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JFK files say CIA link to Oswald ‘unfounded’

Allegations that Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the CIA are "totally unfounded", according to the latest documents released on the assassination of John F Kennedy.

Almost 3,000 documents relating to the November 1963 murder of the US President have been released over the past few weeks.

The third collection, released on Friday, contained 676 files.

Among them was a CIA memo from 1975 which said that agency records had been searched to see if Oswald, who had fired the fatal shots at the President, had been used by the agency or connected to it in "any conceivable way".

The conclusion was that there was no connection between Oswald and the agency or any other US agency.

::JFK files: 10 things the classified papers reveal

The documents are being released to adhere to a law signed by President George HW Bush in 1992, requiring all documents on the assassination be released within 25 years, unless doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.

Image:The President and his wife at Love Field in Dallas, Texas less than an hour before his assassination

Late in November, 2,891 records were released but, after requests mostly from the CIA and FBI, US President Donald Trump had delayed the release of some "sensitive" files.

Days later, the FBI announced those files were cleared and would be published with some redactions. There were 553 in the latest release that come under this category.

President John F. Kennedy's murderer Lee Harvey Oswald during a press conference after his arrest
Image:President Kennedy's murderer Lee Harvey Oswald during a post-arrest news conference

Many of them relate to a trip Oswald took to Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination.

Officials had thought he might have been trying to get visas from the Soviet and Cuban embassies, the documents show.

One document says that, although it seemed Oswald was "then thinking only about a peaceful change of residence to the Soviet Union, it is also possible that he was getting documented to make a quick escape after assassinating the president".

Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby a few days after Kennedy's death.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded Oswald was the only gunman and a 1979 congressional inquiry found no evidence to support the claim of CIA involvement. But suspicion has persisted nevertheless.

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