On October 19th, the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) filed suit against President Biden’s plan to release the remaining redactions in the JFKARC. For those confused by all this, a quick look back might be helpful.
In October 2021, President Biden issued a memo instructing Federal agencies with redacted materials in the ARC to get ready to release these by December 15, 2022 or to justify their continued redaction by jumping through an elaborate series of hoops.…
This is my 11th note on NARA 21, the updated version of the JFK ARC database (available here). See the first note in this series for more details on the what, when, why of this update.
This note concludes my look at redacted CIA documents in NARA 21. The three previous posts on this subject were two looks at short docs, and one look at mid-length docs.…
Some interesting ARC docs have recently been posted online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. These docs are records of executive session testimony before the SISS (Senate Internal Security Subcommittee), which conducted a “limited inquiry” into the JFK assassination in late 1963. The session records were acquired by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) all the way back in 1995, and are noted in the ARRB’s Final report (see here and here).…
While press coverage of the December 2021 ARC releases was mostly disappointing, NARA provided much useful information on the December releases for those who wanted to report it. This note takes a look at the good news side of the December releases, including important clarifications of the current status of the JFK Assassination Records Collection at NARA.…
For those interested, I have another article up at Max Holland’s website, Washington Decoded. The article critiques news coverage of the December 2021 releases from the JFK ARC, which had problems, as usual.
Comments and corrections are welcome here or at WD.…
This is my fifth post on NBR records in the JFK Assassination Records Collection. (See here for a general introduction to records designated NBR “not believed relevant”). The “OP” files is the largest set of NBR files discussed so far, and received much attention immediately following the 2017-2018 ARC releases. As it turned out, this attention was based in part on a misunderstanding.…
Lee Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, traveled to Mexico City at the end of September, 1963. During his stay there, he visited both the Cuban and Soviet Union embassies. Prior to one of these visits, he called the Soviet Embassy, identifying himself as Lee Oswald. This call was monitored by a teltap center, jointly operated by the Mexican and United States governments, and became the subject of several cables between CIA headquarters and its Mexico City station in October 1963, a month before the assassination of President Kennedy.…
This post reviews newly released redactions from documents related to Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), as posted at the National Archives website last December. Oswald is a key figure in Kennedy assassination documents, and the release of redactions in Oswald-related docs is always worth a close look.
The review this time is limited to LHO docs from the CIA, since these are more readily identified than LHO docs from other agencies, as will be seen below.…
An earlier post on this blog counted redactions in a set of ARC docs which I dubbed CIA short docs. CIA short docs are one page CIA docs where NARA 21, the May 2021 update of the JFK database, lists a current status of “Redact” and a doc restriction of 5(g)(2)(D).…