[104-10337-10014.pdf — page 46]
# FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARDk. CIA official cover..i. Review Board guidelines. CIA "official cover" is a means by which a CIA officer can operate overseas in the guise of an employee of another government agency. In congressional documents, the Review Board released general information about official cover but protected specific details. With regard to executive branch documents, the CIA convinced the Review Board that, while Congress might reveal information about official cover, the executive branch does not generally reveal information about official cover because to do so would damage the national security. Thus, the Review Board sustained CIA's postponements regarding official cover in executive branch documents unless the U.S. government had previously officially disclosed the information at issue.The Review Board inserted the phrase "official cover" as substitute language when it postponed such information.ii. Commentary. The Review Board initially considered the issue of official cover to be an "open secret" that was well-known to the public. Thus, they were loathe to withhold such obvious information. The CIA, however, supported its strong objections in briefings and negotiations with the Board, and eventually convinced the Review Board that the harm in releasing information about official cover outweighed any additional information that assassination researchers might gain from knowing details about official cover.1. Alias documentation.i. Review Board guidelines. CIA employees and agents use aliases and the CIA creates documentation to support its employees' and agents' aliases. The Review Board released information that revealed that CIA employees and agents used aliases. The Board protected specific details about how CIA documents particular aliases.ii. Commentary. The CIA argued that it currently uses alias documentation and that aliases are vital to CIA's performance of its intelligence operations. The CIA also argued that the Review Board's release of specific information about alias documentation would not be useful to assassination researchers. The Review Board members accepted CIA's arguments, primarily because they agreed that the public interest in the specific details about alias documentation was low. The Review Board determined that it did not want the CIA to spend a large amount of time gathering evidence in support of postponements that were of low public interest and, thus, it did not require the CIA to provide evidence in support of every postponement relating to alias documentation.m. Foreign intelligence cooperation.i. Review Board guidelines. The Review Board postponed references to foreign intelligence cooperation with the CIA.ii. Commentary. The Review Board vigorously debated the issue of foreign intelligence cooperation with the CIA and demanded extensive evidence and multiple briefings from the CIA on the subject. Though in some instances Board members judged that the information might add to the historical understanding of the assassination, the Review Board, with some dissent, determined that the evidence to postpone the information outweighed this potential value.n. Human sources in FBI foreign counterintelligence (assets).i. Review Board guidelines. The Review Board evaluated the need to postpone the identity of human sources in foreign counterintelligence operations on a-case-by-case basis. Where the human source was a foreign national, the Review Board generally agreed to protect the individual's identity unless the individual's connection with the FBI was already known to the foreign government at issue. Where the human source was a United States citizen interacting with foreign government officials, the Review Board sometimes released the identity of the individual if the public interest in the name of the asset was high. Where the human source was a United States citizen interacting with other United States citizens, the Review Board tended to evaluate the release of the source's name more like other domestic informants.ii. Commentary. In its position paper, the FBI defined "intelligence source" as "any