The pandemic had prevented the national archivist from conducting its review as planned, according to the White House, and finishing the job would require more time than expected. Biden cited security concerns as the basis of his decision to support the archivist's request to postpone.