The National Archives has released hundreds of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The release of 676 Kennedy assassination documents on Friday, the third so far this year, includes 553 records from the CIA that previously were withheld in their entirety.
One newly revealed document is a transcription of a calls that Lee Harvey Oswald made to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City two months before the assassination, requesting travel visas to Odessa, Ukraine.
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered all remaining records released to the public.
Kennedy and his wife Jackie are seen the morning of his assassination. The National Archives has released 676 documents related to the assassination, many revealed for the first time
Oswald is seen in custody on November 22, 1963 after Kennedy’s assassination. New transcripts reveal his calls to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City weeks earlier
He also directed agencies to take another look at their proposed redactions and only withhold information in the rarest of circumstances.
Friday’s document dump represents the first in a series of rolling releases pursuant to Trump’s directive.
In addition to the newly released CIA documents, there also are records in the Friday tranche from the Justice and Defense departments, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the National Archives.
The new Oswald transcript reveals intercepted calls to and from the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City.
In the first call, on September 27, 1963, Oswald calls the Soviet embassy and asks to speak to the consul.
‘I need some visas in order to go to Odessa,’ he says.
The Soviet embassy staffer abruptly tells him the consul is not available and tells him to call back in an hour, and then hangs up.
What follows is a mini-drama of bureaucracy that would be the definition of mundane, if not for the light it sheds on Oswald’s movements in Mexico City just weeks before the November 22, 1963 assassination.
Oswald’s visit to Mexico City from September 27 to October 2 of that year to request a transit visa from the Cuban embassy was previously known, but precise details of his activities there have remained unclear.
The transcript shows that Oswald appeared on the afternoon of September 27 at the Cuban embassy, where he requested the transit visa for forward travel on to the USSR.
Cuban embassy staff contacted the Soviet embassy asking if he had been approved for a visa into the USSR, but staffers there said they needed approval from Soviet officials in the Washington, DC embassy.
‘He wants to go to Russia to stay for a long time with his wife who is Russian,’ the Soviet official says. ‘But we have received no answer from Washington and it will probably take four to five months.’
Oswald is seen holding a rifle and communist newspapers in a backyard in 1963. The new transcript reveals that Soviet officials were dismissive and brusque as he asked for travel visas
President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Minutes later the President was assassinated
The next day, September 28, Oswald again visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies to press his case for travel documents, according to the transcripts.
On October 1, Oswald placed an additional two calls to the Soviet embassy, asking for any new information on his visa application.
The embassy staff brusquely told him there was no new information and hung up on him.
If anything, the new transcript dampens conspiracy theories surrounding the Mexico City trip, supporting the idea that Oswald’s main purpose there was trying to get his family to Odessa – perhaps as a get-away plan in anticipation of the assassination.
In the transcripts, the Soviet embassy officials seem less than cooperative and even exasperated by Oswald’s requests.
Other documents newly released on Friday show US officials scrambling after the Kennedy assassination to round up information about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City.
Officials wondered whether Oswald had been trying to get visas at the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City in order to ‘make a quick escape after assassinating the president’.
A CIA message sent Nov. 24, 1963 – two days after Kennedy was killed – says an ‘important question’ that remained unsolved was whether Oswald had been planning to travel right away or return to the U.S. and leave later.
The message said that although it appeared Oswald ‘was then thinking only about a peaceful change of residence to the Soviet Union, it is also possible that he was getting documented to make a quick escape after assassinating the president.’
