Newly Unredacted JFK Files Include Social Security Numbers Of Hundreds Of Congressional Staffers – & Trump’s Lawyer

Unredacted documents connected to the John F. Kennedy assassination contained the social security numbers of hundreds of congressional staffers and others.

Donald Trump called for the release of the remaining classified files relating to the 1963 assassination of the former president briefly after he was sworn into office in January. 

>MORE: JFK Assassination Records Reveal Lee Harvey Oswald Death Threat, Ties To Russia

Nearly 2,200 files, totaling over 63,000 pages, were posted on the National Archive’s website on Tuesday evening, short of the 80,000 pages Trump vowed on March 17 to make public. 

“People have been waiting for decades for this,” the president told reporters on Monday in a discussion about the records. “We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.”

Some experts noted that Trump only released one-third of available records on the assassination.

Most of these pages disclosed what was previously redacted. The Trump administration made the records public without privacy protections.

Some of the people whose Social Security numbers were disclosed in the files were the 1975 Senate Church Committee members. Others were members of a House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated Kennedy’s murder.

Joseph diGenova, a former Trump lawyer, was among those whose personal information was disclosed. He said he is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for infringing upon privacy laws and is worried about identity theft.

DiGenova was angered, calling the breach “absolutely outrageous,” “sloppy” and “unprofessional” in a statement. It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me … there are dangerous nuts out there,” he went on to say.

“It should not have happened,” diGenova said in a phone interview on Thursday. “I think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing. I don’t believe it had anything to do with rushing the process. The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.”

The former campaign lawyer’s personal information was in documents about his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of American citizens.

The release of this information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act of 1974.

On Thursday, officials at the White House said that a plan was in place to help people whose personal information was disclosed. This plan included credit monitoring offered by the National Archives and a screening of the records that started on Wednesday to identify every released Social Security number. 

Officials also mentioned that new Social Security numbers are going to be issued to those who were impacted.

The White House did not reply to questions regarding why the personal information was unredacted.

“President Trump delivered on his promise of maximum transparency by fully releasing the files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned in a statement. “At the request of the White House, the National Archives and the Social Security Administration immediately put together an action plan to proactively help individuals whose personal information was released in the files.”

During his first term as president on October 26, 2017, Trump approved the release of the Oswald Files, documentation about Kennedy’s assassination.

These files contained the activities of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald within the nine months before the shooting, as well as other artifacts and information on how the U.S. government believed the Soviet Union responded to Kennedy’s death.