The new trove of top secret files released on the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy left experts trawling for new clues and Donald Trump’s own staff scrambling.
The release early Tuesday evening included 2,182 PDF documents totaling 63,400 pages on the National Archives website more than 60 years after the president was shot and killed in Dallas.
It included typewritten reports and handwritten notes spanning decades, including details of a top CIA agent who claimed the deep state was responsible, Lee Harvey Oswald being a ‘poor shot’ and that Secret Service had been warned Kennedy would be killed in August, three months before the murder.
The rollout of the files stunned Trump’s national security team, who spent 24 hours racing to assess security hazards ahead of publication.
When the files were released at around 7pm, it sparked widespread backlash, from liberals claiming it was just a repeat of a similar drop by Joe Biden years ago, to MAGA fans angered that the pages still contained redactions and left questions, leading experts to describe the files as ‘impenetrable.’
Experts have warned as they sift through the information that they do not expect the release to overturn the long understanding of what happened or earth-shattering reveals.
The document batch did not include annotations, what agency documents originated from, how they were linked together or whether they were found more credible than others to the investigation.
Its publication represents the fulfillment of a campaign promise from Trump, who had threatened to get the files out dating back to his first term in office.
President John Kennedy with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy smile at the crowds in Dallas just moments before the president was assassinated on November 22, 1963
The files included typewritten reports and handwritten notes spanning decades, including details of a top CIA agent who claimed the deep state was responsible and Lee Harvey Oswald (pictured) being a ‘poor shot’
Still, those digging through the thousands of pages have uncovered some intriguing details.
One document was a memo released on a passage from the left wing political magazine Ramparts from June 1967 about intelligence agent, CIA informant and former US Army Captain John Garrett Underhill Jr.
‘The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of a friend in New Jersey He was very agitated,’ the passage starts.
‘A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it a suicide,’ the passage continued.
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It noted that he was on ‘intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials.
The passage was shared numerous times by conservatives on social media on Tuesday night. But others dismissed it, pointed out the magazine passage had been publicly available and discussed for decades.
Another document making the rounds in MAGA world Tuesday night after the release focused on Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
One line in the document stated that KGB watched Oswald closely while he was in the USSR. But files indicated that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target filing in the USSR.’
President Donald Trump said during a media event at the Kennedy Center that the files were all going to be released on Tuesday
A passage from the JFK files from a magazine in 1967 that was making the rounds after the latest document release
Another detail released was a letter sent by a man named Sergyj Czornonoh in 1978 to the British Embassy.
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He claimed that he was detained in London on July 18, 1963 and questioned by authorities.
Czornonoh said that he told them about Lee Harvey Oswald, saying he planned to kill the president.
He added that he warned American Vice Consul Tom Blackshear of the plans of Oswald, who trying to defect to Russia.
While Trump’s team was working on getting the records out since the president returned to the White House in January, those plans were put into overdrive on Monday.
The president said during a media event at the Kennedy Center that the files were all going to be released on Tuesday.
National security analysts were scrambling to make sure there were no hazards in what they were about to publish with a supercharged deadline.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe had wanted to have everyone prepped on what was in the documents so that they wouldn’t be caught off guard, the New York Times reports.
Lee Harvey Oswald pictured with the Dallas police on November 22, 1963
One of the documents circulating after the latest JFK file release indicated Oswald was a ‘poor shot’ while in the USSR
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The National Security Council put together an emergency call to make everyone aware of what they still had to un-redact.
Many had worries that confidential information would be revealed about people who were still alive.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, scoffed at the notion that anyone was left unaware that this was coming.
‘President Trump made a promise to release all of the JFK. files — and he is delivering on that promise. Anyone surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention or has been willfully ignorant.’
Historians speaking to the mainstream media have suggested there’s not much new out there in the JFK files and what’s been released is disorganized and will be hard to parse through regardless.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of ‘The Kennedy Half-Century,’ said he had a team that started going through the documents but it may be some time before their full significance becomes clear.
‘We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,’ he said.
Researchers had estimated that the number of files still released either in whole or in part was around 3,000 to 3,500. And last month the FBI said it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Another detail released was a letter sent by a man named Sergyj Czornonoh in 1978 to the British Embassy
He claimed that he was detained in London on July 18, 1963 and questioned by authorities. Czornonoh said that he told them about Lee Harvey Oswald, saying he planned to kill the president
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination, said in a statement posted on the social platform X that the release is ‘an encouraging start.’
