03/21/2025

White House Scrambles after JFK Files Expose Social Security Numbers

The Trump administration rushed to mitigate harm from their major error

After the Social Security numbers of more than 400 former congressional staffers and others were made public in files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the White House acknowledged the breach Thursday and worked to mitigate the harm.

The National Archives and Records Administration will scrub the files for Social Security numbers, and the Social Security Administration will issue new numbers to those exposed by the inadvertent release, a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan.

The Washington Post, in its review of 60,000 pages released this week by the Trump administration, found unredacted Social Security numbers in more than 3,500 instances, because many of the individuals’ numbers were published more than once. (Another release late Thursday brought the total to more than 77,000 pages across some 2,340 documents.)

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.