‘Redact’ resurfaces with the Epstein files cnn com 2025 12 31 us word-of-week-redact-cec Harmeet Kaur December 31 2025 Illustration by Alberto Mier CNN On November 30 2019 according to documents released by the Department of Justice the lawyer Joe Nascimento apparently representing an unnamed employee of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sent an email to investigators “Good morning ” Nascimento wrote “Just wanted to check-in as” — and then the rest of that paragraph disappears into nearly two full lines’ worth of solid black rectangles If the missing words were a mystery the word for what happened to them was not Along with other major swaths of the documents collectively known as the Epstein files they had been redacted Two hundred years ago redact — from the Latin redigere meaning to drive or send back — meant to edit to put into writing or to organize a number of ideas or writings into a coherent form But around the middle of the 20th century it began to refer to one particular kind of editing Instead of coherence the point was concealment to remove certain information from a document before its release especially “for legal security or confidentiality purposes ” per the Oxford English Dictionary 1 3 One of the earliest examples of “redact” as we know it today appears in a 1957 New York appellate court opinion which stated that “feasible means should have been adopted to redact” a defendant’s confession and admissions before they were introduced into evidence Stephen Voyce an English professor at the University of Iowa who has studied classified documents traces this usage to the US national security bureaucracy that emerged during the Cold War and the resulting glut of information it produced As the advent of photocopying made it easier to disseminate material and as the 1966 Freedom of Information Act gave the public the right to access government records federal agencies used the solid black rectangle as a tool to control sensitive information What exactly constitutes as sensitive seems to be up to the discretion of individual government officials said Voyce The US government over the years has frequently redacted information from documents that were already public or blacked out different parts of files at different periods as George Washington University’s National Security Archive has detailed Similar contradictions have plagued the Epstein files rollout — Trump’s name was redacted in one version of a document released by the DOJ and visible in another “There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to what’s being redacted beyond the motivations of the person doing the redaction — in this case the DOJ ” Voyce added What’s redacted in the Epstein files — and what isn’t — has become a point of contention Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers as well as many of the financier’s victims have criticized the Justice Department for over-redaction and under-redaction Entire pages have been blacked out in some instances with flimsy justification from the DOJ Meanwhile survivors who sought to remain anonymous saw their names published and attempts to obscure other information within the records could be undone with a simple copy and paste As with the Epstein files botched redactions are a common occurrence Though the computer software company Adobe deployed effective redaction tools in 2006 some entities still resort to crude techniques resulting in improper disclosure — in 2023 Sony accidentally spilled confidential secrets about its PlayStation business because someone made redactions with a black Sharpie Is there a reason we call the practice of blacking out certain information “redaction” as opposed to “censorship ”Per a 2019 article in the Columbia Journalism Review on what words to use when reporting on then-special counsel Robert Mueller “censor” has a more negative connotation referring to the removal of morally or politically objectionable material Voyce considers redact to be more specific “When you redact what you’re doing is releasing the document with exceptions and that can take up a kind of politics of its own ” he said “Regarding the Epstein things you can strategically reveal some things and conceal other things ” 2 3 Others see the two words as synonymous In a 1988 column in the now-defunct Honolulu-Star Bulletin Mary McGrory wrote about the Iran-Contra affair “The North notebooks may be what Richard Nixon in another ethical crisis called a ‘dry hole ’ Right now it is impossible to tell because they have been so heavily ‘redacted’ — a new word that has replaced ‘censored ’” In the case of the Epstein files the distinction between “redact” and “censor” appears similarly blurred Though theEpstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress stipulates that files can’t be redacted “on the basis of embarrassment reputational harm or political sensitivity including to any government official public figure or foreign dignitary ” the first batch of documents released by the DOJ contained references to former President Bill Clinton while President Donald Trump’s name was conspicuously absent As Trump administration officials tried to defend the rollout the public seemed skeptical Recently Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a post on X that the Justice Department would “bring charges against anyone involved in the trafficking and exploitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims ” Users responded with a community note “The Epstein files released by the DOJ are full of redactions and deleted pages ” adding that photos of Trump were removed “to protect him ” 3 3