# The unredacted copy-paste

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The unredacted copy-paste," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-unredacted-copy-paste/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of the flaw in the first tranche of released Epstein documents: highlighting a redaction, cutting it and pasting it into a new document revealed the blacked-out text, which turned out to be the names of victims.*

- **Release:** First tranche under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- **Method:** Highlight, cut, paste into a new document
- **What was exposed:** The names of victims
- **Consent:** Whether or not the victims authorised it

Opening a December 2025 discussion of the ongoing document releases under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) described a failure in the mechanics of the release itself.

## The flaw

People were unhappy with the first tranche, he said, because they had expected so much more, and there had been *"a couple of screw-ups"* on top of that. The one he described in detail concerned the redactions.

On the redacted documents, in his account, if you highlight the redactions, cut them, and then paste them into a new document, *"they unredact themselves, and you can read what was redacted."*[1]

## What was underneath

The content exposed by the flaw was not what a reader hunting for perpetrators would have hoped for. *"What was redacted was the names of the victims,"* Kiriakou said. *"And so now the names of the victims are all out there whether or not the victims authorized them to be, and we have that to deal with now on top of the actual information that's being released."*[1]

## The pattern it fits

The observation set up the guest's own complaint, which ran in the same direction: that the victims' names had been exposed while *"all the perpetrators are redacted."* Kiriakou did not contest that characterisation.

He treated the flaw as a symptom rather than a scandal in itself. The releases, he noted, were arriving in tranches, another several thousand pages had landed minutes before the interview began, and were searchable at justice.gov, though he cautioned that they *"may not make a whole lot of sense if you don't have a deep understanding of the background,"* adding that he did not have the deepest understanding himself.[1]

## See also

## See also

- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jeffrey-epstein)
- [Epstein Files Transparency Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/epstein-files-transparency-act)
- [The Blacked Out Grand Jury Minutes](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-blacked-out-grand-jury-minutes)

## Sources

1. The Deep Focus Show (2025-12-27), at 02:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0GV63SYxE&t=128s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-27-the-deep-focus-show-the-deep-focus-show/

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