J.F.K. Assassination Records Archive – Previously Withheld JFK Assassination Documents Database
June 27, 2023
Background
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is one of the most significant events in American history. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party. The motorcade route through Dealey Plaza was planned in advance, and Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, along with Texas Governor John Connally, were riding in an open-top convertible limousine when the shots were fired.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested and charged with the assassination. Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later, on November 24, while in police custody, before he could be tried. This series of events triggered numerous conspiracy theories about the assassination, as Oswald was never able to testify or be tried in court.
In the wake of the assassination and Oswald’s death, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, more commonly known as the Warren Commission, named after its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Commission was tasked with investigating the circumstances of JFK’s assassination and Oswald’s role in it. After months of investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy and that there was no credible evidence of a conspiracy, either domestic or international, in the assassination. The Commission’s findings, however, have been controversial and the subject of criticism and skepticism.
In 1992, in response to the ongoing public interest and skepticism towards the official narrative of JFK’s assassination, the U.S. Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. This Act mandated the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent agency that was tasked with re-examining the assassination and declassifying records related to it.
While the ARRB did not come to any definitive conclusions about the assassination, its work helped to shed new light on the events surrounding JFK’s death and sparked renewed public interest in the assassination.
In recent years, The Black Vault has collected hundreds of thousands of pages related to the JFK assassination. These documents are freely available for download below.
The Documents Collection
The entire collection of all records released on the JFK Assassination, previously withheld, have been compiled below. Despite the files originally being released in a non-searchable format in most cases, The Black Vault converted 100% of the files to a searchable format. In addition, The Black Vault created numerous index files of the entire collection, with clickable links to download the files. These can also be downloaded below.
https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/j-f-k-assassination-records/