Complete versions of about a third of the redacted documents held by the National Archives have now been made public, he said, an estimate of over 1,100 of about 3,500 documents.
‘Rampant over classification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document,’ Morely said.
The National Archives said on its website that in accordance with the president´s directive, the release would encompass ‘all records previously withheld for classification.’
But Morley said what was released Tuesday did not include two-thirds of the promised files or any of the recently discovered FBI files.
Historian David J. Garrow told the New York Times ‘this dump is profoundly more impenetrable than all the previous more annotated ones.’
Garrow suggested it would take him two days just to open up all of the released 80,000 pages of documents.
John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault – which boasts of being the ‘largest privately run online repository of declassified government documents’ – similarly complained about the organization of the files.
Historians speaking to the mainstream media have suggested there’s not much new out there in the JFK files and what’s been released is disorganized and will be hard to parse through regardless
Interest in details related to Kennedy’s assassination has been intense over the decades, with countless conspiracy theories spawned.
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security.
And JetBlack while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden´s administration, some remained unseen.
Sabato said that his team has a ‘long, long list’ of sensitive documents it is looking for that previously had large redactions.
‘There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,’ he said. ‘Some of it´s about Cuba, some of it´s about what the CIA did or didn´t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald.’
There was swift backlash to several aspects of the drop, as many of the aged documents were faded, poorly scanned and impossible to read.
Others were notes in handwriting that was completely illegible or included crossed out words and scribbles.
And more ended up being highly redacted despite promises from the Trump administration that the files would not be.
There was swift backlash to several aspects of the drop, as many of the aged documents were faded, poorly scanned and impossible to read
Liberals, like journalist Ed Krassenstein, claimed that Biden released the same files in 2023
‘I’m quickly going through the JFK files to see if we would get everything unredacted like promised. We have not,’ posted one researcher.
‘I was told repeatedly these were going to be unredacted…’ vented another frustrated X user.
‘Most of these documents were marked ‘safe’ for declassification YEARS ago. There is nothing here. Where are the ‘exempt’ and ‘excluded’ JFK files?’ wrote another.
Liberals, like journalist Ed Krassenstein, claimed that Biden released the same files in 2023.
‘The only difference? The top of Biden’s says ‘2023 Release’ and Trump’s says ‘2025 release’ and the word ‘secret’ is crossed out in Trump’s release,’ Krassenstein claimed.
Despite the slow slog through the documents as Americans scoured to find anything new MAGA world cheered the release.
‘The file I am particularly interested is a CIA IG report from whistleblowers alleging that the CIA hid information from Congress ref JFK assassination as it implicated them (shortly after the assassination),’ wrote Rep. Anna Paulina Luna who led the task force to declassification of JFK assassination records.
‘We were given this as a tip and there is actually a document we are currently tracking down,’ she added.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna led the task force to declassification of JFK assassination records
The file I am particularly interested is a CIA IG report from whistleblowers alleging that the CIA hid information from Congress ref JFK assassination as it implicated them (shortly after the assassination). We were given this as a tip and there is actually a document we are… website
— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) March 19, 2025
The GOP congresswoman wrote on X ‘promises made, promises kept’ despite the documents including redactions.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also claimed on X that Trump was ‘ushering in a new era of maximum transparency’ and that the files were being released ‘with no redactions.’
Some X users responded to her post with screen grabs of redacted documents from the release.
The files on JFK weren’t the only ones released, as documents pertaining to the assassinations of both Kennedy’s brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King.
An author who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. says the files released related to the assassination of the civil rights leader are not likely to lead anyone to find anything new.
The MLK assassination files were released alongside those of President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy on Tuesday.
Jonathan Eig, who published last year’s lauded book ‘King: A Life’ told the New York Times he’s set to review the files.
However, he’s not expecting anything surprising.
‘I would be very surprised if there was some kind of smoking gun, or revelation of an alternate assassin.’
King was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968.
Leading up to its release, Trump said it would be ‘interesting’ and the White House said Americans would be ‘shocked’ by revelations.
‘People have been waiting for decades for this,’ Trump said on Monday. ‘We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading.’
Trump was for releasing the JFK files during his first term in office but thousands remained under seal.
During his 2024 campaign he vowed to make them public as part of his overall effort to increase government transparency.
He signed an executive order in January to declassify the remaining files.
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