Is there really anything new in the unseen JFK files? If past revelations are anything to go by, there will be juicy stories about spies, infidelity, and outlandish plots to assassinate or topple Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The FBI and CIA have repeatedly pressured US presidents to retain thousands of sensitive secrets but it’s been six decades since John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination so what can they still be hiding?

1. US spy agencies may have stonewalled Congress and the Warren Commission

Several presidents have justified their decision to delay releasing thousands of top-secret JFK files saying they must protect military defense forces, spies, police, and foreign relations. But why do they need protection? David Kaiser, author of The Road to Dallas and an ex-professor at the US Naval War College, believes the FBI and CIA may have stonewalled Congress and the courts by not revealing everything they knew about the assassination. He told Politico that the files might shed light on shadowy spy-world figures who may have plotted to kill JFK.
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2. The Watergate break-in may have been a set-up to ruin Nixon politically

Was the 1972 Watergate break-in part of a CIA plot to bring down US President Richard Nixon? Nixon repeatedly ordered the CIA to hand over files about JFK’s shooting, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis but the Agency's then-director Richard Helms refused, according to Frank Sturgis, a CIA officer and one of the five Watergate burglars. “I believe that Nixon would have uncovered the true facts,” Sturgis said in an explosive 1977 TV interview. “He [Nixon] is lucky he didn’t get assassinated like President Kennedy got assassinated.”

3. A Cuban-American Double Agent May Have Trained Oswald at a CIA camp‍

Nixon wasn’t the only president to tape conversations in the White House. JFK also recorded top-secret discussions about the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, a CIA-backed operation that led to the death or imprisonment of 2,000 Cuban exiles. Was Kennedy’s assassination payback? Fernand Amandi, who has extensively researched Kennedy’s assassination, believes the still-classified JFK documents mention hitman Ricardo ‘Monkey’ Morales, a CIA-Cuban double agent who claimed he trained Oswald at a secret CIA camp.

JFK assassination expert Jefferson Morley believes the CIA has proof Oswald was involved in a secret operations in 1963 months before JFK's death. Morley, addressing a 2022 press conference, said the operation sought to blame Cuban leader Fidel Castro for an act of violence that could be used as a pretext for a full-scale invasion by the US. If Morley is proven correct, the evidence would alter the accepted history of the presidential assassination. The Mary Ferrell Foundation, which tracks the JFK files, filed a lawsuit in October 2022 seeking to force the CIA and the FBI to release all of the classified information they hold on the Kennedy assassination.

4. Inconsistent medical reports

The Mary Ferrell Foundation, named after the historian and JFK assassination researcher, notes that Warren Report investigators never interviewed the president's personal physician, George Burkley, although he was the only doctor capable of resolving clear discrepancies between the medical reports from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas where JFK was treated after the shooting (describing wounds originating from the front) and the later reporter from the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Baltimore (describing wounds originating from behind). The resolution to this mystery may be buried in the concealed JFK files.

5. The mysterious Mexico trip ‍

In the weeks before JFK’s assassination, the CIA were following Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico but little has been made public about what Oswald did during that six-day trip. Oswald may have spent time at the Cuban and Russian embassies trying to get visas, although some believe the visitor was a look-alike. Did the CIA monitor these conversations and others? Who else did Oswald (or his double) meet? Scholars hope the concealed files will detail the Mexico trip, include internal CIA tapes and transcripts, and reveal House committee reports on the assassination.

Concealed files‍

There are plenty of additional secrets that the US government may want to keep hidden away - including whether there was an ‘ultra-right’ conspiracy to kill Kennedy, or whether Kennedy was killed because he was about to pull out of Vietnam and end the Cold War - but for now the paper trail and any ‘new’ evidence remain tantalizingly out of reach.