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JFK Research Center

A research reading room for records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, drawn from the U.S. National Archives Catalog.

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Records sourced from the U.S. National Archives Catalog, ABBYY JFK-OCR, and allowlisted primary-source reports. Transcriptions and OCR are machine-generated and may contain errors.

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Scope: This research tool indexes 37,141 records - a curated subset of the ~300,000 documents in the JFK Assassination Records Collection. Releases indexed: 2017-2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025. 2,165 records have full-text OCR indexed - of those, 2,162 are sourced from the 2025 re-release (NARA has not yet published an XLSX manifest for 2025; each document’s prior-release history is shown on its page). Releases not yet indexed: 2026. Methodology

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FBI18,005CIA15,955HSCA1,226Department of Defense315NSA299SSCIA258Senate (Church Committee)253Senate236Department of State79NARA47JCS45U.S. Marine Corps45Department of Justice33U.S. Secret Service32ROCKCOM24WC24ARMY24DOS17LBJ14KISS/SCOW11MATHENY7INSCOM6OSD4BUCHEN/DAN4DUVAL78-673CAR/HARDY3BUCHEN78662DAVIS2CHENEY2

1950 – 2004

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Document matches | 2

Results for US ARMY PERSONNEL WHO DESERTED TO IRON CURTAIN COUNTRIES.

Results2Current document, mention, or semantic mode Entities32People, agencies, places, and concepts Topics11Curated subject lanes TimelineChronology routes for this query QuestionsOpen-question routes

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Undated

CIA|PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT|NAID 104-10129-10112

SourceCIATextMetadata onlyRecordNAID 104-10129-10112

US ARMY PERSONNEL WHO DESERTED TO IRON CURTAIN COUNTRIES.

CIA · From: J.L. BENDER · To: DC/CI · JFK45 : F33 : 1997.11.08.08:52:43:466031 : · Release: Redact

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CIA / PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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Entity name appears in the title

High confidenceCurated metadataCIAPaper - Textual DocumentRelease 2021

CIA|PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT|NAID 104-10112-10327

SourceCIATextMetadata onlyRecordNAID 104-10112-10327

MEMO RE US ARMY PERSONNEL WHO DESERTED TO IRON CURTAIN COUNTRIES.

CIA · To: DC/CI · JFK41 : F9 : 1993.07.23.15:48:31:590470 : · Release: Redact