After a string of records unrelated to the JFK assassination, I finally get to write about a release that is highly relevant to the JFK assassination: ARC 104-10535-10001, aka “SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE PACKAGE” (SIP).
What is the SIP?
Like more than one record in the ARC, it is not clear at first glance what the SIP is. Surprisingly, I found the answer to this question in a document outside the collection.
This outside document came from journalist and author Gus Russo, a longtime student of the JFK assassination. In December 2021, Russo posted a declassified, 112 page version of the file on Lee Oswald compiled by Direccion Federal de Seguridad (DFS), the former security service of the Mexican government.
In an accompanying article posted at Dale Myers’ blog, Secrets of a Homicide, Russo explains how he acquired the file, and links to the file itself.
The file (naturally all in Spanish) is important reading for anyone interested in Oswald’s trip to Mexico City. Its relevance for today’s note is that the last few pages of the DFS file (pp 109-11) are identical to the first three pages of the SIP.
After spending some time comparing these two compilations, I think it is very likely that Russo’s DFS file and the SIP are both excerpts from the same government file.
Both compilations include duplicates of Mexican government documents. For example, the DFS file includes the 10 page summary of the first DFS interrogation of Silvia Duran (pp. 29-38). This summary is available in several documents in the ARC.
On the other hand, official forms included in the SIP, such as Oswald’s bus itinerary, are well known documents, and were even included in the Warren Commission volumes.
Neither the DFS file nor the SIP have attracted much attention. In fact, I have not seen any articles translating, analyzing, or even mentioning the declassified DFS file, even though Russo posted it several years ago. The same is true of the SIP, though this is less surprising, since 35 pages were blank, up until last month.
Contents of the SIP
I spent a fair amount of time on this record, and found it a tough nut to crack. Of course, my inadequate Spanish was one big reason, but there are others.
The SIP does not neatly divide its contents into different documents. Everything is sort of run together, except for a few headings here and there. As a result, even listing the documents in the SIP difficult, and beyond the scope of this short note.
Nonetheless, I think it is reasonable to say that the majority of the SIP material is devoted to two subjects: Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado. These, of course, are two key topics in the Mexico city puzzle.
I spent most of my time on this record going over the Silvia Duran material. The Duran material is probably a later transcription of earlier documents. This may partly account for the “run-on” divisions in the documents.
There are also at least 20 typescript pages where the carbon paper ink has bled onto the pages, making reading even tougher. Most of the typescript seems to relate to Gilberto Alvarado.
Is there new material, hitherto unseen, in the SIP? Possibly, but one must be very wary of claiming too much. I spent a lot of time going over the summary of Duran’s second interrogation on 11/28 (SIP pp. 20-24), convinced that this was new material, but it is not.
The Spanish document is available in several places in the ARC (see for example this dispatch), and an English translation of the document is available here.
Careful checking is essential before claiming that any of the recent releases have “new material.”
The other SIP
Although there is no source or date of acquisition or transmission in the SIP itself, don’t forget the preceding record in the collection, 104-10535-10000, which is also labeled “Special Intelligence Package.”
This second SIP (or first?) contains a number of hints about where these docs came from. For instance, it has a long section responding to questions from the “American Embassy” about various Mexico City issues.
The ARRB asked CIA and the State Department to make inquiries to several foreign governments about assassination related materials. Most likely the second SIP represents the Mexican government’s responses to questions that CIA or State posed at ARRB request.
A couple of the questions answered in this other SIP are important. For example:
Q: Do any wiretaps or recordings still exist from 1960-63?
A: No.
For those who understand the story, this means, “Forget about Mexican copies of LIENVOY teltaps.”
Did the ARRB see the SIPs?
As noted, ARRB asked CIA and State to query several foreign governments about potential JFK assassination records. The ARRB discusses the results of these queries in their Final Report on pages 140-142.
They discuss their requests to the Mexican government on the last page of this section, where they write: “At the behest of the Review Board, the Department of State requested the Mexican government to search its files for possible records relevant to the assassination. To date, the only records the Mexican government has made available to the JFK Collection were copies of the same diplomatic correspondence between the Mexican Foreign Ministry and the Department of State that it submitted to the Warren Commission. Copies of these communications already were in the JFK Collection.”
The diplomatic correspondence the Final Report mentions is Commission Exhibit 2020, but this is not the only thing that the WC received from the Mexicans.
As I said above, the Warren Commission also had access to some of the documents in the SIPs, specifically Oswald’s travel docs. The 10 page summary of Duran’s first interrogation was acquired by the CIA through Mexican liaison, and the WC and FBI both received copies of this. The summary of Duran’s second interrogation was also in the collection and I believe the WC and FBI received this as well.
The Mexican government later provided these documents directly to the U.S., via the SIPs. Apparently the ARRB did not know this when they submitted their final report. Did the ARRB see the Mexican responses to their questions in the short SPI? Again, the Final report suggests they did not.
Why not? I suspect the reason is that the SIPs did not enter the collection until after the close of the ARRB.
We can be certain that the SIPs were added to the ARC very late. Why? Remember that the middle five digits in ARC record numbers represent the disk number and the last five digits represent the number of the metadata entry for each record on the disk.
The record number for the big SIP, 104-10535-10001, is the last record on the last disk of the CIA collection. This has got to be late. Several of the records on 104-10534 disk, the one before this, are dated after the ARRB closed.
If the SIPs reached the U.S. after the ARRB closed, it is not surprising that there was a long delay in making these records public. Such diplomatic or liaison exchanges are almost always classified, and without the ARRB to push release through, keeping them under wraps until 2017 was perhaps the default solution.
The short SIP was released in full in 2018. Why was there a longer delay for the release of the big SIP? Well, if Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado are still alive, the Mexican government may have requested that these records be delayed until they were deceased. Perhaps Mexico had other reasons for delaying release of former DFS records.
In any case, I think it is likely that the Mexican government was consulted on the release of the SIPs and the delays in release reflect their preferences. Once President Trump came into office, liaison preferences in these matters seem to have counted for little.
My two cents
I believe there is still more we can learn from the DFS file and the SIPs. Paul Hoch reminds me that HSCA investigators wondered whether Silvia Duran had intelligence affiliations with the Cubans, Mexicans, or Americans, but were unable to reach definite conclusions. Perhaps the SIPs or the DFS file could help?
Hopefully someone with the necessary language skills and background knowledge will take up such questions in the not too distant future.