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New in SpyWeek: JFK Duds, CIA Rollbacks, FBI Shakeup, Musk & China Flap

New in SpyWeek: JFK Duds, CIA Rollbacks, FBI Shakeup, Musk & China Flap

Welcome to SpyWeek, our weekly newsletter, where we look at news from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, and military operations.

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Seth Hettena
Mar 21, 2025
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New in SpyWeek: JFK Duds, CIA Rollbacks, FBI Shakeup, Musk & China Flap
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Musk’s scheduled Pentagon briefing on China war plans: Up in smoke

JFK FILES: The first tranche of some nearly 80,000 pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy hastily dumped online this week revealed a handful of old secrets but created a fresh hell for those caught in the chaos of unchecked Trumpian “transparency.”

President Trump’s surprise announcement on Monday that the documents would be released the next day set off a scramble by officials to review the files for any potential harm. Not surprisingly, a lot was missed. The Washington Post discovered that Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others had been made public. (One was former Trump lawyer Joseph DiGenova, who in the 1970s had investigated intelligence abuses for the House.) “Social Security numbers, addresses, full names: The only thing that wasn’t in the JFK papers was who killed JFK,” comedian Jordan Klepper quipped on The Daily Show.

Some of the most eagerly anticipated documents turned out to be complete duds.

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