华盛顿（美国有线电视新闻网）拜登政府公布了一批秘密文件，一些历史学家和阴谋论者希望这些文件能够揭示 1963 年约翰·肯尼迪总统遇刺事件的真相。
近 1,500 份文件的发布了仍有 10,000 多份被部分编辑或完全保留。预计这将延长联邦政府和肯尼迪研究人员之间的激烈辩论，他们认为中央情报局、联邦调查局和其他国家安全机构一直在阻挠国会授权的释放。
肯尼迪的长期研究人员表示，此次释放可能不包括会从根本上改变公众对肯尼迪之死情况的理解的吸烟枪——历史学家认为，其他地方也不可能存在。
但对于许多立法者和透明度倡导者来说，按照 1992 年国会的要求，公布所有剩余的文件是为了恢复对政府运作的信心。长期以来，公众民意调查表明，大多数美国人不相信沃伦委员会的官方认定，即肯尼迪是被单身男子李·哈维·奥斯瓦尔德 (Lee Harvey Oswald) 单独杀害的。
“因为[政府]花了很长时间才把这些记录拿出来，不管结果如何，没有人会相信就是这样，”一位熟悉与这些文件有关的分类问题的官员说。
10 月，乔·拜登总统推迟了预定的发布，以“防止对军事防御、情报行动、执法或对外关系行为造成可识别的损害，这些损害的严重程度超过了立即披露的公共利益”。
他设定了两个截止日期：星期三，对于国家安全机构未提议保留的任何文件，以及 2022 年 12 月 15 日，允许其余文件经过严格的安全审查，然后发布。
一些透明度倡导者认为，政府预计在周三提交的另一份文件将比发布的文件更重要——事实上，这是朝着透明度迈出的重要一步。
拜登在 10 月的报告中表示，希望在 2022 年 12 月之后继续扣留特定文件的机构将向白宫提供“一个非机密索引，为每个此类记录确定该机构提议继续推迟此类记录中信息的原因”命令。该命令规定这些索引应与其余文件一起在 2022 年公开。
“拜登总统的备忘录强化了国会制定的严格标准，并要求各机构遵守严格的时间表和结构良好的流程，”公共利益解密委员会主席埃兹拉·科恩 (Ezra Cohen) 是一个两党顾问小组，其成员由总统和国会任命，在一份声明中说。
“PIDB 的期望是，从现在起一年后，目前保留的大部分记录将被解密并可供公众使用。”
研究人员对拜登的管理方法感到沮丧
但即使在周三发布之前，长期从事暗杀工作的研究人员就对拜登政府的零敲碎打方式表示失望。律师兼暗杀研究人员拉里·施纳普夫 (Larry Schnapf) 周二晚宣布，他打算起诉拜登，因为拜登未能完整公布这些记录。
Schnapf 此前曾就政府内部沟通提起诉讼，以支持前总统唐纳德特朗普和拜登连续推迟的决定。
“我们将寻求法院命令，指示总统发布剩余记录或披露每份寻求推迟的文件造成的具体可识别损害，以及这种所谓的损害如何超过公布这些记录的强烈公众利益——这应该在 2017 年 10 月 26 日之前发布，”施纳普夫周二在给记者的电子邮件中写道。
前中央情报局官员大卫普里斯说，由于许多有问题的文件涉及秘密的冷战情报活动，因此从理论上讲，应该隐瞒可追溯到 1960 年代的机密信息是有正当理由的。
普里斯说，那个时代的中央情报局消息来源“越来越不可能”但“有可能”仍然活着并面临泄露的风险。
普里斯说：“可能有一个消息来源仍然掌权，或者仍然直接与某人有联系，这对今天的情报收集来说是危险的。” “现在，你必须在历史利益和引人注目的公共利益之间取得平衡。”
1992 年，国会通过了约翰·肯尼迪暗杀记录收集法案，部分原因是奥利弗·斯通的阴谋电影“肯尼迪”引起的愤怒。
该法案规定，所有暗杀记录都应在 2017 年 10 月之前公开披露，但特朗普和现在的拜登在联邦调查局、中央情报局和其他国家安全机构的建议下允许多次推迟。 特朗普最终发布了数以万计的文件，其中大部分至少包括一些删节。
根据国家档案馆的数据，截至周三，超过 90% 的记录已被公开——之前已公开 15,834 份文件，但包括删节和 520 份被完全扣留的文件。 据档案馆称，这些文件中的大部分都是税务记录，包括奥斯瓦尔德的纳税申报表。 这些记录特别不受 JFK 记录法的约束。
Biden administration releases previously classified JFK assassination documents
Washington (CNN)The Biden administration has released a tranche of secret documents that some historians -- and conspiracy theorists -- hope might shed light on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The release of almost 1,500 documents still leaves more than 10,000 either partially redacted or withheld entirely. It is expected to prolong the bitter debate between the federal government and JFK researchers, who have argued that the CIA, the FBI and other national security agencies have continually stonewalled a congressionally mandated release.
