DAE see that 2018 JFK files dump and notice the witness names were redacted differently?

I was digging through the JFK Archives site last Saturday around 2am and pulled up the 2018 batch. The redaction patterns on witness statements from Dealey Plaza looked way heavier than the official reports. I counted 14 names blacked out in one affidavit that a 1992 version had half visible. Did anyone else grab those PDFs before they got scrubbed or is my download corrupted? Just wondering if I caught a legit discrepancy or if this is standard FOIA stuff.

3 comments

3 Comments

hannahcraig8d ago

Oh I gotta push back on the "heavier redactions" thing. Those 2018 releases went through a standard FOIA review where they just applied the same exemptions as always, the difference is probably just that the 1992 versions were sloppy and accidentally left some names visible. The affidavit you mentioned with the 14 names sounds like it was a raw witness sheet that got caught in an inter-agency review (happens all the time with older documents). Your download is probably fine, the government just uses inconsistent redaction tools across different archives and that's boring but normal.

wader715d ago

Heard this exact thing from a buddy of mine who used to do records review for a state archive. He told me once they got a batch of old court files from the 80s where the redactions were literally just strips of tape over the names. After a few years the tape dried out and fell off, so when they scanned them in the early 2000s the names were all visible again. They had to go back through every single page and redo the redactions with proper software. What looks like "heavier redactions" now is probably just them finally doing it right the second time around. The metadata trick dylan mentioned is worth trying though, I've seen that work with federal documents before.

dylan_sanchez8d ago

That affidavit with the 14 names sounds like it came from an FBI witness summary sheet, not an actual sworn statement. I've run into this before with older documents where the original FOIA release had sloppy redaction work and the 2018 version was just catching up on proper protocol. @hannahcraig is right about the tools being inconsistent, but you should check the metadata on that PDF file itself - sometimes the redaction layer is still there but hidden, and you can pull the original text out with a simple PDF editor.