Here’s All the Most Interesting Stuff We Saw in the JFK Files This Week

The Trump administration’s promised release of files related to the Kennedy assassination are here and experts have had time to go through them. The files didn’t give us evidence that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, but they have revealed a wealth of previously unknown information about how the government and its spy agencies operated during the Cold War.

The files are a wealth of information about the CIA’s tradecraft, including revelations about the so-called “Family Jewels.” The CIA has done a lot of illegal stuff and isn’t supposed to operate inside the United States. A report about these illegal operations and how they functioned from 1959 to 1973 was called “The Family Jewels.” We’ve seen some of it before, and some of it with heavy redactions. Thanks to this release of files, we know a lot more.

Here’s all the most interesting stuff we’ve seen this week in the JFK files.

A lot of what’s in the files is just stuff that was previously redacted. X account @420joke has kept up a running list of files they’ve seen where redactions are removed and it’s a fascinating thread. One previously redacted file detailed how the CIA attempted to train birds for domestic surveillance operations. “Birds have been trained and tested in the United States to carry small intelligence collecting packages such as audio surveillance devices,” the file said.

Small thread of things that the government previously thought was worth redacting, starting with details about these domestic surveillance programs pic.twitter.com/RZ0YmO0aRF

— rush (@420joke) March 19, 2025

Steven Portnoy at ABC Audio found an internal CIA memo from 1966 about spies. “It recommends a ‘certificate of distinction’ for a CIA official who led the spy agency’s technical division,” Portnoy said. “Previous releases of the same document contained redactions striking sentences that described how this individual led a team that ‘conceived and developed’ the use of ‘fluoroscopic scanning’ and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to ‘detect hidden technical listening devices’ for the first time.”

The Washington Post ran a roundup of its favorite revelations. In one of the more petty CIA operations the Post found, the Agency tainted 800 bags of raw sugar shipped from Cuba to the Soviet Union. Why? To make it taste gross. This was in 1962.

“The contaminate we used will give the sugar an ineradicable sickly bitter taste which no process will remove,” the CIA said. “The contaminate is not in any sense dangerous to health, it is so strong to the state that it ruins the state of the consumer for any food or drink for a considerable time.” The CIA said this spoiled sugar would cost the Soviet Union between $350,000 and $400,000.

The Post also detailed the massive amount of personal information that was uploaded in the files unredacted. As the files trickled out, multiple people noticed that the social security numbers of living people were present inside them. According to The Post, the total number of social security numbers is more than 400.

The files contained the social security numbers of spies, lawyers, legislators, and former Congressional staffers. One of the people doxxed was Christopher Pyle, a former Army officer and whistleblower who ended up on President Nixon’s list of personal enemies. Pyle is very much alive. “Good lord, government doing foolish things as usual,” he told the Post when it contacted him.

An anonymous White House official told the Post that the people they doxxed would get free credit monitoring.

The most comprehensive and interesting breakdown of the JFK files is happening at the National Security Archive (NSA), a non-profit at George Washington University that archives and researches government secrets and documents. The NSA has the institutional knowledge and training to work through these documents like no other organization can and its work on the subject is the best I’ve seen thus far.

Among the new files is a 1961 CIA Inspector General’s report on the assassination of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Thanks to these files we now know the names of the CIA officers who were involved in the plot to kill Trujillo.

The NSA also highlighted a document from the “Family Jewels” that detailed CIA counterintelligence operations against allies in D.C. According to the file, CIA agents broke into the French Consulate and stole documents. It also suggested that former CIA chief John McCone had dealings with the Vatican that were inappropriate.

The memo was written by agent Walter Elder and meant for then CIA chief Walter Colby. “Finally, and this will reflect my Middle Western Protestant upbringing,” Elder said in the memo. “McCone’s dealings with the Vatican, including Pope John XXVIII and Pope Paul VI, would and could raise eyebrows in certain quarters.”

Another fascinating tidbit comes from a note to JFK on the day of his inauguration. White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. told his boss something disturbing about the CIA. According to the aide, “47 percent of the political officers serving in United States embassies were CAS,” meaning they were spies. In the Paris embassy alone the CIA had 123 spies working as diplomats. “CIA today has nearly as many people undercover overseas 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.