The release of thousands of unredacted documents related to the assassination of US President John F Kennedy has seen archivists and enthusiasts pouring over some of the previously unseen material. The assassination has caused intrigue for decades, with a wide range of conspiracy theories springing from the killing.
US President Donald Trump had vowed to release the documents if elected, and the White House claimed to have delivered on its promise. The vast quantities, illegibility of some documents, and lack of detail as to which department produced each mean that deciphering the intelligence could take months to complete. However, some details have emerged, offering a fascinating insight into one of the biggest events of the 20th century.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a poor shot
One document stated that the KGB monitored Oswald whilst he was in the USSR.
Oswald had a Soviet wife, with one document commenting: “hH has a stormy relationship with his Soviet wife, who rode him incessantly.”
The former Marine spent time in the country where he was monitored continuously by the KGB. Tellingly, one document on his marksmanship skills, lists the man who would go on to kill JFK as a “poor shot”, after observing him on a firing range.
Who was John Garrett Underhill Jr?
A memo released by a left-wing magazine spotlights John Garrett Underhill Jr., a former Army Captain and CIA agent.
The passage, released by Ramparts in July 1967, reads: “The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening, he showed up at the home of a friend in New Jersey. He was very agitated.
“A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it a suicide.”
Oswald was not a KGB spy.
One document details how an American professor named E.B. Smith was befriended by a CIA agent working in the St Petersburg station in the months before the assassination.
Smith is thought to have confided in the agent about a friend, a KGB official known as “Slava” Nikonov, who had reviewed the thick files held by the organisation on Oswald.
The document states: “Nikonov is now confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”
Were the CIA warned?
The trove includes a 1978 letter sent by a man named Sergyj Czornonoh to the British Embassy.
In it, he says that he was detained in London in July 1963 and interviewed by authorities, where he claims to have told them of a plot by Oswald to kill the US president.
He claims that American Vice Consul Tom Blackshear was alerted to Oswald’s plans, who was trying to defect to the Soviet Union.
Most of the documents are not new
Many social media users have commented that many documents have already been released.
One user on X said: “Most of these documents were marked ‘safe’ for declassification YEARS ago. There is nothing here. Where are the ‘exempt’ and ‘excluded’ JFK files?”
In 2023, the US administration under Joe Biden released thousands of files on the assassination.
Journalist Ed Krassenstein added: “The only difference? The top of Biden’s says ‘2023 Release’, and Trump’s says ‘2025 release’ and the word ‘secret’ is crossed out in Trump’s release.”