Assassination Records Review Board

President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992

Other short titles	JFK Records Act
Long title	An Act to provide for the expeditious disclosure of records relevant to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Nicknames	Kennedy Assassination (Open Files) Bill
Enacted by	the 102nd United States Congress
Effective	October 26, 1992; 24 years ago (1992-10-26)
Citations
Public law	102-526
Statutes at Large	106 Stat. 3443
Codification
Titles amended	44 U.S.C.: Public Printing and Documents
U.S.C. sections amended	44 U.S.C. ch. 21 § 2107
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 3006 by John H. Glenn, Jr. (D–OH) on July 22, 1992 Committee consideration by Senate Governmental Affairs Passed the Senate on July 27, 1992 (passed voice vote) Passed the House on September 30, 1992 (passed without objection) Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 26, 1992
Major amendments
Pub.L. 103–345, 108 Stat. 3128, enacted October 6, 1994

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, or the JFK Records Act, is a public law passed by the United States Congress, effective October 26, 1992. It directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish a collection of records to be known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. It stated that the collection shall consist of copies of all U.S. government records relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that they are to be housed in the NARA Archives II building in College Park, Maryland. The collection also included any materials created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of any state or local law enforcement office that provided support or assistance or performed work in connection with a federal inquiry into the assassination.

The final report of the Act's Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) partially credited the conclusions in Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK with the passage of the Act. The ARRB stated that the film "popularized a version of President Kennedy’s assassination that featured U.S. government agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military as conspirators."

The Act requires that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full and be made available in the collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of the Act (which will be October 26, 2017), unless the President of the United States certifies that: (1) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and (2) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

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