Assassination of John F. Kennedy Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===JFK Act and Assassination Records Review Board=== {{Main|President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992}} [[File:Oliver Stone 01.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|left|alt=A portrait of Oliver Stone|[[Oliver Stone]]'s 1991 film ''[[JFK (film)|JFK]]'' spurred the "[[President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992|JFK Act]]", which mandated the release of all relevant classified files.]] In 1991, [[Oliver Stone]]'s film ''[[JFK (film)|JFK]]'' renewed interest in the assassination and particularly in the still-classified files relating to the killing. In response, Congress passed the [[President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992|JFK Records Act]], which called for the National Archives to collect and release all assassination-related documents within 25 years.<ref>[[#AARBR|Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board]], p. xxiii.</ref><ref name="2017a"/><ref>[[#Hornaday|Hornaday (2021)]]</ref> The act also mandated the creation of an independent office, the [[Assassination Records Review Board]], to review the submitted records for completeness and continued secrecy. From 1994 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents comprising over 4 million pages.<ref>[[#AARBR|Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board]], Chapter 4.</ref><ref>[[#Unlock|Tunheim (2000)]].</ref> A 1998 staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records may not be of Kennedy's brain, reportedly showing much less damage than Kennedy sustained. Dr. Boswell refuted these allegations.<ref>[[#Lardner|Lardner Jr. (1998)]].</ref> The board also found that, conflicting with the photographic images showing no such defect, several witnesses (at both Parkland hospital and the autopsy) remembered a large wound in the back of Kennedy's head.<ref>[[#Stone|Stone (2013)]]</ref> The board, and board member Jeremy Gunn, stressed the problems with witness testimony, urging people to weigh all of the evidence, with due concern for human error, rather than take single statements as "proof" for one theory or another.<ref>[[#Scientists|"Clarifying the Federal Record on the Zapruder Film and the Medical and Ballistics Evidence". Federation of American Scientists.]]</ref> All remaining assassination-related records were scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by succeeding presidents due to "identifiable harm... to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations... of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure."<ref>[[#Bender1|Bender (2013)]]</ref><ref name=Trump/> President [[Donald Trump]] said in October 2017 that he would not block the release of documents,<ref name=Trump>[[#Trump|"Trump has no plan to block scheduled release of JFK records". Associated Press.]]</ref> but in April 2018—the deadline he set to release all JFK records—Trump blocked the release of some records until October 2021.<ref>[[#Shapira|Shapira (2018)]]</ref><ref name="2017a">[[#2017|"National Archives Releases JFK Assassination Records". The National Archives.]]</ref> President [[Joe Biden]], citing the [[COVID-19 pandemic]], delayed the release further,<ref>[[#Bender1|Bender (2021)]]</ref><ref>[[#Biden|"Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy". The White House.]]</ref> before releasing 13,173 unredacted documents in 2022.<ref name="matza">[[#Matza|Matza (2022)]]</ref> A second group of files were unsealed in June 2023, at which point 99 percent of documents had been made public.<ref name="matza"/><ref>[[#June2023|Fossum (2023)]]</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page