Thousands of JFK assassination documents have just been made public

• Classified documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been released.
• The JFK files were released online after months of delays by the Biden administration.

Nearly 1,500 previously classified documents related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy were released on Wednesday by the US National Archives and Records Administration.

The previously secret government JFK files were released online after months of delays by the Biden administration.

That trove of documents can be viewed here.

The White House said in October that it would again delay the release of long-classified documents due to the "significant impact" of the COVID-19 pandemic.

NARA, however, said on its website Wednesday that the agency was "processing previously withheld John F. Kennedy assassination-related records" to comply with President Joe Biden's memo requiring the records be released by December 15, 2021.

The files released Wednesday are made up of documents from both the FBI and CIA, as well as other agencies. They include files specifically on Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing Kennedy.

According to the newly released CIA documents, Oswald had been in touch with Soviet consul Valery Kostikov in Mexico City a month before the assassination.

The president's assassination has been the focus of countless conspiracy theories for decades.

Kennedy was fatally shot on November 22, 1963 as he rode in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.

Oswald, a former US Marine, was arrested for the assassination, but was shot dead inside the Dallas police station by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television two days after the killing.

In 1992, Congress ruled that all government records about JFK's death "should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination."

Congress found that "only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records."

In 2017, former President Donald Trump's administration released several thousand documents about the JFK assassination.