It has been 58 years since President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, Texas. However, the extensive research and investigations that followed produced documents that have remained largely classified. President Joe Biden has released a trove of documents surrounding the assassination and the probes that followed.
According to CNN.com, the documents were scheduled to be disclosed in Oct. 2021 but were put on pause due to national security issues. Now, just a little over a month later, 1,500 documents are being disclosed. That leaves 10,000 documents left that have been redacted or withheld. It's that reason that JFK researchers assume the so-called "smoking gun" isn't included.
"Because it has taken [the government] so long to get these records out, no matter what comes out, no one is going to believe that that's it," said an official familiar with the document classification.
The documents were delayed due to "protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in the immediate disclosure."
But what was scheduled to be disclosed was supposed to be a much bigger deal. However, Biden's Oct. 2021 decision creates a deadline for the full 10,000 pages.
Any U.S. agency that seeks to withhold the pages beyond Dec. 2022 must provide to the White House "an unclassified index identifying for each such record the reasons for which the agency is proposing continued postponement of information in such record," according to Biden's order.
Such an order would ensure all information would be released.
Assassination researchers are still frustrated because they expected everything to be public. Lawyer Larry Schnapf intends to sue the administration.
"We will be seeking a court order instructing the President to release the remaining records or to disclose the specific identifiable harm posed by each document sought to be postponed and how such alleged harm outweighs the strong public interest in the release of these records -- which were supposed to have been released by October 26, 2017," Schnapf said in an email.
Former President Donald Trump had previously refused to release the information in 2017, despite his own personal interest. That information was scheduled to be revealed after a 25-year deadline set by the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act. Trump cited national security concerns.
That information revealed that shooter Lee Harvey Oswald attempts to get a Soviet or Cuban visa, which the CIA thought was part of his plan to make a quick escape after the slaying.
Some of the new documents go into great detail about sources and possible Cuban spies and Soviets being monitored by the CIA.
Aline Mosby, a reporter for the United Press International in Moscow and later in Beijing was also among those identified in the documents. She interviewed Oswald in 1959. The FBI suspected that she was a Soviet agent at the time, and some documents detail interviews with sources about her. However, the documents had sources saying that she was drugged and found in the gutter in Moscow.
Former newsman Norman Ray "RUNNION said that this episode was considered an attempt by the Russians to place UPI at a disadvantage, so that in the event PI should in the future incur the displeasure of the Soviet Government, they could concoct a similar incident and have Miss MOSBY expelled from the USSR with resultant publicity. He said that to avoid such an eventuality, UPI transferred. Miss MOSBY to another post, thus terminating her career in Moscow."