Category Archives: Record issues

These notes discuss problems with individual records, as opposed to problems that affect all records from an agency, or problems that affect the entire Collection.

The FBI issues a blank page

Continuing with my short posts on oddball releases, the specimen for today is record number 124-10289-10167, released in 2022, and which is, as the title indicates, a blank page. This note attempts to explain why the FBI issued a content free record. It may seem exotic to you newbies, but I’ve seen at least one other instance of this before.…

Siamese twin records

This note is really for my own reference, but may be helpful for one or two other people, somewhere, somehow.

Ever see a peanut M&M with two peanuts? If you have, that is what a siamese twin record is. The case I am looking at in this note is the 2023-06-28 release of record 124-10328-10029, with 31 pages (available here).…

December 2022 “duplicate records”: Note 3

This note covers one final case of multiple pdfs posted at NARA under one record number. Like the other cases discussed in the previous two notes (available here and here), this note involves CIA info in FBI records. Unlike the previous notes, this time I go into problems in the 2022 CIA document index which I have tried to use to explain things.…

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.”…

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.…