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.”…
Category Archives: Record issues
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.…
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.…
When is a release not a release?
I have been looking at the ARC 2017-2018 releases again and there are still many questions I cannot answer. One question that I am looking at now is what makes some of these documents “releases” to begin with.
Here is an example of this problem. CIA record 104-10001-10042 was released on April 26, 2018.…
Record number error in the 2018 releases
I have been looking at the ARC records released by NARA on 26 April 2018 again, and there is at least one error identifying a record.
NARA 18 lists the record 104-10012-10037; it is available here
In fact, this record has the identification sheet for ARC 104-10012-10037 on top of it, but the document that follows the sheet is not ARC 104-10012-10037.…
Two more files
Just when I think I’ve squeezed all the data out of the various sources for the JFK ARC, another drop comes out. After checking NARA’s main page for the 2017-2018 releases, I discovered that there were two more pdf files I had not previously downloaded.
The page, www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release, features a fancy html table that gives all the data from the NARA18 spreadsheet online — or so I thought.…