The Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board is not a report of findings on the assassination of President Kennedy. Rather, it reports on the work of the ARRB to find and declassify "assassination records," and on the cooperation or lack thereof it received from government agencies.

The ARRB Final Report was issued on September 30, 1998, the day the ARRB went out of existence. It describes the nature of the problem of secrecy as seen by the Review Board, and the means by which the Board defined and implemented its work.

While the ARRB's mission was not to reinvestigate the assassination, it did interview many persons and also took sworn testimony when it deemed that the documentary record could be illuminated by doing so. The ARRB's depositions of witnesses to the autopsy contained much testimony which indicted the authenticity of the autopsy photographs and X-rays, and other ARRB work has altered the debate among researchers. This Report does not reflect some of the truly stunning revelations contained in those depositions and in other files declassified under the ARRB's review.