The “JFK Records Collection” was established by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act (PL 102-526), signed by President George H.W. Bush in October 1992. Agency records responsive to the Act were collected between 1994 and 1998 and reviewed by an independent Assassination Records Review Board, which was also established by the JFK Act.
This collection includes over 5 million pages, along with photographs, audio recordings, and artifacts, housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The vast majority of this material was declassified at the outset, with the understanding that, over time, further information within the JFK collection that had initially required continued protection on national security grounds would be made available to the public.
The PIDB long advocated for the additional release of this still classified information, urging agencies, and advising President Biden to pursue a fulsome release of this material, as well as more direct public access to these records via the digitization and online publication of the JFK Collection. Following President Trump’s Executive Order 14176 in January 2025, the National Archives engaged with agencies across the federal government on the removal of remaining redaction on JFK Collection records and prioritized the digitization of all records in the collection, a process that members of the PIDB got to see firsthand in a recent visit to College Park.
As of March 18, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection have been released. These records, which are a subset of the total collection, are available to access online, at the link above, or are available for in-person review at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, while full digitization of the JFK collection continues.