JFK assassination files released on Thursday mentioned a death threat against Lee Harvey Oswald the day before he was killed by Jack Ruby, deals to kill Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders, and even the search for a mysterious stripper, according to news sites digging through the more than 2,000 documents.
However, the most interesting revelations may yet be to come because President Donald Trump has withheld some of the most sensitive documents on President John F. Kennedy's assassination for at least another six months at the request of the CIA, FBI and other agencies, The Washington Post reported.
Here are five of the most riveting details released so far:
1. Oswald talks to KGB officer in Mexico City: CNN reported a CIA said Oswald talked with Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, an "identified KGB officer" "in broken Russian" on Sept. 28, 1963, at the Russian embassy in Mexico, two months before the assassination. The memo's writer said he was told by an FBI liaison officer that the bureau believed Oswald was there to get support for a passport or visa.
2. Naming a price for Fidel Castro's assassination: The Washington Post said a 1964 FBI memo described a meeting in which Cuban exiles tried to set a price on the heads of Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "It was felt that the $150,000.00 to assassinate Fidel Castro plus $5,000 expense money was too high," the memo said. The exiles agreed at a later meeting on $100,000 for Fidel, $20,000 for Raul and $20,000 for Guevara.
3. FBI receives a death threat on Oswald the day before his death: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover said in a document dated Nov. 24, 1963, that the FBI Dallas office received a call from a man saying that he was a member of a committee to kill Oswald, per CNN. Hoover went on the say in the memo that even though the FBI pressed the Dallas police chief to protect Oswald, Jack Ruby was still able to shoot him at near point-blank range. "Ruby says no one was associated with him and denies having made the telephone call to our Dallas office last night," Hoover said in the memo.
4. FBI searches for a stripper named Kitty: The Post said the agency was interested in the stripper in New Orleans because of her association with Ruby, a nightclub owner at the time he shot Oswald. Leon Cornman, business agent with the American Guild of Variety Artists in New Orleans, told the FBI that "the only stripper he knew by the name of Kitty who worked in New Orleans was Kitty Raville," who he said committed suicide in New Orleans in August or September 1963," per the report.
5. Soviets believe Kennedy's death was "organized conspiracy": According a then top secret memo Hoover forwarded to the White House shortly after Kennedy's assassination, a source told the agency that the Soviet Union believed the death was a conspiracy of the "ultraright" in the U.S. as a coup, CNN said. "They seem convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part," the memo said, per CNN.