"The Trump administration on Tuesday released more than 30,000 pages of previously classified or censored documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, providing insight into some of the Central Intelligence Agency's most sensitive operations over decades.
The documents are digitized paper documents going back to the 1960s, with faded typewritten text and handwritten notes.
The Warren Commission in 1964 found that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald acted alone. In the years since, a raft of alternative theories have bubbled up, fueled in part by the CIA's own secrecy in the investigation.
Here are five takeaways from the new documents:
The CIA had reasons to resist the release of the documents for decades.
The inquiry into Kennedy's assassination swept up thousands of documents about CIA operations globally, and officials weighed the potential explosive fallout to spy programs around the world from some potential revelations.
In one 1995 assessment, for example, a CIA official argued that acknowledging a CIA station in Tunisia would hurt the country vis-a-vis its neighbor.
The CIA spent years probing if Fidel Castro was involved.
More than a decade after the Kennedy assassination, the CIA conducted a multiyear investigation into whether Cuban leader Fidel Castro was involved. The probe found "no definitive proof that the Castro regime was implicated," but a newly released document lists in granular detail a yearslong campaign of CIA-sponsored sabotage and assassination attempts targeting Castro.
The Cuban leader was enraged when he learned of CIA-backed efforts to attack the sugarcane industry and set off bombs in the sewage system during one of his speeches.
CIA operatives with the help of the American mafia also agreed to attempt to kill Castro for $100,000.
The Mexican president was secretly close to the CIA.
One document describes President Lyndon Johnson being briefed on the close personal relationship between the CIA's station chief in Mexico and Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, who was the best man at the spy's wedding. (Johnson was told not to mention this to Mateos).
Mateos was publicly outspoken against Washington's intervention in Cuba, but was quietly involved in CIA telephone surveillance operations in Mexico City and had previously told the station chief, Win Scott, that he was "delighted that a decision had now been made to get rid of Castro," according to another document.
The CIA bugged a meeting RFK was likely to attend.
In 1963, the CIA set up eavesdropping equipment in a house in a wooded area of Bethesda, Md., where two Cuban exiles were set to meet with American officials -- "probably" including Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Memos describing the operation show the human side of espionage, with details about equipment failure, navigating payments and paperwork, and handling unexpected changes to surveillance targets.
It included "concealing a tape recorder in the attic, basement or garage," with electronics running more than $28,000 in today's prices. (A single battery for the operation cost almost $6.) "The first test [. . .] from the safehouse to the listening post was a failure." At one point, a vendor accused the agency of reneging on payment. But the equipment "appeared to work satisfactorily" by the end of June.
The CIA in Mexico asked Washington to keep quiet about the Oswald recordings.
Much of the remaining mystery around Kennedy's killing involves Oswald's time in Mexico City in the months before the shooting, and his meetings there at the Cuban and Soviet missions.
The CIA recorded Oswald's phone conversations with officials from both of those countries but claimed to have later destroyed them, according to a 1998 document. Four years earlier, however, the CIA's station in Mexico City asked for the agency to avoid releasing information about the Oswald wiretaps, arguing they could force Mexico to reassess its U.S. relationship.
"Do whatever is possible to keep the lid on the box re previous joint ops with the Mexicans," the CIA Mexico station told headquarters.” [1]
1. U.S. News: Key Revelations in JFK Assassination Files. Schectman, Joel; Gillum, Jack; Whitton, Brian. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Mar 2025: A4.
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