Secret files concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will not be released to the public by next week after all. The national archivist asked for more time to review them, White House officials announced, blaming the delay in part on the pandemic, CBS reports. President Biden issued a statement calling postponement "necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations." The files will instead be released in two installments, per the Washington Post.
The first will take place on Dec. 15, the White House said. The other records will be released on Dec. 15, 2022, after an "intensive 1-year review"—almost 60 years after Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas. The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 mandated that all the documents be made public by October 2017, though it permitted delays for documents whose national security issues outweighed public interest. Former President Donald Trump released some of the records in 2017 but cited national security grounds in holding back others. Biden's statement conceded that the case for keeping them secret "has only grown weaker with the passage of time."
The editor of JFKFacts.org, who once sued the CIA for assassination documents, said it's clear the Biden administration isn't going to follow the law. Calling Biden's statement a "COVID dog ate my homework" excuse, Jefferson Morley said Congress should intervene. A group of House members wrote Biden this month calling on him to release the 520 documents that are still secret and 15,834 others that have been made public but include redactions. "Excessive secrecy surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination continues to inspire doubt in the minds of the American public and has a profound impact on the people’s trust in their government," they wrote. (More Kennedy assassination stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
