The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is one of the most significant events in American history. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party. The motorcade route through Dealey Plaza was planned in advance, and Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, along with Texas Governor John Connally, were riding in an open-top convertible limousine when the shots were fired.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested and charged with the assassination. Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later, on November 24, while in police custody, before he could be tried. This series of events triggered numerous conspiracy theories about the assassination, as Oswald was never able to testify or be tried in court.
In the wake of the assassination and Oswald’s death, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, more commonly known as the Warren Commission, named after its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren Commission was tasked with investigating the circumstances of JFK’s assassination and Oswald’s role in it. After months of investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy and that there was no credible evidence of a conspiracy, either domestic or international, in the assassination. The Commission’s findings, however, have been controversial and the subject of criticism and skepticism.
In 1992, in response to the ongoing public interest and skepticism towards the official narrative of JFK’s assassination, the U.S. Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. This Act mandated the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent agency that was tasked with re-examining the assassination and declassifying records related to it.
While the ARRB did not come to any definitive conclusions about the assassination, its work helped to shed new light on the events surrounding JFK’s death and sparked renewed public interest in the assassination.
In recent years, The Black Vault has collected hundreds of thousands of pages related to the JFK assassination. These documents are freely available for download below.
In June of 2021, NARA released to The Black Vault all drafts of the, “Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Continuing Obligations of the CIA Under the JFK Act.”
Each of the indexes below have clickable direct links for the files. Or, keep scrolling, and you will find links to browse the entire collection via a directory.
The links in this section will take you to a full file listing for individual downloads of the .pdf files. If you prefer .zip files instead, scroll down for a list breakdown of .zip files available.
July & October 2017 Release
November 3, 2017 Release
November 9, 2017 Release
November 17, 2017 Release
December 15, 2017 Release
April 26, 2018 Release
ARRB Hard Drives
ARRB Emails (.pdfs) or (raw .csv files)
June 27, June 13, May 11, April 27, and April 13, 2023 Releases
March 18, March 20, March 26, and April 3, 2025 Releases
March 28, 2025 “Hidden 75” Files – Note: These files were found by X user Luis Gonzalez 𝕏 @prgrlm by using past 2023 links to bulk downloads, and guessing the URL. He found this one by doing so. As of the morning of March 21, 2025, the documents within this .zip are primarily not found on NARA’s 2025 release pages. Some were not released on March 18, but were released in part on March 20, but there were differences. It is unknown why these files were singled out, but not linked anywhere. The URL, and verified again on 3/20/25, is at: https://archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/jfk2025.zip
When some of the “Hidden 75” Files did show up on the March 20, 2025, drop, there were some differences including quality, declassification markers, and even page counts. So, I am keeping the original state of the files discovered on March 18, 2025, which when downloaded on that day, all had a file date from NARA of March 1, 2025, 3:24pm.
Download the July and October Release: (right click – press save as): [ .zip 39.1GB]
Download the November 3 (searchable .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ .zip 3.7GB ]
Download the November 9 (searchable .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ .zip 7.0GB ]
Download the November 17 (searchable .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ .zip 16.4GB ]
Download the December 15 (searchable .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ .zip 41.1GB ]
Download the April 26 (SEARCHABLE .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ JFK-April2018.zip 38.5GB ]
Or for a smaller, segmented download (but is not searchable) I have left the following .zip files available for download:
Download the April 26 (non-searchable .pdf) Release: (right click – press save as): [ jfk201804a.zip 1.1GB | jfk201804b.zip 1.0GB | jfk201804c.zip 1.2GB | jfk201804d.zip 1.1GB | jfk201804e.zip 1.15GB | jfk201804f.zip 1.4GB | jfk201804g.zip 1.1GB | jfk201804h.zip 0.95GB | jfk201804i.zip 1.1GB | jfk201804j.zip 1.1GB | ]
Download the December 15, 2021, (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the December 15, 2022, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the December 15, 2022, (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the June 27, June 13, May 11, April 27, and April 13, 2023 (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the June 27, June 13, May 11, April 27, and April 13, 2023 (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 18, 2025, (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 18, 2025, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 18, 2025 “Hidden 75” Files, (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 18, 2025 “Hidden 75” Files, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 20, 2025, SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 20, 2025, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 26, 2025, SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the March 26, 2025, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the April 3, 2025, SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Download the April 3, 2025, (Non-processed, non-searchable [original release from NARA].pdf files) Release: (right click – press save as): [
Although I have filed multiple FOIA requests to multiple agencies, the below are the only records to have come back: Please Note: The FBI acknowledges that there is a nearly 18,000 page FBI file on Johnny Roselli, however, there are enormous fees to go along with obtaining the file. $530 to obtain the records on CD while a printed copy would cost $1,769.40. If anyone would like to sponsor the rest of this file, I would put all 18,000 pages on The Black Vault and archive it here for research. |
Harold Weisberg (April 8, 1913 – February 21, 2002) served as an Office of Strategic Services officer during World War II, a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, an investigator for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties, and a U.S. State Department intelligence analyst who devoted 40 years of his life to researching and writing about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He wrote ten self-published and published books and approximately thirty-five unpublished books related to the details for those assassinations, mostly with respect to Kennedy’s assassination. Weisberg was a strong critic of the Warren Commission report and of the methods used in investigating President Kennedy’s murder. In this regard, he was avant-garde, embarking on a course that many other conspiracy theorists would later come to follow. Weisberg is best known for his seminal work, Whitewash, where he wrote: “Following thousands of hours of research in and analysis of the vast, chaotic, deliberately disorganized, padded and largely meaningless 26 volumes of the testimony and exhibits of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its 900-page Report – millions of words of which are not needed and are merely diversionary – I published the results of my investigation in a book, Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report. In this book, I establish that the inquiry into the assassination was a whitewash, using as proof only what the Commission avoided, ignored, misrepresented and suppressed of its own evidence.” On February 21, 2002, Weisberg died of cardiovascular disease at his home in Frederick, Maryland. |
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 created the Assassination Records Review Board as an independent agency to re-examine for release the assassination-related records that federal agencies still regarded as too sensitive to open to the public. The Board finished its work on September 30, 1998, issued a final report, and transferred all of its records to the National Archives and Records Administration.
The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy that had taken place on November 22, 1963. Its 889-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964 and made public three days later. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Governor John Connally and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later. The Commission’s findings have proven controversial and have been both challenged and supported by later studies.
The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson’s presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance. One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears proved valid. (Source: Wikipedia)
This post was published on April 7, 2025 12:00 pm
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