Matt Douthit, a JFK assassination researcher, posted a comment on Fred Litwin’s Youtube interview with me. I respond to Douthit’s comment in this note.
MD’s comment
Apologists: “There’s nothing to see in the remaining sealed files!”
In reality…
David Morales—61 pages still classified
William King Harvey—123 pages still classified
Anne Goodpasture—286 pages still classified
E. Howard Hunt—332 pages still classified
David Atlee Phillips—606 pages still classified
Yuri Nosenko—2,224 pages still classified
George Joannides—50 files still classified
George H. W. Bush—UNKNOWN number of files and pages still classified
Response
First, I find Douthit’s description of the records unclear. What does it mean to say “XX pages still classified”? Three possible meanings one might infer:
1) “The whole record is XX pages long and no text from it is available for public inspection.” This is certainly wrong. As I said in the interview, and elsewhere on this blog, there are no “withheld in full” CIA records left in the ARC.
2) “There are XX pages from a record, or records, concerning this person, in which the whole page is redacted.” I can’t find any records about these people which have that many whole page redactions, so again this is wrong. If Douthit has references for records which do have that many whole page redactions, I would like very much to see them.
3) “There are records on these people that are XX pages long, and within those pages there are still some redactions.” If this is what Douthit means, it’s a very misleading description. If he is referring to a 61 page doc on Dave Morales where only one or two words are redacted, he should not write that “61 pages” are “still classified.”
I am also not one hundred percent sure which records Douthit is referring to. Below I will try to pin down some specific records that match his descriptions. If Douthit would like to give better references, or if other people can point to specific links, let me know!
1) David Morales + 61 pages looks like ARC 104-10222-10019. The link here is to the MFF copy of the most recent release of this doc, which is a file for Morales from the Office of Personnel (OP), and is exactly 61 pages long.
In this release, one whole page, page 52, is redacted. Text is available on all the other pages. There are redactions on pages 14, 21, 25, 26, 27, 32, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, and 56. Most of these are single items, the majority of them seem to be his birth date.
2) William King Harvey + 123 pages looks like ARC 104-10193-10076. The link here is to the MFF copy of the most recent release of this doc, which is an OP file for Harvey that was reviewed in 1978 by HSCA researcher Dan Hardway.
The figure of 123 pages comes from the JFK database info, but the doc, as released by NARA, is 113 pages. Don’t know why, but there are sometimes errors in the “number of pages” field in the JFK database.
There are NO whole page redactions in this release, but there are redactions, mostly one or two items, on pages 61, 69, 82, 83, 84, and 85.
3) Anne Goodpasture + 286 pages looks like ARC 104-10193-10079. The link here is to the MFF copy of the most recent release of this doc, which is an OP file for Goodpasture, also reviewed in 1978 by HSCA researcher Dan Hardway.
The figure of 286 pages comes from the JFK database info, but the doc, as released by NARA, is 288 pages. Again, don’t know why, this may be another “number of pages” error in the JFK database.
There are NO whole page redactions in this release, but there are redactions, mostly one or two items, on a number of pages, including pages 47, 57, 59, 68, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 88, 91, 92, 153, 157, 161, 162, 241 and 258.
For the next three people in Douthit’s comment, the page numbers indicate he is referring to multiple records, not 100 percent sure which ones, so I won’t give the detailed response to these that I gave for the first three. I will say, however, that I looked hard for whole page redactions in the collection, and I don’t believe there are any left in E. Howard Hunt’s files.
There are whole page redactions still left in some OP files for David Phillips, but 606 pages seems to represent every single page in Phillips’ OP files, and it is false to say that these are all redacted. The true figure is more like 30 pages redacted out of 600+ total pages. Files with whole page redactions are mostly from the early 1950s when Phillips was a contract agent in Venezuela.
For Yuri Nosenko, 2,224 pages may also be intended to represent every page in the set of Nosenko files which were declared NBR (not believed relevant) by the ARRB. This set of files was largely released in 2017/2018. I don’t think there are whole page redactions left in any Nosenko files, and not many single item redactions are left either.
However, many of the Nosenko records are “previously sanitized documents” (PSDs). These are copies of documents that were redacted long ago, as part of FOIA suits or whatever, and the CIA was unable to find copies of the originals without redactions. Say what you wish about these, but both CIA and NARA count these as “released in full”.
As for records on George Joannides or George Bush, they were not put in the collection or simply do not exist. Don’t hold your breath waiting for these.
My final rejoinder
I don’t understand why Douthit would write that there are thousands of pages still “classified” in the JFK collection. Not true. Check the NARA releases, or look on the MFF website to find out the true state of these records for yourself.