DOJ lawyers fought to block public access to CIA and FBI files
By Desmond Okafor ·
Martin Luther King, Jr. was watched by the same government machinery that DOJ lawyers used to shield CIA intelligence activity in Mexico City and other hidden files.
The Department of Justice Civil Division spent years maintaining a specific kind of archive: the legal paperwork required to keep other archives hidden.
According to a catalogue entry from the US National Archives, the series titled "Litigation Case Files Relating to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" is not a collection of evidence regarding who fired the shots in Dealey Plaza. Instead, it is a record of the state's defensive posture. The file's catalogue entry records that the series consists of "legal briefs maintained by Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys working within the Civil Division," alongside the memoranda, notes, correspondence, subpoenas, affidavits, and exhibits that supported those briefs.
These are the records of the lawyers tasked with guarding the perimeter. The scope of the litigation focused on civil court cases centered on access to records concerning the assassination of the 35th president, but the perimeter extended further. The catalogue indicates that these legal battles also covered records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the "Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) activities."
DOJ Civil Division
When a government treats its own historical records as liabilities to be litigated, the legal brief becomes the primary document of interest. The presence of subpoenas and affidavits in this series suggests a protracted struggle between those seeking the truth of November 22, 1963, and a DOJ determined to manage the flow of information.
Public record establishes that John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine. However, the existence of a dedicated litigation series suggests that the "official" narrative was not merely a matter of historical consensus, but a result of successful legal resistance. The DOJ was not just archiving the past; it was actively contesting the right of the public to see the files of the CIA and FBI.
Mexico City and Anne Goodpasture
While the litigation files show the legal wall, related archival series hint at the specific vulnerabilities the state sought to protect. One such series contains deposition materials for Anne Goodpasture, a CIA employee who was stationed in Mexico City at the time of the assassination.
The catalogue entry for the Goodpasture files lists exhibits, reports, notes, and transcripts. The focus on a single employee in a foreign capital highlights a recurring theme in the JFK mystery—the role of Mexico City as a nexus for intelligence activity and the subsequent struggle to account for what the CIA knew and when they knew it. The fact that these materials are categorized separately from the general litigation files suggests a depth of specific interest in the agency's overseas operations during the window of the assassination.
Robert J. Skwirot and the ARRB
Eventually, the tide of secrecy met a formal challenge in the form of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). The archives contain the notes and correspondence of Robert J. Skwirot, an analyst for the board.
Skwirot's files provide a window into the process of reconstruction. His materials include reports related to the Church Committee findings—the Senate investigation that exposed the darker side of US intelligence—and records from the CIA. This intersection of the ARRB and the Church Committee suggests that the quest for the truth about Kennedy's death was inextricably linked to a broader effort to expose the systemic abuses of the US intelligence community's paramilitary and surveillance programs.
This pattern of surveillance is not limited to the assassination. The archival description for the sound recordings of the House hearings reveals that the recordings contain "substantive Martin Luther King, Jr. investigative information from an executive session of the House Select Committee on Assassinations." It is a telling detail: even in the proceedings meant to resolve the death of a president, the government's machinery for monitoring domestic dissidents remained a primary concern.
Ultimately, the record of the litigation is a record of redaction. The sound recordings of the hearings exist in two forms: the unedited versions and the redacted recordings. The catalogue notes that the latter contain "deleted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee names."