We are up to note 8 in our series on records that had whole page redactions. This note discusses a CIA record about a Costa Rican poet which previously had 17 of its 20 pages completely redacted. Now those pages are released. What was all the mystery about? Read on to find out.
“Loose Documents” on Eunice Odio
The record we are looking at today is ARC 104-10177-10225, titled “Loose Documents on Eunice Odio.” In 2023, this record had 85 percent of its text redacted. This is not quite as extreme as the “Target Study” document we looked at in note four of this series, which in 2023 had over 95 percent of its text redacted, but it still left one wondering what the deal was.
In 2025, the Odio documents were released in full. The released pages, however, were still a puzzle. It took some digging to figure out the story behind this record.
Why did the HSCA request documents on Eunice Odio?
As with several other records this series has disccussed, it helps to first find out what the HSCA wanted to know about Odio. There are two HSCA requests for information on Odio. The first one, dated 3 July 1978, is available here. The second one, dated 11 July 1978, repeats several of the names in the 3 July request and asks that these files be given “highest priority.” The 11 July request is available here.
The names on the 3 July request clarified what this request was about, and one name in particular stood out: Elena Garro de Paz. Odio, it turns out, was part of the story of Elena Garro de Paz, already discussed in a previous note on the “Tichborn” files (see here). The short-short version of the story: Garro claimed she had seen Oswald at a party given by Silvia Duran some time during Oswald’s visit to Mexico City, suggesting that Duran knew more about Oswald than she was telling.
The differing accounts of Garro’s story were one of the main subjects of a lengthy report by HSCA investigator Edwin Lopez. The report covered the minor role played by Eunice Odio, starting on page 270.
So it seems the purpose of the 3 July HSCA request was to get the documentation for this part of the report. Page 292 of the report lists the files of all of the people named in the request as its sources, and the log sheet for the Odio documents was signed by Lopez on 18 July and 21 September.
What was in the file?
In the 2023 release of this record, only three pages were available: the log sheet for the file, a cover sheet for a report by “Wallace N Madison”, discussing Report TLB-1191 from Bogota, and a reference slip, which indicated the return of “CIA Report No. DB-29871” on a Colombian police report on clandestine arms traffic in Costa Rica from 1950.
In 2025, the file was released in full. What was on the redacted pages? 1) a copy of CIA Report No. DB-29871; 3) A summary of the information in the report; 3) a copy of a 13 page Colombian police report, numbered TLB-1191, on arms trafficking in Costa Rica, which served as the basis for the CIA report. So it turns out that the pages released in 2023 actually told us what the redacted material was.
This sort of “strategic release” of descriptions for redacted material was a feature of many of the CIA records with whole page redactions.
The Colombian police report is all in Spanish, and the reproduction is of poor quality, probably from microfilm, so it took quite a while to go over it all. What does it have to do with Odio? The last few pages of the police report list several members of the Costa Rican Communist Party and their locations. It seems the Colombian investigator suspected that the CRCP were doing some of the arms smuggling.
Odio’s name appears as part of this list on page 9 of the report. She is described as “Odio, Eunice, a native Costa Rican poet and agitator, now resident in Guatemala.”
And that is all there is on Odio in the entire record. If this seems like an anti-climax, remember that the ARRB, the Federal Board which processed all these records, designated this one as “not believed relevant”.
And of course we have met this sort of anti-climax more than once in these WPR records. The “Target Study” we looked at, for example, was added to the collection because the name of Silvia Duran appeared in one sentence in that 49 page document.
Why was the record redacted?
Why were so many pages of the record redacted until 2025? The Colombian police report is probably the reason. This is foreign government information, which is not supposed to be unilaterally released.
CIA could have gone to the Colombian security service to ask permission to release, of course, but that might have been awkward. The CIA report, which is based on the Colombian report, strongly suggests that the police report was not provided through regular liaison channels. If a unilateral CIA asset in a Colombian security service provided the report under the table, it is not surprising that CIA were reluctant to release it, or even to ask the Colombians if they could release it.
