JFK assassination files live updates: New details reveal Lee Harvey Oswald’s connection to Soviets

Tim Naftali, a Nixon historian and research scholar at Columbia University, told The New York Times that it wasn’t damaging information in the JFK assassination files that meant they had been kept secret for decades.

It was, according to Naftali, to protect classified details about CIA intelligence-gathering – including their methods and sources.

Naftali said he found details in the newly released documents that had previously been omitted.

It includes details about the U.S. intercepting communications in Egypt, an ally.

As the Trump administration pushes out controversial policy changes, thousands of declassified files concerning the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy have been released.

While historians, journalists and amateur sleuths pour over the files looking for a scrap of anything new, many have speculated that their release is a “distraction” tactic by the administration.

The 2,200 files containing approximately 63,000 pages were posted by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Tuesday evening after President Donald Trump ordered their release.

Trump boasted of the reams of paper that would be there for all to read; the internet largely reacted with anger.

Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy, said that second-cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr and Donald Trump only care about the assassinated former president’s “carcass”.

Schlossberg, 32, took to X on Wednesday to draw a stark comparison between his grandfather and the incumbent president.

“President Trump is obsessed with my grandfather — but not in his life or what he achieved in it. No, just like @robertfkennedyjr @realdonaldtrump is only interested in JFK’s carcass,” he wrote at the beginning of his thread.

He later wrote: “JFK fought fascism and Communism. Trump is selling us out to tech warlords, at home and abroad. JFK stood behind unions and labor, demanding healthcare, higher pay. Trump is stripping working families from lifesaving care, financial support.”

Many of the documents released on Tuesday were hand-written, or blurred scans making them difficult to read.

Some were typed more than half a century ago and others had portions of scratched-out information.

The documents were largely not categorized in an organized way – potentially extending the time to analyze the files by days.

President Donald Trump’s administration has released what are believed to be all the U.S. government’s remaining classified files on the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963.

For the first time, thousands of previously unseen pages of government documents are now available regarding the former president’s violent, untimely death in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. The document dump also includes details relating to the assassinations of Senator Robert F Kennedy and civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

Two-thirds of the promised filed concerning the John F. Kennedy’s assassination have not been released, an expert on the incident claims.

On Monday, President Donald Trump promised the government would not redact “anything.” The National Archives wrote on its website that “all records previously withheld for classification” would be released.

Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit that operates a database of government records on the event, contested on Tuesday evening that only “two thirds” of the promised documents had been made public.

The ex-Washington Post reporter added that the release also didn’t include any of the recently discovered FBI files – after the bureau said it had discovered 2,400 new records related to the assassination last month – nor any of the 500-plus Internal Revenue Service records.

“Nonetheless, this is most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the 1990s,” he added in his statement.

An unredacted CIA memo from June 1961, which was sent to JFK by aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr, contained harsh criticism of the agency months after its backing of Cuban exiles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government.

Another document dated January 1962 reveals details of “Operation Mongoose,” a top-secret CIA-led campaign authorized by JFK following the Bay of Pigs to again destabilize and thwart Castro’s Communist government.

In a letter penned to the British Embassy in 1978, Sergyj Czornonoh said that he warned authorities of Lee Harvey Oswald’s plan to assassinate John F. Kennedy months before the president was killed.

Czornonoh, who claimed he was detained in London on July 18, 1963, said he told authorities – and warned U.S. Vice Consul Tom Blackshear – of Oswald’s assassination plot.

The man claimed he was provided the details by “Mr. Wasilev,” who was working at the Soviet Embassy in Bulgaria.

Czornonoh allegedly warned State Department officials on August 19, 1963, that Oswald possessed a weapon.

Despite being mentioned previously in books, one CIA memo from July 1967 released on Tuesday cited an article from the magazine Ramparts about John Garrett Underhill Jr – believed to be CIA operative, Gary Underhill.

It states the day after JFK was gunned down, Underhill quickly left Washington, DC before he arrived at a friend’s house 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,” the memo read.

Underhill told his friends that JFK “got wind” of the attempt on his life but was “killed before he could ‘blow the whistle on it.’”

On May 8, 1964, Underhill was found dead in his Washington apartment, which the coroner ruled as suicide.

According to the memo, Underhill’s friends said before his death that he was “sober but badly shook” by the president’s assassination.