On June 30th, President Joe Biden declared that the files from President John F. Kennedy’s death that were released June 27th of this year are to be his final set. Biden has ordered over 13,000 classified documents related to Kennedy’s assassination to be released to the public during his presidency. His efforts were to be seen as following through with the promises of transparency he made during his campaign yet the 4,684 JFK documents that remain withheld or redacted still raise suspicion about what really happened on November 22nd, 1963. Related read: The Lincoln Assassination Was Actually the Sixth Attempt on Honest Abe’s Life

The Facts About the JFK Assassination

On this Friday morning in 1963, President Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy were in a procession in Dallas, Texas heading to a luncheon where the president was expected to speak. As the car containing President Kennedy and the First Lady moved past the Texas School Book Depository, a gun fired at Dealey Plaza.The president was hit with bullets to the head and to his neck. He was rushed to a nearby hospital in which he was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm that same day. The shooter and recently hired employee at the Texas School Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested in a theater 45 minutes following the assassination after killing a local police officer.Oswald was a former marine who lived in the Soviet Union. He was a communist activist and had connections to Cuba. It was concluded that he acted alone, shooting from the sixth floor of the depository. In 1979 the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) looked further into the possibility of Oswald being part of a bigger conspiracy but the lack of evidence led the investigation to fizzle out.Oswald was shot point blank on live television as he was being transferred from the police headquarters in Dallas to a county jail. As we know it, any information about why he shot Kennedy died with him or is being buried deep in the National Archive.

The Release of Classified JFK Documents

Almost 30 years after Kennedy was killed, Congress put the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 in place. This Act placed the documents and files related to the assassination in a collection at the National Archive. Because of this Act, the government was required to release all documents related to the assassination (that did not have any effect on national security) by October 2017. This responsibility fell to President Trump as the deadline fell within his term. He released more than a thousand documents which proved unsettling to the public as there were over 6,000 unreleased or redacted documents at the time.When Biden came into office, a series of releases were sent out starting in December of 2022 and ending in June of 2023. He released the vast majority before issuing his statement that the rest would not be released. Now the National Archive says that 99% of documents are available to the public. Suggested read: The Complicated Necessity of (Redacted) Documents in the Military

What the JFK Assassination Records Reveal

For 60 years people have longed for more information regarding the shooting. Conspiracists have tried to pull repeatedly on Kennedy’s connections to the mob and ideas of a second shooter to his death for decades, and with the release of new files there was fresh hope of finding evidence that supported these theories. Inside the JFK documents, one that stuck out was written by a CIA officer in December 1963 and detailed the agency’s interception of Oswald’s communications with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City prior to November 22nd. This document had the name of the CIA officer redacted, but in the most recent release it was revealed that the man was named Rueben Efron.Efron had been intercepting Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail for months prior. This shows they were running an investigation on Oswald while Kennedy was still alive. Rueben died 30 years ago making some wonder why they were protecting his name in the initial release of these documents. Conspiracists believe since they weren’t protecting his name in an effort to keep his life private and safe, they could have been trying to hide something about the investigation he was a part of at the time.The other document that stood out to the public was Document 32149267, which detailed a quote from a confidential informant who said that the man who shot Oswald may have known the shooting was going to happen before the event took place. “The informant stated that on the morning of the assassination, Ruby contacted him and asked if he would ‘like to watch the fireworks.’ He was with Jack Ruby and standing at the corner of the Postal Annex Building facing the Texas School Book Depository Building, at the time of the shooting.”This information goes against the FBI’s report stating Ruby was four blocks away when the shooting happened. The release of this document led people to speculate that Ruby might have been involved in the assassination and killed Oswald to avoid him turning in others who were involved. Ruby had a history of organized crime which feeds into mob conspiracies as well.

Will the JFK Assassination Ever be Fully Settled?

Considering we are now 60 years from when this event took place, it is unlikely that any further answers will arrive soon. Two-thirds of Americans weren’t even alive during John F. Kennedy’s presidency and yet over 4,000 documents about his assassination are left to be unreleased. Obviously, there is something inside the JFK documents that the government wishes to keep under wraps. Though conspiracy theories are generally never the answer, it's difficult to judge Americans for wanting to fill in that missing piece on their own. It's entirely possible that a completely separate issue or process is being held for national security reasons that has nothing at all to do with President Kennedy. Dealey Plaza has now become a popular attraction in Dallas. There is a museum on the sixth-floor of the Texas School Book Depository where you can see where Lee Harvey Oswald took his fatal shot.Read next: 10 Top Attractions in Dallas, Texas For Military & History Buffs