Previously classified JFK assassination files released
Historians are reviewing the freshly declassified documents on the JFK assassination, consisting of police reports and handwritten notes.
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WASHINGTON – In its zeal to release unredacted secret documents from the government’s JFK assassination files, the Trump administration has made public the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information of potentially hundreds of former congressional staffers and other people.
At least one of them, USA TODAY learned Thursday, plans to take legal action.
“I intend to sue the National Archives,” said Joseph diGenova, a former top Justice Department official and Trump campaign lawyer. “They violated the Privacy Act.”
DiGenova, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. during the Reagan administration, said the information about him that was made public stemmed from his involvement with the Church Committee in the 1970s, which investigated misdeeds by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Under the Privacy Act of 1974, federal agencies are generally prohibited from disclosing records without the written consent of the individual, especially in cases where it reveals sensitive information.
Another former Church Committee staffer, James Johnston, told USA TODAY his personal information, including Social Security number, was made public in the files released by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Archives posted thousands of pages of newly unredacted government files on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday evening, a day after President Donald Trump told the media they would be released.
But it is virtually impossible to tell the scope of the breach because the National Archives put them online without a way to search them by keyword, some JFK files experts and victims of the information release told USA TODAY.
“Your Administration doxxed former public servants who staffed 1977-79 congressional investigation by revealing their SSNs. Many are still alive. Completely unnecessary & contributed nothing to JFK assassination understanding,” said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who has represented current and former spies and other officials in cases against the government.
“I trust you will provide them free credit monitoring,” Zaid said in one of several posts on X.
Zaid told USA TODAY the he “saw a few names I know and I informed them of the breach.” The disclosures were not limited to staffers on the Church Committee but included other congressional investigative bodies that touched on the Kennedy assassination, including the House intelligence committee.
“Hundreds were doxxed but of that number I don’t know how many are still living,” Zaid said in an email. For example, he said, former Democratic Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee “is on the list but she obviously passed away.”
Zaid said the Chief Counsel and Staff Director of that committee was also doxed, but USA TODAY is not using his name because he is still alive and was unavailable for comment.
Donald Trump releases remainder of JFK assassination files
The final batch of files surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy have been released under an executive order by US President Donald Trump.
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Zaid, who has fought for decades for the JFK records to be made public, said many of the thousands of investigative documents had been made public long ago with everything declassified and unredacted except for the personal information.
Releasing that information now, he told USA TODAY, poses significant threats to those whose information is now public, including dates and places of birth, but especially their Social Security numbers.
“The purpose of the release was to inform the public about the JFK assassination, not to help permit identity theft of those who actually investigated the events of that day,” Zaid said. “This decision was completely avoidable and either reflects intention or incompetence.”
USA TODAY is reaching out to other people whose names and private information were contained in the files for comment. The Justice Department and National Archives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
‘Sloppy and unprofessional’
In all, the National Archives released more than 60,000 pages related to Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
Many if not most of those pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions that had been whittled down by various reviews and public declassifications over the years, including by the Biden administration.
Despite Trump’s order, Trump administration officials acknowledged that only a portion of them were posted online on the National Archives webpage under the headline “JFK Assassination Records — 2025 Documents Release.” More are expected to be posted later, officials said.
Fear of threats and identity theft
DiGenova, a former top Justice Department official, has for years been a staunch and very public defender of Trump. As a result, he said the breach might result in physical threats against him, and financial theft. He said some threats in the past have been serious enough to require him to report them to the FBI.
“I can tell you that the whatever the review process was, it did not include notifying people who were alive and whose personal identifiable information was included for release, which is a violation of the law,” diGenova said. “And so the people physically doing the review process at the National Archives and the FBI were sloppy and unprofessional.”
DiGenova was part of the November 2020 legal team tapped by Trump to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Joe Biden. He told USA TODAY that he doesn’t blame Trump for the breach, even if the president did order the files to be unredacted and released on what seemed to be an impossible timeline.
Lawyer: ‘not Trump’s fault’
Most of the tens of thousands of files were already in the government’s possession, but with sensitive information like Social Security numbers – and the names of confidential CIA assets – blacked out for security reasons.
“This is not President Trump’s fault. This was the fault of the people responsible for reviewing the records,” diGenova said. “Your job as a reviewer is to get it right. They got it wrong.”
All they had to so is say, ‘Mr. President, we need more time. There’s a lot of personally identifiable information in here,” diGenova said. “And if they just said, ‘What the hell, let’s just throw all this out there, then that’s another reason they should all be sued.”
Josh Meyer is USA TODAY’s Domestic Security Correspondent. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @JoshMeyerDC and Bluesky at @joshmeyerdc.bsky.social.