Today’s note continues our series on whole page redactions (WPRs) in CIA documents from the JFKARC. These redactions were extensive in the 2017-2018 releases, but have been mostly released in 2022-2023. How many are left? Keep reading to find out!
The note today discusses whole page redactions in a single document referenced in the “201 file” for Silvia Duran, a file which I recently discussed here. For specifics on who Duran was and her importance in the JFK assassination story, see that note. There are controversies over Duran, including what she did and what she said. I am going to skip all of these, as they are irrelevant to the particular document we are looking at.
Given Duran’s prominence in the assassination story, especially the Mexico City side of the story, it is surprising this particular document has received so little attention. Yet in the end, it is typical of the twenty or so records in the ARC which still have extensive whole page redactions.
For those who missed the first installment of this series, including an explanation of WPRs, see here.
The Duran 201 file
The Duran 201 is available in redacted form at MFF here. This is what I call an “old CIA file.” The individual documents in the file were all later released again, and there are almost no redactions left in the file now.
The 201 was set up sometime in 1963 (the 201 request is fuzzy, as usual), and has a number of important documents in it, reflecting U.S. and Mexican interest in the details of Duran’s encounter with Oswald.
There is also a “soft file” on Duran which was put together by CIA researchers at some unknown time, available at MFF here. This is another “old CIA file” with numerous redactions, now mostly released as individual documents. The soft file is even longer than the 201 file, and includes several documents not available in the 201.
The doc we are looking at today is not in the Duran 201 or the soft file. It is represented by a form which CIA analysts filled out when they moved documents from one file to another, or when they wanted to cross reference documents from one file in another file, called a “Document Transfer and Cross Reference” form.
This particular form from Duran’s 201 is now numbered ARC 104-10169-10201; an unredacted version is available here. This form has a special stamp on it, which shows the record moved was document 1226 in the JFK FOIA record series. A number of these records were released in the 1970s, but this one was not.
In fact, the only version of document 1226 available in the ARC is 104-10437-10091. This is a record in the Russell Holmes Collection, another set of CIA docs which I discussed here. Tracking the release of this record, we can see that it was withheld until 2017, then received minor releases until it was published in its current version in June 2023.
What is Document 1226?
This document is in two parts. The first part is CIA dispatch HMMA 39809, sent from Mexico City to Miami, and dated 2 December 1970. The second part is a 47 page attachment which is completely redacted. However, the dispatch explains that it is a “target study” of someone in the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, name redacted. The study apparently includes another attachment, a log of the subject’s activities in October 1970.
Target studies are mentioned more than once in the ARC. When the CIA was looking to recruit informants and agents abroad, it would first subject them to carefully study to determine if they had access to the information CIA was interested in, to see if it would be possible to contact them away from the scrutiny of other intelligences services, to evaluate how open the subject would be to a CIA approach, and so forth.
The dispatch indicates that Mexico City was not particularly excited about this subject, and intended to focus on someone else who might give them more information on him.
We thus have a clear idea of the information currently redacted in this doc, both the target study and activities log.
The irrelevance of document 1226
It is important to underline that the subject of this dispatch is NOT Silvia Duran. Was the dispatch placed in Duran’s 201? Possible not. Going back to the “document transfer” form, this indicates at the bottom that Duran was a contact of “Jesus Cruz” and gives a 201 number for Cruz. The dispatch carries this same 201 number, indicating that Cruz was most likely the subject of the dispatch.
Duran, according to a number of sources, quit her job at the Cuban embassy in 1964 and after 1967 had nothing to do with Cuban matters. So why was this dispatch referenced in her 201? In their desire for cross-references to all relevant people in Cruz’s background, analysts apparently dropped cross reference form in Duran’s file to remind themselves that they had found mention of Cruz contacting Duran at some point earlier.
As the document transfer form shows, this is almost the last referenced document in Duran’s 201. (The last item in the 201 was a 1975 FBI doc, which was removed from the file when it was sent to the HSCA. This was a standard arrangement.)
Cruz has zero relevance for the JFK assassination, having had no contact with Oswald in 1963. Duran’s contact with Cruz must have been when she was still at the embassy. This 1970 target study is clearly equally irrelevant to Duran, a double irrelevancy.
My two cents
The 47 page redaction from Document 1226 is the fourth longest WPR left in the ARC. The MC-Miami dispatch will certainly be released in full at some point. Will the target study and activities log be released? If they are, expect to wait awhile first. The JFK Act does require some kind of balancing between relevance and classification, and in this case the balance seems heavily against release any time soon.