In 1962, the CIA had a driver’s license made for considered one of its officers, James P. O’Connell. It gave him an alias: James Paul Olds. We all know this as a result of the doc containing the data was launched to the general public in 2017—a part of an effort to declassify data associated to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. However now, because of an govt order from President Donald Trump calling for the discharge of all the categorised data pertaining to the incident, we all know a bit extra. It was, particularly, a California driver’s license.
That is an irrelevant element in an irrelevant doc. So far as anybody is aware of, O’Connell had nothing to do with the assassination; the inclusion of his story was in all probability only a by-product of an excessively broad data request. However there it was on Tuesday night, when the Nationwide Archives and Document Administration uploaded to its web site about 63,400 pages of “JFK Assassination Data.” Given Trump’s order, the discharge of all this data sounded dramatic, however a lot of what has been revealed is about as fascinating as that driver’s-license element. Many of those paperwork had been already public with minor redactions, and plenty of of them have nearly nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination and by no means did. This is the reason the Assassination Data Evaluate Board, which processed them within the Nineties, labeled so a lot of them “Not Believed Related.”
A whole bunch of 1000’s of such paperwork have been launched for the reason that ’90s, together with 1000’s launched throughout Trump’s first time period and the Biden administration. (That is because of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Data Assortment Act of 1992, which was handed in response to overwhelming public curiosity within the case after the discharge of the Oliver Stone film JFK.) However considered one of Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign guarantees was to launch all the remaining; he stated that it was “time for the American folks to know the TRUTH!” His well being secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—John Kennedy’s nephew—has been animated in regards to the challenge and framed the secrecy across the final information as proof to assist his conspiratorial view of historical past.
There are nonetheless some paperwork that the Archives couldn’t make public, as a result of they’re topic to IRS privateness legal guidelines or as a result of they arrive from sealed grand-jury proceedings. These could come out ultimately, however they’ll probably comply with the identical drip, drip, drip as all the remaining. It appears potential that the general public’s curiosity won’t ever be absolutely happy, not less than in my lifetime. A brand new batch will at all times come out, however there’ll at all times be one thing left.
I’m one of many individuals who cares lots in regards to the Kennedy assassination. I’m at the moment ending a e-book in regards to the case. On precept, and out of egocentric private curiosity, I agree that the federal government ought to make the entire paperwork public if it could possibly. In fact I scanned this new batch to see whether or not there was something thrilling. There wasn’t, however a few of it was type of humorous.
In lots of circumstances, the eliminated redactions reveal correct nouns {that a} reader might have simply inferred earlier than or that appear completely inconsequential. For example, there’s a 1974 memo in regards to the Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt’s historical past with the CIA. A beforehand launched model of the doc mentions that the Workplace of Finance had requested a CIA station whether or not Hunt had acquired funds from it whereas he was residing in Madrid. We didn’t know which station had been requested. Now we all know it was the Madrid station. (Wow!) A 1977 doc in regards to the New York Instances reporter Tad Szulc features a rumor about Szulc being a Communist; in earlier variations of the doc, this data was “apparently from a [REDACTED] supply.” With the redaction eliminated, we now know that it was “apparently from a British supply.”
A few of it was much less humorous. The information additionally comprise the unredacted private data—together with Social Safety numbers—of dozens of individuals, seemingly revealed unintentionally, although the Nationwide Archives website now suggests this was an inevitable results of the transparency effort. White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the issue to The New York Instances on Thursday, saying, “On the request of the White Home, the Nationwide Archives and the Social Safety Administration instantly put collectively an motion plan to proactively assist people whose private data was launched within the information.” The Nationwide Archives didn’t reply to my request for remark.
In my scan, I got here throughout the late-’70s personnel information of dozens of workers members of the Home Choose Committee on Assassinations, all of which contained Social Safety numbers. A very good variety of these individuals are probably nonetheless alive. The doc dump comprises the Social Safety variety of a journalist who was energetic within the anti-war motion through the ’60s. There are, by my rely, 19 paperwork about his private life and employment historical past; not one of the paperwork about him seems to have the faintest relevance to the assassination. Bizarrely, the brand new launch additionally comprises an unredacted arrest file for a Dealey Plaza witness who testified in entrance of the Warren Fee in 1964. This file—for the alleged theft of a automotive in 1970—has nothing by any means to do with the assassination of President Kennedy. But it’s reproduced in full and it contains the person’s Social Safety quantity and a full set of his fingerprints.
Comparatively few of the paperwork even point out Kennedy. I noticed just one addressed to him: a June 30, 1961, memo from his particular assistant, confidant, and eventual biographer, Arthur Schlesinger in regards to the rising energy of the CIA. Most of it has been public since 2018, however the model launched on Tuesday eliminated a ultimate redaction in regards to the company’s intensive use of State Division jobs as cowl for its brokers. Schlesinger knowledgeable Kennedy that about 1,500 CIA brokers overseas had State-provided cowl tales on the time—too many, in his opinion; he wrote that “the impact is to additional the CIA encroachment on the standard capabilities of State.” The Paris embassy had 128 CIA folks in it on the time, he added for example. “CIA occupies the highest ground of the Paris Embassy, a reality well-known domestically; and on the evening of the Generals’ revolt in Algeria, passersby famous with amusement that the highest ground was ablaze with lights.” Once more, that is at greatest “type of fascinating” and at most trivia. It doesn’t meaningfully have an effect on the historic understanding of President Kennedy’s tense relationship with the CIA, which may be very nicely documented elsewhere.
After many years of releases, it might be that these are the one sorts of secrets and techniques the Archives nonetheless maintain in regards to the Kennedy assassination—tiny bits of shade on issues which can be already nicely understood and boring particulars about folks whose connections to the occasion are minimal in the event that they even exist. However there’s no strategy to know till we see every part … if we see every part, if we ever can. Even then, when the rely of secret issues ticks right down to zero, how will we all know that was actually, actually all? We received’t, in fact. We by no means will.
