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 information associated to the Kennedy assassination are right here and consultants have had time to undergo them. The information didn’t give us proof that anybody apart 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 companies operated throughout the Chilly Battle.

The information are a wealth of details about the CIA’s tradecraft, together with revelations in regards to the so-called “Household Jewels.” The CIA has finished plenty of unlawful stuff and isn’t alleged to function inside america. A report about these unlawful operations and the way they functioned from 1959 to 1973 was referred to as “The Household Jewels.” We’ve seen a few of it earlier than, and a few of it with heavy redactions. Due to this launch of information, we all know much more.

Right here’s all essentially the most attention-grabbing stuff we’ve seen this week within the JFK information.

A number of what’s within the information is simply stuff that was beforehand redacted. X account @420joke has saved up a operating listing of information 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 skilled and examined in america to hold small intelligence amassing packages corresponding 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 hanging sentences that described how this particular person led a group that ‘conceived and developed’ using ‘fluoroscopic scanning’ and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to ‘detect hidden technical listening gadgets’ for the primary time.”

The Washington Publish ran a roundup of its favourite revelations. In one of many extra petty CIA operations the Publish discovered, the Company tainted 800 luggage 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 is just not in any sense harmful to well being, it’s so sturdy 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 Publish additionally detailed the huge quantity of private data that was uploaded within the information unredacted. Because the information trickled out, a number of individuals observed that the social safety numbers of dwelling individuals had been current inside them. In response to The Publish, the whole variety of social safety numbers is greater than 400.

The information 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 may be very a lot alive. “Good lord, authorities doing silly issues as ordinary,” he told the Post when it contacted him.

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

Essentially the most complete and attention-grabbing breakdown of the JFK information is occurring 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 means of these paperwork like no different group can and its work on the topic is the perfect I’ve seen so far.

Among the many new information is a 1961 CIA Inspector General’s report on the assassination of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Thanks to those information 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 response to 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 can 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 in regards to 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 at the moment 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.