The US Releases 1.500 Files Inquiry Into President Kennedy Assassination: Lee Larvey Oswald Contacts Soviet, Cuban And KGB Embassies

Illustration. (Piaxabay/TayebMEZAHDIA)

JAKARTA - The United States (US) National Archives on Wednesday released nearly 1.500 documents relating to the US Government's investigation into the 1963 assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.

The disclosure of classified cables, internal memos, and other documents met a deadline set in October by President Joe Biden. And, in accordance with Federal Laws calling for the release of government-owned records. Additional documents are expected to be published next year.

Citing The Guardian December 15, there is no direct indication the records contain disclosures that could radically reshape the public understanding of the events surrounding the assassination of Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald.

But the latest documents remain eagerly awaited by historians and others who, decades after Kennedy's assassination, remained skeptical that, at the height of the Cold War, a troubled young man with a mail-order rifle was fully responsible for the assassination that changed the course of American history.

The documents include cables and CIA memos discussing Oswald's visit that were previously disclosed, but never fully account for the visit to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City as well as discussions, in the days following the assassination, of Cuba's potential involvement in the Kennedy assassination.

One CIA cable describes how Oswald called the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to request a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would allow him to visit Cuba, and waited there for a Soviet visa. On October 3, more than a month before the murder, he was driving back to the US via a crossing at the Texas border.

President John F Kennedy. (Wikimedia Commons/Gongonllum)

Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy's assassination, said according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with KGB officers while at the Soviet embassy in September.

After Kennedy was killed, Mexican authorities arrested a Mexican employee of the Cuban embassy with whom Oswald communicated, and he said Oswald had "professed to be a communist and an admirer of Castro", according to the cable.

A CIA document marked "Secret Eyes Only" traces a US government plot to assassinate then Cuban leader Fidel Castro, including a 1960 plot "involving the use of the criminal underworld with contacts inside Cuba".

Another document considers whether Oswald, while living in New Orleans, might have been influenced in any way by the publication in a local newspaper of an Associated Press correspondent interview conducted with Castro, in which the leader warned of retaliation if the US took Cuba.

The new files include several FBI reports about the bureau's efforts to investigate and keep tabs on major mafia figures such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana, who are frequently mentioned in conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination.

Despite the Kennedy investigation, some of the material will appeal to scholars or anyone interested in the minutiae of 1960s counter-espionage, with pages and pages of classified detail on such things as the methods, equipment, and personnel used to monitor Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City.

In blocking the release of hundreds of records in 2017 due to concerns from the FBI and CIA, Donald Trump cited "potentially irreversible losses". Even so, about 2.800 other records were released at that time.

To note, The Warren Commission in 1964 concluded Oswald was the sole gunman, and another congressional investigation in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA was involved. But other interpretations remain.