Social Security numbers and other private information unmasked in JFK files

Boston Globe

20-03-2025

More than 60,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination were released this week by the Trump administration. Many of the pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions. Many, but not all, redactions have been removed. The records have been posted to the National Archives webpage under the headline 'JFK Assassination Records - 2025 Documents Release.'
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The Post, in its review of the previously redacted material, discovered the Social Security numbers, birthplaces and birth dates of more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee, established in 1975 to investigate abuses by America's intelligence agencies and government. The Post also discovered more than 100 Social Security numbers of staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the killing of Kennedy. Many of the individuals are still alive.
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The Department of Justice had no comment Wednesday evening. The National Archives did not respond to a request for comment.
John F Kennedy smiles at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Bettmann/Archive Photos via Bloomberg
The release of the information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act of 1974, according to experts.
'Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,' said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. 'It's absolutely a Privacy Act violation.'
Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers.
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In announcing the release of the material Tuesday, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the roughly 80,000 pages were 'previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions.'
'It's astonishing that our personal information is now just out there for anyone to see. Someone dropped the ball,' said Loch Johnson, a retired intelligence expert and professor emeritus at the University of Georgia. 'I hope they weren't as sloppy in the JFK files with covert agents and assets overseas.'
Mark Zaid, a national security attorney who fought for the JFK records to be made public, called the release of private information 'incredibly irresponsible.'
'In some of these documents, the only thing that was being redacted for the last 20-plus years was someone's Social Security number,' Zaid said. 'It is dangerous for these individuals, who can now be doxed.'
DiGenova said he had no idea his name and personal information - including his Social Security number and date and place of birth - were included in the JFK files until a Post reporter called him while he was shopping for groceries.
'It makes sense that my name is in there,' he said, because of his work in the 1970s investigating intelligence abuses, 'but the other sensitive stuff - it's like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that.'
'It was fascinating work,' diGenova said. 'One of the lawyers on our team located the girlfriend of a mafia guy who was supposedly seeing JFK at the same time. He found her in Nevada or Arizona and got chased away by her husband. Other work we did was looking into assassination plots against Castro and people who were assets of the CIA. Incredible stuff.'
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DiGenova said the government should pay to help protect those who had their personal information released, as some companies do with credit score agencies after a data breach.
At its peak, the Church Committee had 150 staffers. According to Senate records, the select committee held 126 meetings, interviewed 800-some witnesses and combed through 110,000 documents, and it identified abuses by multiple agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service and National Security Agency.
In the unredacted files, the former Church Committee staffers' names and personal information appear in tidy typewritten columns on pages that list which of them had been cleared for 'access to classified information up to and including TOP SECRET.'
'This was in the wake of Watergate and Nixon,' said one former Senate staffer, who spoke on the condition anonymity to avoid becoming a target of identity theft. 'The whole idea was to unveil the secret, illegal activities going on.'
That former staffer, who later worked for the State Department, said she was furious at now having to worry about financial fraud and identity theft. 'It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process.'
Three other former staffers for the committee said that since learning from The Post that their Social Security numbers had become public, they had called their banks to freeze their accounts and credit cards. One had started to talk to others about whether it would be possible to sue the National Archives.
'It seems like the damage is done, but clearly we have to talk to some lawyers,' that former staffer said.
Christopher Pyle, a former Army officer, exposed the Army's hidden domestic intelligence operations and testified before Congress. He said his activities as a whistleblower landed him on the Nixon administration's 'enemies list.'
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Pyle was unaware that his Social Security number had become public until a Post reporter reached him by phone Wednesday.
'I'm fascinated that this ended up in the released papers,' he said. 'Good Lord, government doing foolish things as usual.'
Pyle said he worries the released data could hurt those who worked so hard in the 1970s to uncover nefarious government actions. 'Why did they even have anything on the Church Committee?' he said. 'I would be interested to know that.'
Jonathan Edwards, Kyle Rempfer, Alec Dent, Evan Hill, Azi Paybarah, Alexandra Tirado Oropeza, Anthony J. Rivera, Anumita Kaur, Beck Snyder, Ben Brasch, Ben Pauker, Chris Dehghanpoor, Daniel Wu, Danielle Newman, Elana Gordon, Hari Raj, HyoJung Kim, Ian Shapira, Jada Yuan, Jorge Ribas, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Kelsey Ables, Kim Bellware, Leo Sands, Meghan Hoyer, Kyle Melnick, Tom Jackman, Niha Masih, Razzan Nakhlawi, Sally Jenkins, Sarah Cahlan, Tobi Raji, Joseph Menn and Vivian Ho contributed to this report.