CIA officials decided which JFK records to scrub or withhold

By Theo Marchetti · August 9, 2026

Lee Harvey Oswald’s movements in Mexico City were curated by CIA officials who used internal inventories to decide which records to scrub and which to sequester from the public.

The US National Archives catalogue entry for the "Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Team Working Files" describes a paper trail not of the assassination itself, but of the effort to manage the record of it. This series—composed of notes, tables, inventories, schedules, reports, correspondence, and memorandums—documents the process by which CIA officials decided what the public was allowed to see.

Full, Redacted, or Withheld

The primary purpose of these materials, according to the file's catalogue entry, was to facilitate reviews of agency documents regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The goal was a three-way triage: determine if records could be "released in full, released in redacted form or withheld."

For anyone who has spent years digging through the thousands of pages of the JFK releases, the "withheld" category is the only one that truly matters. The catalyst for the review was not a sudden impulse toward transparency, but a systematic process of filtration. The working files represent the administrative layer of this operation—the logs and schedules that track which documents were scrubbed and which were sequestered.

In a legal or court-records context, the mention of "tables" and "inventories" suggests a ledger of secrecy. A table is a roadmap for discovery; if the agency used them to track redactions, it implies a meticulous accounting of what was being removed from the public eye. While the catalogue entry confirms the existence of these decisions, it does not list the specific documents that were kept from the public or the legal justifications provided for those redactions. We are left with the inventory of the process, rather than the inventory of the secrets.

Mexico City and Lee Harvey Oswald

A recurring focal point in these working files is the activity of Lee Harvey Oswald. The catalogue entry specifically notes that the series includes copies of records relating to the time Oswald spent in Mexico.

This aligns with other materials held in the National Archives, specifically the "Anne Goodpasture Deposition Materials." Goodpasture was a CIA employee stationed in Mexico City at the time of the assassination. Her deposition materials—which include exhibits, reports, notes, and transcripts—were compiled for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

The "Team Working Files" appear to be the internal scaffolding for these releases. When the HSCA requested information on Oswald's movements in Mexico, the CIA did not simply hand over a folder. They used these working files—the tables and inventories—to decide which parts of the Mexico City record were safe for congressional eyes and which remained too sensitive for disclosure. The correspondence between the CIA and the HSCA, also noted in the catalogue entry, documents the formal exchange of these curated materials.

Morning Meeting Minutes

The review process was not an isolated clerical task. Related series in the archive, such as the "Morning Meeting Minutes Related to the Central Intelligence Agency Segregated Collection," suggest a broader operational context. These minutes record CIA discussions on Oswald and the work of the House Assassination Committee, but they also drift into other Cold War priorities.

In the same breath as the Kennedy assassination, these minutes cover "Algerian-Chinese Communist Agreements" and the investigations of the Church Committee. This juxtaposition suggests how the agency viewed the Oswald files: not as a standalone historical tragedy, but as one of many sensitive intelligence vectors to be managed alongside current geopolitical crises.

There is also the "Segregated Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Collection Files," which contains the actual memoranda, reports, and audio recordings compiled for the HSCA. The "Team Working Files" are the metadata of that relationship. They exist alongside "Public Hearing Press Materials," creating a sharp contrast between the records used for public consumption and the internal tables used to decide what those records would contain.

While the public record established by the Warren Commission and later the HSCA provides a narrative of the events in Dealey Plaza, the existence of these working files highlights the curated nature of that evidence. The catalogue entry leaves us with a list of record types—notes, schedules, and tables—but the specific contents of the files marked "withheld" remain outside the scope of the description.