The Trump administration recently released over 77,000 pages of records related to the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy. History buffs immediately dove into the records, hoping to find some important scoop about the infamous killing. However, the findings are turning out to be quite a revelation for some American families.
The records have exposed the secrets of many families who are now learning that their parents, grandparents, or spouses worked as spies. A man named John Smith knew that his grandfather, E.B. Smith, was a professor at the University of Maryland who also wrote books on pre-Civil War presidents. He also knew that E.B. Smith had travelled the world when he was younger. What John and his family didn’t know was that his grandfather was a CIA agent.
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The news reached Smith days after the records were released, which mentions “an account from 1991 of E.B. Smith pressing a KGB official for Soviet intelligence related to Kennedy’s killing,” as per The Washington Post.
John was surprised when The Washington Post reporter delivered the news, but soon he began connecting the dots. He realised that his grandfather once lived in the Soviet Union and continued to maintain connections even after moving back to the US.
The report reveals that E.B. Smith went to the Soviet Union in 1976 as a professor at Moscow State University where he became friends with a student named Vyacheslav “Slava” Nikonov. Interestingly, Nikonov’s grandfather was the foreign minister of Soviet’s former PM Joseph Stalin. The two remained in touch for years. When Smith visited Moscow in 1991, Nikonov had become a high-ranking KGB officer tasked to soften the relations between KGB and CIA. The records mention Smith’s attempt to learn Soviet’s ties to Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Nikonov told Smith that he was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB. From the description of Oswald in the files he doubted that anyone could control Oswald.”
The report by The Washington Post also narrates how Dorothy North from California recently learned that her late husband worked for the CIA. A reporter reached out to the 76-year-old woman telling how the declassified records mention her late husband, Robert North, as a “longtime source of exceptional value.”
Dorothy married her husband in 1977. Robert North reportedly used to teach politics at Standford University. But even his closest family members knew that he was also a spy. Dorothy expressed her shock but recounted how the FBI often used to drop by to interview him after he returned from foreign trips for “research”.
Dorothy is fearful that people might change their perception of her husband. She said that her husband was a “patriot” and a World War 2 veteran who fought Japanese soldiers in the Battle of Saipan in 1994.
Family secrets exposed as JFK files name long-hidden CIA assets – The Washington Post https://t.co/8qkPBOqG5A
— Dr. Cindy (@RNNP2020) March 26, 2025
Mark Mills knew his dad worked for the US government. His job made their family move through Thailand, Vietnam, Canada, and Taiwan. Growing up, he caught a few hints about his father’s real job, but his doubts were confirmed through the recently released records. Mentioning a memo, the reporter told 67-year-old Mark that his father, Bryan Mills, had “engaged in sensitive spycraft in Cuba.”
Mark told the portal that his father never mentioned going to Cuba. However, he added, “But I knew he had gone through hairy situations.” He said that as a child, he saw his dad would leave for Vietnam, and the family wouldn’t hear from him for weeks.
“He never talked about any of it though. To me he was just Dad,” he added.
