On the afternoon of Friday before arguably one of the busiest holiday weekends in America, the Biden administration issued a memo announcing that due to national security, it was going to postpone the release of certain classified documents relevant to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK).
Despite the quiet announcement on the eve of the July 4th weekend, it sparked off outrage led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) who has in recent times openly speculated that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was behind his uncle’s assassination and that he could be in danger from the agency.
In a barrage of Twitter posts, Kennedy, who is gaining momentum against Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president, suggested a coverup.
“The assassination was 60 years ago. What national security secrets could possibly be at risk? What are they hiding?” he asked.
He blasted Biden for choosing the timing to cover the “bad news” he would be “maintaining secrecy indefinitely” on JFK assassination records.
Kennedy charged that the postponement was an “unlawful” violation of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated the release of all government-held JFK assassination records no later than October 2017.
The records have been kept with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The deadline to release the JFK assassination documents has been repeatedly extended including under the Trump Administration.
However, the law does include an exception in instances where the president certifies that a continued delay is “made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” and the harm is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest.”
In December, as part of a partial release of new records, Biden issued a signed agreement that the remainder would be released on June 30, the eve of the Independence Day weekend.
On Friday, the White House announced that more than 99 percent of the records have been publicly released. But in the memo signed by Biden, the president said that NARA’s acting archivist recommended he postpone the public release of “certain redacted information” in the records released back in December.
