Category Archives: +2021 releases

Following President Biden’s memo from October 2021, NARA has begun preparing for more releases from the JFK ARC. The first new release was in December 2021, and another large release is scheduled for December 2022. Is this the end of redactions in the ARC? Read here for the latest!

Judge Tunheim’s letter to President Biden

Judge John Tunheim served as chair of the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994 to 1998, and together with the other four Board members, deserves much credit for the important accomplishments of the Board, the greatest of which was the successful creation of the massive JFK Assassination Records Collection (JFKARC or ARC), a most valuable contribution to the history of both the JFK assassination and to the historiography of the cold war as a whole.…

The next releases: A prediction

If NARA can stick to its schedule, next week we will see more redacted text released from the JFK Assassination Records Collection. Since not much time is left, I had better hurry up with my predictions of what that “new” material will include.

Calling future roulette rolls can be tricky, but I’m confident about the predictions I will offer here.…

“Heavily redacted” records in the ARC

[Note that some material linked in this post has moved from my Google Drive to Dropbox, I have changed the links and refs for these.]

This post discuses my recent attempt to count redactions in the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection (JFKARC) at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).…

Compilation of redacted CIA documents: pre-2022 release version

[Note! The compilations discussed in this post have moved from Google Drive to Dropbox. Let me know if you have any trouble with viewing or downloads.]

This post introduces a long term project which I have finally finished. As noted many times, on this website and elsewhere, there are over 10,000 CIA documents in the JFKARC that still have redactions.…

NARA 21, part 11: Redacted CIA records – long

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.…

NARA steps up

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.…

The October cables

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.…

Oswald docs in the December 2021 releases

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.…