The report by the assassinations records review board, to be officially released today, blames the government's past and current ``excessive classification'' or the mistrust of the US public.

``Thirty years of government secrecy,'' the citizens' commission said in its report, ``led the American public to believe that the government had something to hide.''

The five-member panel -- a federal judge, three historians and one archivist -- was appointed by Congress in 1992 after Oliver Stone's movie JFK supporting a conspiracy triggered a huge controversy.

It was given unprecedented power to review and release secret records. In six years it has made public more than 60,000 secret documents -- some four million pages -- on the Kennedy assassination.

The review board saidthe public had reasons for not trusting the 1964 Warren Commission report, which attributed Kennedy's murder to a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Warren Commission worked in secrecy, sealed many of its records, mis-stated some evidence and was denied some facts, the IEW board said in its report.

In its work on the Kennedy assassination, the review board said it confronted a Cold War culture of secrecy. Countless records were withheld from the public unnecessarily, it added.

The panel called on the government to change the ``current practice of excessive classification'' of historical documents arguing that making such material public ``is essential to maintaining our freedom''.

The documents include original notes from Oswald's interrogation by FBI agents and police, and statements from doctors who performed an autopsy on Kennedy.

They also include papers concerning a Pentagon plot to blame Cuban President Fidel Castro if John Glenn's attempt at becoming the first US astronaut to orbit the earthin 1962 failed, the daily added.