US Investigated Possible Role of Soviet Union in John Kennedy's Assassination - Archives

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States investigated for years the possible involvement of the Soviet Union in the assassination of US President John Kennedy in 1963, according to published records from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

On Wednesday, NARA released an additional batch of 1,491 declassified records related to the assassination of Kennedy.

One of the published documents mentions a 1975 book by Robert Anson - “They've Killed the President!": The Search for the Murderers of John F. Kennedy” - that discusses the shooter Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Moscow, including how he managed to obtain a visa in a matter of two days while it usually took almost two weeks.

Another document dated December 1978 states that it is unlikely Oswald’s trip to Soviet Union was assisted by some Soviet officials and cannot be confirmed by the fact of the accelerated issuance of the visa.

A number of published documents detail an anonymous call made to the US Naval Attache’s office in Canberra by someone who described himself as a Polish driver working for the Soviet embassy in Australia. During the call, the individual reported on the possible involvement of the Soviet Union in financing the assassination of Kennedy.

“This individual, while discussing several matters of intelligence interest, touched on the possibility that the Soviet government had financed the assassination of President Kennedy,” a Central Intelligence Agency memorandum said describing the call.

The memorandum concluded that the call was most likely made by a “crank” and the Australian authorities were not able to identify any Polish employee of the Soviet Embassy, as well as the automobile described by the caller as the one he drove to perform his duties.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Several investigations came to the conclusion that the shots that killed Kennedy were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested shortly after the murder.

Two days later, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, an owner of a club in Dallas, while being escorted to a car that was supposed to take him to a county jail. A number of theories have since emerged to explain the assassination of Kennedy and the murder of Oswald.

Under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, NARA was required to disclose the entire collection to the public in exactly 25 years - on October 26, 2017, unless the US president decided that releasing the information would harm national security or current foreign relations.

The national archivist has since released to the public more than 250,000 records concerning Kennedy’s assassination or more than 90% of its collection.