National Archives Releases All Previously Withheld Classified Kennedy Assassination Records

On March 18, 2025, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration released all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. The records were posted online that evening, and all of them are also available for in-person review at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas; the collection holds over six million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and artifacts, the vast majority previously released, with the withheld classified portion the last piece outstanding.

According to the National Archives' 2025 release page, the March 18 release was posted in two batches: 31,419 pages in 1,123 PDF files at 7 p.m. eastern time, and 37,127 pages in 1,062 PDF files at 10:30 p.m., for a total of 68,546 pages in 2,185 files posted that day. Digitization of the records continues, the Archives said, and records not yet online will be posted as they are digitized; further batches followed on later days. Previewing the release on March 17, President Trump said about 80,000 pages would be released, a figure stated by the President himself; in a March 27 news release, the Archives described the release as one of the largest single releases of records in U.S. history.

The release was made in accordance with President Trump's directive of March 17, 2025, in support of Executive Order 14176, which he signed on January 23. That order determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and that the release of the records is long overdue, and it directed the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to present, within 15 days, a plan for the full and complete release of the Kennedy records, and, within 45 days, to review the records of the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and present a plan for their release. The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 had required all Kennedy assassination records to be publicly disclosed in full by October 26, 2017, unless the President certified that postponement was necessary; successive administrations issued such certifications, and the release of this material was delayed for years.

The Archives notes on its release page that the records released are those previously withheld for classification in the collection; information under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, addressed in section 10 of the 1992 Act, and tax return information and certain deeded records, addressed in section 11, are governed by separate provisions. Researchers and the public can search the files online through the Archives' Kennedy assassination records pages, or review the records in hard copy and analog formats in person at College Park.

Related: Trump Signs Order to Declassify Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and King Assassination Records

(Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：位于马里兰州大学公园市的美国国家档案馆馆舍（国家档案馆第二馆舍）——肯尼迪遇刺案档案即由国家档案馆保管并在此供查阅（美国国会图书馆藏品，公共领域）。 / Image: The National Archives at College Park (Archives II) in College Park, Maryland — the Kennedy assassination records are held by the National Archives and made available there (Library of Congress, public domain).

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