This note looks at a record that was over 95% redacted in 2023, and is now released in full. What is its significance for assassination research? See my two cents below.
Background
The final release of ARC 104-10437-10091 is worth at least a cheer and a half. This 49 page record had only two pages released in 2023, and even those two had several important items redacted. The other 47 pages were blankness. This page total put it at #4 on the WPR top ten list.
In fact, by 2023, this was the most redacted document in the ARC, in terms of percentage of unreleased text. Of course in 2022 and earlier, it was left in the dust by the WIROGUE 201 files, where only one or two pages were released out of several hundred.
Now the whole record is available in full, another victory for transparency.
So what is this record, and why is it in the ARC? This record was the subject of an earlier note, available here, which tried to answer both these questions. How do my guesses stand up? Read on to find out.
What is this record?
ARC 104-10437-10091 is a 1970 dispatch with a 47 page attachment. The dispatch tells us that the attachment is a “target study.” As my previous note explained, the CIA conducts “target studies” on people before it attempts to recruit them as informants, agents, or assets.
The 2023 version of the dispatch concealed the subject of this target study, but based on reference numbers in other documents, I guessed that the subject was Jesus Cruz, an employee of the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. This turned out to be correct: the study subject is in fact Jesus Cruz Gonzalez, the Cuban press attache in Mexico city during this period.
Target studies are mentioned in other documents in the ARC, but I’m not aware of anything like this release. The study surveys an amazing volume of information about Cruz, his wife, their colleagues, and their families.
The information was gathered from the CIA’s comprehensive intelligence collection activities in Mexico City, including teltaps, physical surveillance, trash rummaging, assets in all kinds of places, and liaison information, all carefully sifted for info on Cruz and his wife.
Despite this all out effort, CIA decided that it was not safe at this point to approach Cruz.
Why did this record have so many whole page redactions? Redaction is supposed to identify patches of sensitive info to withhold and non-sensitive information to release, a process called “segregating”.
In this case, however, the entire document is a detailed recitation of intelligence sources and methods in every paragraph. Not only are the sources sensitive, many of the questions posed and problems considered will no doubt be of interest to Cuban counter-intelligence officers, even today.
If you think I have mixed feelings about releasing the study, you are right. This is essentially a detailed description of how CIA targets people for recruitment. Releasing it will help ensure that CIA does not do that any more. Transparency has a price.
Why is this record in the ARC?
In my previous note, I offered some speculation about why this record was in the collection. The super-super-short version: it was referenced in the 201 file of Silvia Duran, a record of much interest for JFK assassination researchers.
I don’t believe the 47 page study was incorporated in Duran’s 201, but there was a cross-reference form in her 201 to the dispatch transmitting the study.
For some reason, perhaps because of a document series CIA was putting together in the mid 1970s, CIA researcher Russell Holmes probably found the lengthy attachment from the 201 file for Cruz by using the cross reference.
When Holmes’ entire doc collection was declared an assassination record, this irrelevant record was swept in, along with many other obscure and occasionally irrelevant records.
Was there some sort of connection between Cruz and Duran? In fact, page 27 of the target study says that in September 1968 “One Silvia called and left word she would meet Cruz for Sunday breakfast at Sanborns on Durango. (May be clandestine contact by Silvia Duran.)”
This one reference would hardly be sufficient reason to add the whole study to Duran’s file, but it might explain the cross reference. If that’s all the evidence there is for a connection between Cruz and Duran, color me unimpressed.
My two cents
This is yet another record that people interested in intelligence matters will find fascinating, while people interested in the JFK assassination will find it of no interest at all.
It is forceful proof that “extensive redactions” do not equal “concealing assassination info.”