Three days after the Warren Commission Report was delivered to President Lyndon B. Johnson, it was released to the American people and the world.
In short, the findings of the Warren Commission were, "that Oswald acted alone" and that the commission "found no evidence that Jack Ruby acted with any other person in the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald."
Essentially, the commission found no evidence to support a conspiracy to kill the president, or his accused killer -- but that didn't silence conspiracy theorists in the years and decades following the assassination in Dealey Plaza.
Despite their findings, the Warren Report was criticized for its conclusions, for conducting sealed hearings, for suspected omissions from the report and for unpublished documents related to the investigation that were ordered sealed for 75 years.
It wasn't until 1991, and the release of Oliver Stone's film JFK, that public pressure brought about change in the form of The Kennedy Act, according to a recent story published by the Associated Press.
"Congress created the Kennedy Collection when it passed the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This statute directed all Federal agencies to transmit to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) all records relating to the assassination in their custody. The Kennedy Act also created a temporary agency, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), to ensure that the agencies complied with the Act," according to a statement on the National Archives website.
As a result of that act, about 5 million pages of documents were released to the National Archives. Still, more than 1,000 records, each containing 1-to-20 pages of information, remain sealed that contain information deemed too sensitive to be released, the AP reports -- further fueling conspiracy theories five decades after the assassination.
The JFK Act required all records to be released by 2017, but it left some wiggle room for agencies to petition to have records withheld if disclosure would compromise "military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations."
At this time, it is unknown whether some documents will remain classified past 2017. For the time being, for some, many questions remain unanswered.
