Right here’s All of the Most Attention-grabbing Stuff We Noticed within the JFK Recordsdata This Week

The Trump administration’s promised launch of recordsdata associated to the Kennedy assassination are right here and consultants have had time to undergo them. The recordsdata didn’t give us proof that anybody aside from Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, however they’ve revealed a wealth of beforehand unknown details about how the federal government and its spy businesses operated throughout the Chilly Warfare.

The recordsdata are a wealth of details about the CIA’s tradecraft, together with revelations concerning the so-called “Household Jewels.” The CIA has carried out quite a lot of unlawful stuff and isn’t alleged to function inside the US. A report about these unlawful operations and the way they functioned from 1959 to 1973 was known as “The Household Jewels.” We’ve seen a few of it earlier than, and a few of it with heavy redactions. Because of this launch of recordsdata, we all know much more.

Right here’s all essentially the most fascinating stuff we’ve seen this week within the JFK recordsdata.

A whole lot of what’s within the recordsdata is simply stuff that was beforehand redacted. X account @420joke has saved up a operating listing of recordsdata they’ve seen the place redactions are eliminated and it’s a fascinating thread. One beforehand redacted file detailed how the CIA tried to coach birds for home surveillance operations. “Birds have been educated and examined in the US to hold small intelligence gathering packages equivalent to audio surveillance gadgets,” the file said.

Small thread of issues that the federal government beforehand thought was value redacting, beginning with particulars about these home surveillance applications pic.twitter.com/RZ0YmO0aRF

— rush (@420joke) March 19, 2025

Steven Portnoy at ABC Audio discovered an internal CIA memo from 1966 about spies. “It recommends a ‘certificates of distinction’ for a CIA official who led the spy company’s technical division,” Portnoy stated. “Earlier releases of the identical doc contained redactions placing sentences that described how this particular person led a group that ‘conceived and developed’ the usage of ‘fluoroscopic scanning’ and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to ‘detect hidden technical listening gadgets’ for the primary time.”

The Washington Submit ran a roundup of its favourite revelations. In one of many extra petty CIA operations the Submit discovered, the Company tainted 800 baggage of uncooked sugar shipped from Cuba to the Soviet Union. Why? To make it style gross. This was in 1962.

“The contaminate we used will give the sugar an ineradicable sickly bitter style which no course of will take away,” the CIA stated. “The contaminate will not be in any sense harmful to well being, it’s so robust to the state that it ruins the state of the buyer for any meals or drink for a substantial time.” The CIA stated this spoiled sugar would price the Soviet Union between $350,000 and $400,000.

The Submit additionally detailed the huge quantity of non-public info that was uploaded within the recordsdata unredacted. Because the recordsdata trickled out, a number of individuals seen that the social safety numbers of dwelling individuals had been current inside them. In line with The Submit, the full variety of social safety numbers is greater than 400.

The recordsdata contained the social safety numbers of spies, legal professionals, legislators, and former Congressional staffers. One of many individuals doxxed was Christopher Pyle, a former Military officer and whistleblower who ended up on President Nixon’s listing of personal enemies. Pyle could be very a lot alive. “Good lord, authorities doing silly issues as typical,” he told the Post when it contacted him.

An nameless White Home official advised the Submit that the individuals they doxxed would get free credit score monitoring.

Essentially the most complete and fascinating breakdown of the JFK recordsdata is going on on the National Security Archive (NSA), a non-profit at George Washington College that archives and researches authorities secrets and techniques and paperwork. The NSA has the institutional data and coaching to work by way of these paperwork like no different group can and its work on the topic is one of the best I’ve seen to this point.

Among the many new recordsdata is a 1961 CIA Inspector General’s report on the assassination of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Thanks to those recordsdata we now know the names of the CIA officers who had been concerned within the plot to kill Trujillo.

The NSA additionally highlighted a doc from the “Household Jewels” that detailed CIA counterintelligence operations against allies in D.C. In line with the file, CIA brokers broke into the French Consulate and stole paperwork. It additionally urged that former CIA chief John McCone had dealings with the Vatican that had been inappropriate.

The memo was written by agent Walter Elder and meant for then CIA chief Walter Colby. “Lastly, and this may mirror my Center Western Protestant upbringing,” Elder stated within the memo. “McCone’s dealings with the Vatican, together with Pope John XXVIII and Pope Paul VI, would and will increase eyebrows in sure quarters.”

One other fascinating tidbit comes from a word to JFK on the day of his inauguration. White Home aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. advised his boss one thing disturbing concerning the CIA. According to the aide, “47 % of the political officers serving in United States embassies had been CAS,” which means they had been spies. Within the Paris embassy alone the CIA had 123 spies working as diplomats. “CIA in the present day has almost as many individuals undercover abroad as [the State Department—3900 to 3700.”

There will, no doubt, be more controversies and revelations as historians and scholars continue to work through the JFK files.