Trump Admin Publishes Social Security Numbers of Living People in Unredacted JFK Files: 'No Thought of Who Gets Damaged'
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03/20/2025 03:11 PM
Congressional staffers, intelligence experts and federal contractors are among those whose private information is now public record. The newly unsealed files have not yet produced revelations about the assassination itself
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty
President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on March 3, 2025Social Security numbers and other private information belonging to hundreds of Americans — some of whom are still living — were made public as President Donald Trump's administration released more than 60,000 pages of unredacted documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Both The New York Times and the The Washington Post report that the personal information — including Social Security numbers of congressional staff members, intelligence researchers and others — was made public on Tuesday, March 18, along with their corresponding files on the 1963 assassination.
Former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, whose information was apparently part of the release, told the Post that the move was "absolutely outrageous" as well as "sloppy" and "unprofessional."
"It not only means identity theft, but I've had threats against me," said diGenova. "In the past, I've had to report real threats against me to the FBI. There are dangerous nuts out there."
Related: JFK Files Released Over 60 Years After the Kennedy Assassination
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, per the Times, that the Trump administration is aware that it released personal information of former government employees and that 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."
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment on Thursday, March 20.
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US President John F Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, prepared for motorcade into the city from the airport in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.The release of the documents on March 18 — 64,000 of the 80,000 total pages Trump had promised — came just one day after the president vowed to release all the remaining assassination files during a Monday visit to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
A person with knowledge of the documents' release told the Times that officials knew releasing them without redactions would lead to the publishing of Americans' personal information. Journalists and historians sifting through the document drop have so far failed to uncover any major new revelations about the assassination itself.
William Harnage, a former government contractor, told the Times that he considered the release of his information "almost criminal." Harnage said he learned from a reporter that his Social Security number from a 1977 file had been made public.
According to the Post, among the information made public was the personal information of some former staffers of the Church Committee — a group that identified abuses by the CIA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service and multiple other agencies. Some of those people have since frozen their bank accounts and credit cards after being contacted by reporters this week.
"It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process," a former staffer of the Church Committee told the newspaper.
"It seems like the damage is done, but clearly we have to talk to some lawyers," the staffer added.
Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty
Donald Trump appears at at New York State Supreme Court on Jan. 11, 2024Judy K. Barga, a former government contractor who still supports Trump overall, told the Times that the release of her personal information was "not good for anybody."
"People's private information should be kept private," she said.
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As previously reported, the release of the files pertaining to the death of Kennedy — who was fatally shot during a Dallas motorcade in November 1963 — was teased during Trump's first term, before former President Joe Biden took limited action by releasing some.
Trump has also ordered the release of files pertaining to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jack Schlossberg — the only grandson of JFK — has repeatedly slammed Trump for pushing to declassify the remaining assassination files, which historians and insiders have long warned were unlikely to reveal anything surprising or validate conspiracy theories, given that the most substantial files were already public.
"The truth is [a lot] sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn't need to happen," Schlossberg wrote in a Jan. 23 post to X, which he shared on Instagram later that day. "Not part of an inevitable grand scheme."
He added, "Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he's not here to punch back. There's nothing heroic about it."
