Printing Office Releases Digital Version of Report on JFK Assassination

The Government Printing Office today released a digital version of the entire Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy to commemorate the 50 years since the printed version of the report first rolled off the agency’s presses.

In conjunction with the Boston Public Library, GPO first digitized and released the Warren Commission report -- named after commission chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren -- last year.

Today’s digital release includes 26 volumes of hearing records, which reproduce the text of hearings conducted by the commission, such as testimony by Marina Oswald, wife of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. In 1964, GPO printed only 5,600 sets of the hearing records and 235,000 copies of the report.

The final 10 volumes of the hearing records contain reproductions of documents entered into the record during the hearings, including correspondence from Russian agents with both Oswalds during the three years he lived in Russia after defecting from the U.S. in 1959.

Other volumes contain in-depth details on the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald fired the fatal shots that killed Kennedy. These include floor plans, a letter from then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to the commission on the weight of cartons in the book depository and a rifle ad Oswald clipped from Field and Stream magazine.

All 26 volumes combined total more than 18,000 pages. That comes out to a little more than 1 gigabyte of data – which would comfortably fit on just about any flash drive.  

GPO has bundled the full digital version of the Warren Commission report with previously released audio recordings from Air Force One and the White House Situation Room after the assassination.

The package also includes a link to a video clip about GPO’s production of the paper Warren Commission report in 1964.