Longtime JFK researchers say the release likely does not include a smoking gun that would substantively change the public understanding of the circumstances surrounding Kennedy's death -- nor, historians argue, does one likely exist elsewhere.
But for many lawmakers and transparency advocates, releasing all of the remaining documents, as mandated by Congress in 1992, is about restoring faith in the functioning of government. Public polling has long shown that a majority of Americans do not believe the Warren Commission's official finding that Kennedy was killed by a single man, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
"Because it has taken [the government] so long to get these records out, no matter what comes out, no one is going to believe that that's it," said one official familiar with the classification concerns related to the documents.
In October President Joe Biden delayed a scheduled release to "protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in the immediate disclosure."
He set two deadlines: Wednesday, for any documents that national security agencies have not proposed be withheld, and Dec. 15, 2022, to allow for the remaining documents to undergo a rigorous security review and then be released.
Some transparency advocates argue that another filing the government is expected to make on Wednesday will be more significant than the documents release -- and, in fact, is a significant step toward transparency.
Agencies that wish to continue to withhold particular documents past December 2022 are scheduled to provide to the White House "an unclassified index identifying for each such record the reasons for which the agency is proposing continued postponement of information in such record," according to Biden's October order. That order dictated that those indexes should be made public along with the remaining documents in 2022.
"President Biden's memo reinforces the strict standards established by Congress and holds agencies to a strict timeline and well-structured process," Ezra Cohen, the chairman of the Public Interest Declassification Board, a bipartisan advisory panel whose members are appointed by the president and Congress, said in a statement.
"The PIDB's expectation is that, a year from now, most of the records currently withheld will be declassified and available to the public."
Researchers frustrated with Biden administration approach
But even before Wednesday's release, longtime assassination researchers expressed frustration with the Biden administration's piecemeal approach. Larry Schnapf, a lawyer and assassination researcher, announced on Tuesday night his intention to sue Biden for failing to release the records in full.
Schnapf has previously sued for internal government communications underpinning the decision behind successive postponements by both former President Donald Trump and Biden.
"We will be seeking a court order instructing the President to release the remaining records or to disclose the specific identifiable harm posed by each document sought to be postponed and how such alleged harm outweighs the strong public interest in the release of these records -- which were supposed to have been released by October 26, 2017," Schnapf wrote in an email to reporters on Tuesday.
Since many of the documents in question involve covert Cold War intelligence activities, there are theoretically legitimate reasons why classified information dating to the 1960s should be withheld, said former CIA officer David Priess, the author of "The President's Book of Secrets."
It is "increasingly unlikely" but "possible" that a CIA source from that era could still be alive and at risk from disclosure, Priess said.
"It could be that there's a source out there who is still in power or still connected directly to someone that would be dangerous for today's intelligence collection," Priess said. "Now, you have to balance that against the historical interest and the compelling public interest here."
In 1992, Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, in part prompted by furor caused by the conspiratorial Oliver Stone film "JFK."
The act dictated that all assassination records should be publicly disclosed by October 2017, but Trump and now Biden have allowed multiple postponements on the advice of the FBI, the CIA and other national security agencies. Trump ultimately released tens of thousands of documents, the majority of which include at least some redactions.
Going into Wednesday, more than 90% of the records had been released, according to the National Archives -- 15,834 documents that had been previously released but include redactions and 520 documents that had been withheld in full. The majority of those documents are tax records, according to the Archives, including Oswald's tax returns. Those records are specifically exempted from the JFK records act.
