CIA Monitored Public Opinion After JFK Assassination
By Theo Marchetti ·
American public reactions to the official narrative were tracked for decades, as the agency monitored newspaper clippings and Mexico City testimony to synchronize internal records with the investigation.
A single entry in the US National Archives Catalog lists a series titled "Office of Security Files Regarding Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." The file's catalogue entry records that this series consists of media coverage surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, specifically material compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Lee Harvey Oswald, a U.S. Marine veteran, is the public record's designated assassin of the 35th president on November 22, 1963. The CIA's interest in the event is well-documented, but the catalogue description for the Office of Security files suggests a specific focus on the external perception of the crime. The series includes not only "reports and memoranda created by the CIA," but also newspaper clippings published after the assassination and "public opinion about the investigation."
Public Opinion
It is a common impulse for intelligence agencies to monitor the weather of the street, but the explicit inclusion of "public opinion" in a security file regarding a presidential assassination suggests a specific anxiety. The CIA was not merely tracking Oswald; it was tracking how the American public—and perhaps the international community—processed the official narrative of the event.
When an agency compiles newspaper clippings in the wake of a national trauma, the value is rarely in the news itself, but in the selection process. Which stories were clipped? Which editorial lines were flagged as dangerous or noteworthy? The catalogue entry does not provide the specific clippings, but it establishes that the CIA viewed the public's reaction as a matter of security record.
Anne Goodpasture
Adjacent to the general Office of Security files is a more granular set of records: the Anne Goodpasture Deposition Materials. The catalogue describes this series as containing "exhibits, reports, notes, memorandums, photographs, transcripts and other records" relating to the deposition of Goodpasture.
Goodpasture was a CIA employee stationed in Mexico City at the time of the assassination. Her presence in the records connects the broader media-monitoring efforts of the Office of Security to the specific, tactical movements of Oswald in Mexico. The materials include copies of her testimony to the United States House Select Committee, bridging the gap between internal agency intelligence and the public scrutiny of congressional hearings.
Mexico City
Mexico City remains one of the most contested geographies in the study of the Kennedy assassination. The mention of Goodpasture's deposition materials highlights the agency's enduring preoccupation with that locale. While the Office of Security files tracked the reaction to the assassination, the Goodpasture files track the activity preceding it.
This duality—monitoring the news while managing the testimony of overseas employees—points to a coordinated effort to synchronize the internal CIA record with the public-facing investigation. Other holdings, such as the US National Archives' "Enlisted Personnel File and Medical File for Lee Harvey Oswald" and "Unit Diaries Relating to Lee Harvey Oswald," provide the military baseline of the man. Meanwhile, the State Department's FRUS volumes, including the index for the "Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath," provide the geopolitical backdrop. However, the Office of Security files occupy a different space: they are the records of how the agency watched the world watch the tragedy.
Interim Record Review Forms
The process of surfacing these documents was not immediate. The catalogue lists a series of "Interim Record Review Forms" completed by the Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB). These forms represent the systematic effort to scrub and release records that had been sequestered for decades.
Related to this is the work of Robert J. Skwirot, an ARRB analyst whose personal notes, correspondence, and reports are also cataloged. Skwirot's files include materials related to the Church Committee findings, as well as academic journal articles and newspaper clippings. This layering of records—the original CIA files, the ARRB's review forms, and an analyst's working notes—creates a map of the investigation's own evolution.
While the NSArchive holds other related materials, such as documents from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the National Archives' catalogue entries for the Office of Security files remain the primary index for the CIA's internal media monitoring. The records explicitly include "reports and memoranda created by the CIA pertaining to the assassination," though the specific conclusions of those internal memos remain separate from the catalogue's summary description.