A nephew of John F. Kennedy blasted President Joe Biden for postponing the release of secret documents related to the 1963 assassination of the former president.
The final collection of secret documents concerning the assassination had been scheduled to be made public Tuesday however, the White House announced late Friday night that it would delay the declassification until at least Dec. 15.
The administration added it might delay the release longer if Biden decides it's in the country's best interest to keep them confidential.
"It's an outrage. It's an outrage against American democracy. We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Politico.
"How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?"
Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., cousin to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Americans have a right to know about "something that left such a scar in this nation's soul that lost not only a president but a promise of a brighter future."
"I think for the good of the country, everything has to be put out there so there’s greater understanding of our history," Patrick Kennedy told Politico.
Then-President Donald Trump postponed the documents' scheduled release in 2017.
Some historians were surprised by Biden's decision to extend the delay of the documents’ declassification, Politico said, because the president had served in the Senate when the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 passed unanimously in Congress.
That ’92 act set up an independent review board to collect and release all government files that might have bearing on the assassination, which took place on Nov. 22, 1963, when then-President John Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas.
Only the most sensitive classified documents remain classified after most records were released between 1994-98.
Experts on the assassination say the documents could have information on whether a CIA operative named Bill Harvey mysteriously traveled from Rome to Dallas before the assassination, and on the CIA's role in plots to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Historian David Talbot, author of "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years," told Politico that the former president's brother, Robert Kennedy, did not believe the official explanation of the assassination.
"RFK was the first JFK 'conspiracy theorist,' the attorney general of the United States," Talbot said. "Any serious journalist or historian who looks at this seriously comes to the same conclusion: that Lee Harvey Oswald was what he said he was, 'a patsy,' and that the Warren Commission was an effort to cover up the crime, not investigate the crime in an honest way."
The Biden White House issued a general statement saying that "the National Archives advised that their review of classified material was severely hampered by COVID-19 since classified material cannot be reviewed remotely and asked for more time."
It also promised that the "public will have access to a tranche of previously withheld records and redacted information withheld in previously released records" adding that the "Biden administration is setting up a whole-of government effort to ensure the maximum possible disclosure of information by the end of 2022."
The president's memo also directed the National Archives to form a plan to digitize the entire collection of documents, more than 300,000 records, Politico said.