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Scholars say the papers are unlikely to include dramatic revelations but could shed light on lingering questions — including about the intelligence agencies.
March 18, 2025Updated 10:19 p.m. ET
The promise of a “final” release of all government secrets relating to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy has whetted the appetite of many Americans, including the current occupant of the Oval Office.
But many historians are taking a more measured, wait-and-see approach to Tuesday’s release of documents by the National Archives.
“I doubt that these releases are going to overturn our understanding of what happened on that terrible day in Dallas,” Fredrik Logevall, a historian at Harvard who is working on a multivolume biography of President Kennedy, said before the release.
But still, he added, “we should prepare to be surprised.”
It could take months, if not longer, for scholars to parse and digest the more than 1,100 PDF documents posted on the archive’s website. Previous Kennedy assassination documents that have been released were listed by serial number, which is opaque enough for those who aren’t experts in the intricate filing systems of the various intelligence agencies’. But these appear to come with even less identifying information.
Some will likely turn out to be versions of documents previously available with only light redactions, adding a name or two to the record. And others, scholars say, are likely to be duplicates or variants of memos and reports that have long been available from other sources.
David J. Garrow, the author of “The F.B.I. and Martin Luther King” and numerous articles about the intelligence agencies, predicted that the release would likely be a “a big nothingburger” when it comes to the assassination itself.