It is also true that the police report is from 1950. Whoever gave CIA the report is likely long dead. Even so, why advertise that CIA had such a source? It might inspire the Colombians to take another look at more recent dealings with the CIA.
Jefferson Morley on the Odio document
The Odio documents attracted the attention of blogger Jefferson Morley back in January of 2024, when he did a post on his substack, JFK Facts, about the documents. Morley has devoted significant time over the last four years to highlighting the continued redaction of ARC records, focusing in particular on CIA record redactions. One of his articles was discussed in the first note in this series. This was a fair sample of his interests and writing.
It is by no means unreasonable to criticize the continued redaction of records almost eight years after the statutory release date has passed, but Morley frequently goes beyond reasonable critiques. His articles are often based on false assumptions, marred by careless research errors, and filled with sloppy, slanted writing.
His article on the Odio documents suffers from all of these faults. Having noted that most of this record is redacted, Morley poses a question and gives us his answer:
“Why, you may wonder, is the CIA blocking release of information about a dead poet whom the Agency regarded as an enemy back in the middle of the 20th century? How could release of such information possibly threaten the national security of the United States today?
Answer: Because the forgotten poet Eunice Odio was of service to the CIA after the assassination of JFK.
Specifically, Odio spied on a credible witness who said she saw Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of Cuban communists in Mexico City shortly before JFK was killed, a story that threatened to undermine the U.S. government’s preferred narrative of a “lone gunman.” She and another CIA agent spied on and harassed the witness.
Why does Morley think this? Because, he informs us, “The CIA has labeled the Odio file “NBR,” short for “Not Believed Relevant” to JFK’s assassination. But we can be reasonably sure that the file contains details of CIA operations. These operations almost certainly took place in Mexico, where Odio lived, and they probably involved her friend June Cobb.”
None of this is in record, as we now know. Morley apparently got much of this from the suppositions of writer Mary Haverstick, author of a biography of June Cobb, a mutual friend of Odio and Garro. Odio helped arrange for Cobb to rent a room at Garro’s house, where Cobb heard one version of Garro’s story. Cobb, it turned out, was a CIA contract agent, and passed the story to her CIA contact.
Haverstick’s interpretation, as presented by Morley, is that the documents were redacted because Odio was also a CIA agent, who planted Cobb in Garro’s house so she could “run interference on Garro in the reporting of her sighting of Oswald.” Morley found this reasonable, and wrote his article.
Unfortunately for Morley and Haverstick, their assumptions were completely wrong, as the unredacted Odio documents show.
As for careless research, Morley knew that the Odio documents included a discussion of gun traffic in 1950 Costa Rica. He found a 1950 cable on Odio which identified the Colombian police report, by number, and actually quoted the one sentence in the report relating to Odio.
Morley ignored all of this, and, for no reason that I can see, adopted the theory that the Odio documents describe Odio’s work for the CIA in Mexico during the 1960s.
One assumption Morley makes repeatedly, both here and in many other places is that “The CIA has labeled the Odio file “NBR.” This is particularly egregious. It is not just careless phrasing, further down in the article Morley says it again. “The CIA says the Odio file is “not believed relevant” to JFK’s assassination. Given the CIA’s multiple false statements on JFK’s assassination, that claim needs to be checked independently, which is not now possible.”
As Morley must know, however, the record was not designated “NBR” by the CIA. It was designated by the ARRB. Why? Because The ARRB staff and Board thought the Colombian police report was utterly unrelated either to the JFK assassination itself, or to any imaginable aspect of the assassination.
Damn straight.
The ARRB did not, of course, sign off on the 17 whole page redactions. The CIA requested that President Trump allow them to redact these pages. In 2018, Trump agreed. In 2025, he changed his mind. Having read first Morley’s article, then the unredacted Odio documents, I now say, “Good call.”