Tens of thousands of classified files on the assassination of John F Kennedy were released to the public overnight, some of which contain incredible claims about his shock death.
Donald Trump had signed an executive order requiring 80,000 documents relating to JFK and his death to be made available to the public shortly after returning to power in January. The National Archives partnered with agencies across the federal government to comply with the President’s directive in support of Executive Order 14176. Included in the reports were claims the CIA was responsible for JFK’s assassination in Dallas, in November 1963. Another page suggested Lee Harvey Oswald, who has gone down in history as the man responsible for the death, was a “poor shot”.
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One of the released documents was a memo on an article published by magazine Ramparts in June 1967 about a CIA informant, named US Army Captain John Garrett Underhill Jr. The passage reads: “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.
“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.”
Another document from a KGB official named as Nikonov was a file determining if Oswald had been an agent of the USSR, after spending time there before returning to the USA. Mentioning his “stormy” relationship with his Soviet wife, the document reads: “Reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the USSR.
“Nikonov is now confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB. [It is] doubted that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KBG (sic) watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.”
Another document was a letter sent to the British embassy in 1978 from a man known as Sergyj Czornonoh in 1978 which claimed he was detained in London on July 18, 1963. He told them about Lee Harvey Oswald, and claimed he planned to kill the popular president.
Despite assurances from Trump they would not be redacted, some appear to have been crossed through with black markings. Others of the documents are unreadable, while others are scans of faxes. Others appear to have voice recordings. Should the JFK assassination files have been released? Vote in our poll HERE to have your say.
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation which was responsible for the release, said on X: “The first JFK files release of 2025 is an encouraging start. We now have complete versions of approximately a third of the redacted JFK documents held by the National Archives (1,124 of approximately 3,500 documents).
“Rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document. Seven of ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record.
“These long-secret records shed new light on JFK’s mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald.
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“The release does not include two thirds of the promised files nor any of 500-plus IRS record, nor any of the 2,400 recently discovered FBI files. Nonetheless, this is most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the 1990s.”
