Week in Review: There Is Something New(s)
Two stories from the new JFK files about CIA secrecy and assassins
We’re (almost) getting accustomed to pro bono attorneys for the “lone nut” conspiracy theory proclaiming there’s nothing new to be found inside or under the redactions of newly released JFK assassination-related documents.
Since President Trump’s Executive Order 14176 went into effect, more than 88,000 pages of documents relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and his brother Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 have been declassified or unredacted and released and posted online at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee has established the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets which held its first hearing in April.
For those who haven’t yet started to read the new documents, JFK Facts has been doing that, and with additional reporting and the assistance of work in progress by the Mary Ferrell Foundation to make the document searchable, we’re beginning to publish results.
FBI takes a bow to the CIA
This week Chad Nagle reported on records relating to CIA-funded anti-Castro Cuban exile groups such as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), usually known in English as the Cuban Student Directorate, as well as the Castro-friendly Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC).
These groups are familiar to JFK researchers, who have mined previously released documents for decades. But the latest versions of these records do reveal the FBI’s undue deference to the CIA in classifying its own records on surveillance inside the United States. More than 62 years ago, the FBI surrendered its domestic counterintelligence mandate to an agency supposedly responsible only for espionage outside U.S. borders, and it did so during the first official investigation into President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and beyond.
Hit Man Pages Hiding in Plain Sight
Four days after JFK's murder, the Bureau received information that hit man Herminio Díaz was working with the Agency. JFK Facts has written that an anti-Castro Cuban exile and known assassin named Herminio Díaz Garcia had been identified by two associates as having participated in the murder of President Kennedy in Dallas
But recently, JFK researcher David Boylan, co-author (with Larry Hancock) of “The Oswald Puzzle: Reconsidering Lee Harvey Oswald” (2025), called our attention to an FBI report about Díaz, dated November 26, 1963.
On the Mary Ferrell Foundation site, that FBI document, first made public in 2017, was missing two pages. Nagle trekked out to the archives in search of the missing pages, and found them. They tell the story that informant “MM-761-S” told FBI agent Thomas Errion: “HERMINIO DIAZ is or was working for the CIA.”
Like this:
Nagle writes:
Of course, this isn’t evidence that Díaz was involved in JFK’s assassination. But it is noteworthy that a credible FBI informant said the CIA was using a known assassin as some kind of asset around the time of JFK’s death, and that the FBI later warned the Secret Service that Díaz was a threat.
Nagle provides the real name of “MM-761-S” and a link to his report — not available anywhere else online — in the story published yesterday.
Do the research!
Finally, my favorite topic: searchable databases. Jeff Morley reports on the Mary Ferrell Foundation tool that makes the new documents searchable. If you have been trying to research the new records releases on the NARA site, you know you can only search by the document number. Rex Bradford at MFF has processed them and made them available for searching by keywords here. Don’t forget to read the “search tips.”
Tweet of the week
Link to the thread here.
Thanks for the Info
what is still being withheld, and do you have any insight as to when (or if) they plan to release the rest of the files?