Author Archives: Robert Reynolds

A flip flop zombie from 2023

Zombie redactions have been a topic on this blog several times. Check the search box for the various references. As defined more than once, “A zombie redaction is a redaction in copy X of a document which has already been released in copy Y of the same document, available in some other file or folder or microfilm reel.”…

Response to Matt Douthit

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.…

CIA working files and DCI minutes

This note concludes my survey of CIA record categories in the JFKARC. It is the fourth and last note in the series. Links to the series are available here. The two categories summarized below include fewer than 540 records, but some of these are quite interesting.

The DCI morning meeting minutes

From the early days of the CIA, the DCI (head of the CIA) held a meeting every morning with CIA executive officers, a practice that lasted up until the mid-1970s.…

CIA files on Oswald

This is another long-overdue note giving a brief overview of CIA files on Lee Oswald, the man who shot President Kennedy. It is the second in a series of notes on CIA records in the JFKARC. The first note, on CIA docs in HSCA records, is available here.

Note the plural in the title of this post; there were multiple CIA files devoted to Oswald over the years, as well as files where Oswald was mentioned, but was not the main subject.…

CIA documents in the HSCA records

[Corrected and revised on 1/17/24; new refs added 1/23/24]

This long-overdue note gives a brief overview of CIA documents that were collected by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), a special Congressional committee that investigated the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

During its 1976-78 investigation, the Committee acquired a massive collection of CIA records, dating from World War 2 all the way up to the 1970s.…

MFF on the 5 TPs

Now that the dust has settled from the JFKARC review, more than one researcher has cast a jaundiced eye on the Transparency Plans (TPs) filed by the five agencies that still want to continue redactions in ARC records.

Why jaundiced? The TPs give both the redactions remaining in the ARC, and the schedule for their release, and that schedule is not nearly fast enough for researchers’ tastes.…

Reconstructing the J Walton Moore OS file

This note discusses how I was able to put together again virtually all of a lengthy CIA file using both the latest releases from the ARC and bits and scraps of an ancient file from 1993.

The file

The file I am discussing in this note is the CIA Office of Security file for J Walton Moore, who for many years was the head of CIA’s field office in Dallas, including the period when Lee Oswald was a Dallas resident.…

“Missing” CIA records in the ARC (II): The DCD Garrison files

I’ve been very busy with other projects recently, so there’s been a long silence on this blog. Having a few free hours this weekend, however, I’m putting up a note on some of the work I did this summer.

This note might interest people who are curious about which CIA records are available online, or who are looking for Garrison files in the ARC.…