JFK Assassination Records

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection

John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963. Almost 30 years later, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The resulting Collection consists of more than 5 million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts (approximately 2,000 cubic feet of records). Most of the records are open for research.

There are several ways to research our collections online:

  • Search ARC for 194 Digitized Assassination Collection Documents and Images.
    The digitized documents are from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Office of the Secretary of the Army, and relate primarily to Vietnam and Cuba. The digitized images are of well-known artifacts collected by the Warren Commission, such as:
    • various bullet fragments
    • Oswald's rifle, revolver and clothing
    • the windshield of the President's limousine
    • the camera belonging to Abraham Zapruder that produced the famous moving images of the assassinations

President Kennedy

Portrait distributed by the White House, 1961-1963.
JFK Library (Boston, MA).



Online Highlights

Contact Us

  • Special Access and FOIA Staff
    National Archives
    Room 6350
    8601 Adelphi Road
    College Park, MD 20740-6001
  • Phone: (301) 837-3190
  • E-mail: specialaccess_foia@nara.gov

What's Not Online Here?

  • The majority of the records have not been digitized. Primarily what you will find here are finding aids to assist you in your research preparation.
Help Us Recover Lost and Stolen Documents

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001
Telephone: 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272