In matter-of-fact language, a Secret Service agent's report captures the horror of that awful day in Dallas more than 30 years ago.
Spread-eagled across the trunk of a racing limousine, agent Clint Hill could see that John F. Kennedy was "bleeding profusely" with "part of his brain missing.""They've blown his head off," Jacqueline Kennedy screamed, according to Hill, as the limousine sped toward Parkland Memorial Hospital, the fatally wounded president slumped in the back seat.
Hill's report - among thousands of yellowed, faded government documents released this week by the National Archives - concludes with a description of how Kennedy was rushed into the hospital's emergency room and Secret Service efforts to contact the White House and protect Vice President Lyndon Johnson, his wife and Jacqueline Kennedy.
"What we are trying to do here is fill out, with as much detail as possible, the story of those days," said Steve Tilley, the JFK liaison at the archives. "There isn't anything awfully new here, but our mission is to make the story as complete as possible."
The archives released 224 boxes containing more than 50,000 documents from FBI headquarters in Washington, FBI field offices in Dallas, New Orleans and Mexico City, along with additional documents made available to the Senate panel that investigated U.S. intelligence operations in the mid-1970s.
The documents have been released as part of a 1992 law that requires federal agencies to disclose all records related to Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963. The CIA is still processing more than 100,000 documents and the FBI has 100 boxes of material still to provide. About 1 million documents have been released, Tilley said.
Other material released included photos of the interior of the limousine that bear mute testimony to horrors that Hill and others near the motorcade witnessed.
Bloodstains are smeared on the Lincoln's leather seats, and blood has soaked the carpeted footwells and the upholstery below the seat. A crushed, bloodstained bouquet of chrysanthemums, given to Jacqueline Kennedy at Love Field, sits on the seat near where Kennedy slumped; rose petals from another bouquet are scattered on the floor.
Accompanying diagrams show that bullet fragments were retrieved from the vehicle's floor.
The documents also feature numerous photos of a crack on the inside of the limousine's windshield, evidence that investigators used to help them conclude that Kennedy had been killed by bullets fired from the rear.
Documents that have been released since 1992 have shown an extraordinary lack of communication among the CIA, FBI and Secret Service regarding Oswald's activities in the months before the killing.
There was more of that this week. A routine file update from the FBI's Dallas field office, dated Nov. 19, 1963, notes that Oswald had been located and was working at the Texas School Book Depository.
By then, Kennedy's parade route had been published in Dallas newspapers, the Secret Service was never notified that Oswald was working there and the FBI file contains no information that the agency was concerned about the possible security threat posed by Oswald.