Spent 6 months chasing a false lead on the JFK files

I got deep into the JFK records release last year and thought I found a smoking gun in a memo from Dallas dated November 22, 1963. Turned out it was a typo in the index, and the actual document was a routine weather report from 1962. Wasted way too long digging through 300 pages before I realized the mistake. Has anyone else gotten tripped up by bad metadata in these archives?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_morgan2d ago

Even with all that metadata stuff, you ever wonder how much of this archive stuff is just straight up wrong? I was looking through the FBI files on some old local crime stuff once, spent a good month thinking I found a connection to a bigger case, turns out the file number got mixed up with a completely different dude's parking ticket records from 1979. The index said one thing, the actual box had something else, and the dates were all jumbled. It's like they hired someone who couldn't read a calendar to organize it all.

xena_fisher492d ago

File numbers in that archive are off by as much as 40 percent in some boxes.

hall.charles2d ago

Forty percent is way too steep, they probably meant fourteen.