Yeltsin Hands Over JFK Data

Arriving in Germany Sunday to meet with representatives from the G8 nations, Boris Yeltsin had a big surprise for President Clinton.

The Russian president had brought along documents that he said were from Russia's military, an archive concerning President Kennedy and specifically his assassination, CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports.

The documents concerned a trip to the Soviet Union by Lee Harvey Oswald, a news report said Monday. The 80 documents also detailed the Soviet government's reaction to Kennedy's assassination.

American officials refused to speculate whether the documents contained any new information on the Kennedy assassination, saying they hadn't been reviewed yet.

National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was asked if he had seen them. He said he had seen them, but didn't read Russian.

Oswald, the man the Warren Commission identified as the gunman who killed Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962.

In 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Russia's intelligence agency declassified its files on Oswald. Russian intelligence officers said at the time that the documents shed no new light on the Kennedy assassination.

Russian media reported in 1992 that the Russian intelligence chief at the time wanted to release the files but was blocked by veteran spies who feared disclosure of their names and tactics.