National Archives Releases New Group of JFK Assassination Documents, December 2021 Release

Note from The Black Vault: This page is a work in progress. The Black Vault has created searchable .pdfs, a bulk file download of those .pdfs in a .zip file, and lastly formatted a .pdf index of each of the documents, complete with direct links to download each one individually.

Bulk File Download – 19,891 Pages in 1,485 Documents

Download the December 15, 2021, (SEARCHABLE .pdf files) Release:

[jfk2021.zip 1.4GB (right click – press save as)

or Browse The Files Individually]

Complete Document Index

Here is a complete document index for the release. Starting from an Excel spreadsheet created by NARA, The Black Vault formatted the list to a PDF, complete with clickable links to go directly to the document download.

Continue scrolling for more...

To view, it is recommended you zoom in with your PDF reader. Although upon opening it may look very tiny, the text will be perfectly readable when zooming in.

[ jfk2021-index.pdf 1.31MB]


The following was released by the National Archives and Records Administration. It is archived here for research purposes, and this archive will be updated to offer its own archived downloads. For now, the new release will need to be downloaded FROM NARA DIRECTLY, one document at a time. The Black Vault aims to change the accessibility of the 1,491 documents just released to have a better, easier, format for downloading and searching.

Original Press Release

WASHINGTON, December 15, 2021 – In accordance with President Biden’s directive of October 22, 2021, the National Archives today posted 1,491 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act).  Released documents are available for download.

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, established by the National Archives in November 1992, consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without restrictions on access since the late 1990s. As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 22, 2021. The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until December 15, 2022, to allow for a review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency, disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.”

As of December 15, 2021, all documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released in full or in part. No documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act remain withheld in full. Over the next year, the National Archives and the agencies proposing continued postponement of more than 14,000 previously withheld documents will be conducting an intensive review of each remaining section 5 redaction to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency. Any information currently withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not propose for continued postponement beyond December 15, 2022, will be released to the public on that date.

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This post was published on December 15, 2021 5:12 pm

John Greenewald

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