A little over a year ago, I took a look at what FOIA might look like under the Trump administration. Unfortunately for transparency, things have turned out much as we expected.

Panama has a long history of coups and interventions involving the United States that go back to the establishment of the Panama Canal, some of which resulted in pro-U.S. governments, while other seemed to benefit Communist groups. Documents show that the confessed assassin of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón Cantera was a Central Intelligence Agency asset, and that at least one other CIA asset was on the scene and arrested at the time of the assassination in 1955. Both also share ties to the Cuban community, as well as vague connections to the JFK assassination - and one of them may have also been involved in a plot to kidnap and/or assassinate Vice President Spiro Agnew and CIA Director Richard Helms.

Some researchers in the JFK assassination community are aware of the fact that one of the doctors that treated Jack Ruby was none other than Louis Jolyon West, a figure equally infamous for allegedly killing an elephant with LSD and for his work in MKULTRA - the Central Intelligence Agency’s infamous interrogation, hypnosis, and mind control program.

Despite Donald J. Trump’s statement that “JFK Files are released, long ahead of schedule,” last week’s release was not what many expected. MuckRock’s FOIA community gathered on our Slack to discuss what had happened, what people had found, and what next April’s batch of records might bring.

When much of the JFK files were released on October 26th, over 50 thousand emails from the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent agency to re-examine for release the assassination-related records, were separately released and largely overlooked. These emails show a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the ARRB, the review and release process, and provide new insight into how our history came to be written.