JFK’s nephews urge Biden to reveal secret assassination records

John F. Kennedy’s nephews are slamming the Biden administration’s decision to withhold JFK assassination records that remain under seal until late 2022 – with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. calling it an ‘outrage.’

The Biden White House released a memorandum on the records Friday night explaining the continuation of the delay, which followed a decision by former President Donald Trump to withhold thousands of records.

‘It’s an outrage. It’s an outrage against American democracy. We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government,’ RFK, Jr. told Politico.  

He added: ‘How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?’

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of longtime Biden friend late Sen. Ted Kennedy, also slammed the decision, although in softer terms.    

‘I think for the good of the country, everything has to be put out there so there’s greater understanding of our history,’ he said.

Kennedy said it was a time of ‘a lot of conspiracy theories’ and noted there is ‘a tendency to distrust government in general.’

Biden’s decision to hold back records comes after he released a trove of Sept. 11th records after pressure from families of victims of the attacks, who had turned up public pressure in advance of the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

The public comments by the Kennedy nephews come after the administration cited the ‘significant impact’ of the COVID-19 pandemic as cause for the holdup – although the pandemic only hit the US in early 2020. 

According to the memo released by the White House, ‘The Archivist of the United States (Archivist) … has reported that “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and NARA and that NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released.”‘   

The White House said Friday it would delay the release of long-classified documents related to the assassination.

President Biden wrote in a statement that ‘an interim release’ of the remaining classified files ‘shall be withheld from full public disclosure’ until ‘later this year’ – nearly 60 years after Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas in 1963.

A second batch of records will be released to the public in a ‘more comprehensive release’ in a little over a year on December 15, 2022, the memo announced. 

The memo said that the coronavirus pandemic has slowed down the process of reviewing whether redactions continue to meet the ‘statutory standard.’ 

In 2018, former president Donald Trump released around 19,000 secret files on the assassination, but withheld approximately 14,000 records on national security grounds through October 26, 2021 – which would have been this coming Tuesday. 

The deadline had been initially imposed 25 years ago by then-President George H.W. Bush after passing the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.

However, the White House said the national archivist needs more time for a review into that redaction, which was slowed by the pandemic, according to Biden’s memo. 

Biden also said the delay was ‘necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations’ and that this ‘outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.’ 

The assassination of the 46-year-old president was a ‘profound national tragedy’ that ‘continues to resonate in American history and in the memories of so many Americans who were alive on that terrible day,’ the statement said.

A 10-month investigation led by then-Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone when he fired on Kennedy’s motorcade.

But the Commission’s investigation was criticized for being incomplete, with a Congressional committee later concluding that Kennedy was ‘probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.’

US law requires that all government records on the assassination be disclosed ‘to enable the public to become fully informed.’

In the decades since Kennedy’s assassination, millions of pages of documents have been released to the public, providing researchers with a veritable treasure trove of American history, with topics ranging from the Cold War to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s slaying.  

The national archivist added that the administration ‘making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste.’