News updates: JFK files released by Trump administration related to assassination

Washington — The Trump administration on Tuesday evening released tens of thousands of pages of government documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, weeks after President Trump ordered government agencies to make their JFK files public.

The documents were uploaded by the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency responsible for housing the government’s collection of records related to the assassination. The Archives said Tuesday that “all records previously withheld for classification” have been released, but not all are available online yet.

Shortly after taking office in January, the president took executive action to establish a process to declassify and release any remaining documents related to Kennedy’s killing, as well as the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The order instructed the director of national intelligence and attorney general to present the president with a plan for the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

Last month, the FBI said it had discovered roughly 2,400 records related to the assassination during a search stemming from Mr. Trump’s executive action.

What’s in the newly released JFK files?
Mr. Trump estimated the new files contain roughly 80,000 pages. CBS News has a team of reporters sifting through the records to identify what documents contain new information.

Many of the records were expected to be unredacted versions of documents that have been released but partially obscured in the past.

Researchers have estimated there are about 3,000 records related to the case that hadn’t been previously released in full. There are 1,123 documents of varying lengths in Tuesday’s online release.

Various investigations into the JFK assassination over the years — some as recently as the 1990s — swept up classified information that dealt with intelligence gathering methods and friendly foreign governments but were not directly linked to the assassination. Portions of documents, and some entire records, had remained classified for decades to protect sources and methods.