Does the key to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination lie buried in Canada's national archives?

Or is it another secret that has pitted Montreal researcher Maurice Philipps against Library and Archives Canada and the widow of a prominent former Montreal lawyer, the late Louis Mortimer Bloomfield.

One thing is certain: Whatever Bloomfield's widow is trying to keep under lock and key out of concern for "privacy and the reputation of Louis M. Bloomfield," it has left Canada's national archives wrestling with a dilemma that goes to the heart of the question of who controls access to private documents donated to the federal government.

A recent Federal Court ruling found the institution cannot arbitrarily extend the restriction on access to Bloomfield's papers well past the original deadline set by Bloomfield himself. Now, archive officials are struggling to decide when to lift the veil of secrecy on papers that have been judged of exceptional interest to Canada.

"We are in the process of reviewing the whole issue, and upon having completed that review we will make it known," Francois Gagnon, spokesman for Library and Archives Canada, said Friday.

Gagnon could not say how long that review is expected to take.

Bloomfield's nephew says he sees no reason to keep the papers shielded from public view. Montrealer Harry Bloomfield says the fight to keep his uncle's papers behind a veil of secrecy is likely fuelling conspiracy theories tying Bloomfield to JFK's assassination - theories that he says are completely unfounded.

At the centre of the controversy are 31 boxes of documents Bloomfield, a well-known lawyer who specialized in international law and was a pillar of a number of Montreal charities, donated to the archives a few years before his death in 1984.

In addition to correspondence with a number of prominent Canadian politicians and with George Bush Sr., the collection includes documents relating to a variety of charities in which Bloomfield was active, cases in which he was involved and papers related to some of his notable clients.

The one condition Bloomfield placed on the donation was that public access to the papers would be restricted for 20 years after his death. Members of the public who wanted to consult the Bloomfield Collection would have to obtain the permission of Bloomfield's widow, Justine Stern Bloomfield Cartier.

Philipps, author of the book De Dallas a Montreal (From Dallas to Montreal), which explores a possible Montreal connection to JFK's 1963 assassination in Dallas, stumbled on a reference to the Bloomfield connection in the mid-1990s and was intrigued - particularly given allegations advanced by some JFK conspiracy theorists that tied Bloomfield to the shooting, a shadowy international company called Permindex, the CIA and the agency that preceded it, the OSS.

While the conspiracy theory connection between Bloomfield and JFK's assassination is a complex one and has evolved over time, it appears to stem from the fact that he was named as a major shareholder in Permindex. There are allegations that Permindex was a front or shell company for the CIA and was used to funnel money for intelligence operations.

While Philipps does not believe the papers implicate Bloomfield in the shooting - in fact, he thinks they may clear Bloomfield's name - he says they might contain clues that could help shed light on JFK's assassination.

In 2004, however, just as the 20-year restriction was coming to an end and Philipps applied in writing for access to the collection, he was told the archives had extended the restriction on access at the request of Mrs. Bloomfield, who was still alive, until 25 years after her death.

When chief archivist Ian Wilson rejected his request to review the decision, Philipps took his case to court, saying the archives should respect Bloomfield's own wishes for a 20-year delay.

Lawyers for the archives argued the terms of Bloomfield's donation allowed his widow to extend the length of the restriction.

In his ruling, rendered in November and made public this month, Judge Simon Noel ruled that the donor's original wishes should be taken into account and the archives' view that Bloomfield's widow had a right to revise the terms of the restriction on his papers was an error in law. He ordered the archives to review the decision.