There’s nothing like a big anniversary to galvanize the gatekeepers of history into action. Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, we are finally going to get to see the personal notes and records of Robert F. Kennedy, which have been held hostage to a long-running ownership dispute between RFK’s family and the National Archives. 

Bobby Kennedy served as his brother Jack’s closest adviser and alter ego during the crisis, which brought the world the closest we have ever come to nuclear destruction. His contemporaneous notes will examined closely by historians as a unique window into the thinking of the late president as he sought to avoid nuclear war and negotiate a diplomatic solution with his Soviet opposite number, Nikita Khrushchev.

JFK Library officials in Boston plan to put hundreds of previously withheld documents online Thursday morning, prior to a conference of missile crisis experts that the library is hosting on Sunday. The new documents include memos between the two brothers written during the so-called “thirteen days” that marked the peak of the crisis between October 16 and October 28 1962, when Khrushchev finally agreed to withdraw his missiles....