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56begin review for declassification immediately of this material. And, indeed, as Ispeak, the reviewers are going through a substantial number of documents, and Ianticipate that many of these will be released shortly.As we carry out our program to declassify Kennedy assassination documents, ourgoal will be to release as many as possible. In fact, I recently approved a new CIAdeclassification guideline for our Historical Review Program which specifically di-rects a presumption in favor of declassification. I believe we can be very forwardleaning in making these documents available to the public, and I have instructedthe Historical Review Group to take this attitude to heart.To understand the magnitude of the effort involved in reviewing these documentsfor declassification, it is important to place them in some context. The CIA's collec-tion of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy consists of ap-proximately 250,000-300,000 pages of material. This includes 64 boxes of copies andoriginals of information provided to the Warren Commission and the House SelectCommittee on Assassinations and 17 boxes of material on Lee Harvey Oswald accu-mulated after President Kennedy's assassination. Unfortunately, and for reasonsthat I do not know, what we are dealing with is a mass of material that is not in-dexed, is uncatalogued, and is highly disorganized all of which makes the reviewprocess more difficult. The material contains everything from the most sensitive in-telligence sources to the most mundane news clippings.These records include documents that CIA had in its files before the assassina-tion, a large number of records that CIA received later as routine disseminationsfrom other agencies, as well as the reports, correspondence, and other papers thatCIA prepared in the course of the assassination investigations. I should emphasizethat these records were assembled into the present collection as a result of specificinquiries received from the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee onAssassinations. I have prepared a chart that illustrates this point.As you can see, prior to President Kennedy's assassination, CIA held only a smallfile on Lee Harvey Oswald that consisted of 33 documents (approximately 110pages), some of which originated with the FBI, State Department, the Navy, andnewspaper clippings. Only 11 documents originated with the CIA. I have broughtalong a copy of Oswald's file as it existed before the assassination so that you cansee first-hand how slender it was at the time. As I have already noted, we have de-classified the CIA documents in this file with quite minimal deletions, and we areproviding them to the National Archives. The records in this file dealt with Os-wald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 and his activities after his return in1961. By contrast, it was only after the assassination that CIA accumulated the restof the material on Oswald-some 33,000 pages-most of which CIA received fromother agencies after November 22, 1963.You have asked about documents in our possession generated by other agencies.In fact, much of the material held by CIA originated with other agencies or depart-ments. For example, in the 17 boxes of Oswald records, approximately 40 percent ofthe documents originated with the FBI, and about 20 percent originated from theState Department or elsewhere. Our staff is still going through the material com-piled at the request of the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee onAssassinations, which includes 63 boxes of paper records and one box that contains72 reels of microfilm. The microfilms, in part, overlap material in other parts of thecollection. We estimate that within the 63 boxes of paper records, approximately 27percent of the documents originated with a variety of other U.S. Government agen-cies, private organizations, and foreign and American press.Although our holdings do include many documents from other agencies, we none-theless have a substantial collection of CIA documents that will require considerableeffort to review, and as I said earlier, at my direction, this review for declassifica-tion is now underway. A preliminary survey of these files has provided us some in-dications of what they contain. Although the records cover a wide variety of topics,they principally focus on CIA activities concerning Cuba and Castro, Oswald's defec-tion to the Soviet Union, and Oswald's subsequent activities in Mexico City andNew Orleans. They also include a large number of name traces requested by thestaff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as well as material relatingto the Garrison investigation and Cuban exile activities.The CIA cannot release a number of documents unilaterally because of the limitsin the Privacy Act (which protects the names of American citizens against unau-thorized disclosure), the sequestration of many documents by the House Select Com-mittee on Assassinations, and the fact that many of the documents belong to agen-cies other than CIA. However, we have already taken steps to lift the sequestration,coordinate with other agencies and to begin the process of declassification. If neces-57sary, I will ask the House for a resolution permitting CIA to release the results ofthe declassification effort on the sequestered documents.While I expect a large amount of the material can be declassified under our pro-gram, I assume that there still will be information that cannot be released to thepublic for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns or the exposure of intelli-gence sources and methods. Let me take a moment to give examples of this type ofmaterial. During the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassina-tions, I understand that security and personnel files were requested on a number ofAgency employees. These files contain fitness reports, (performance evaluations),medical evaluations and credit checks on individual CIA officers. Although irrele-vant to the question of who killed President Kennedy, these and other personal doc-uments ultimately ended up in the sequestered collection of documents. I do not be-lieve that the benefit to the public of disclosure of this information outweighs theclear privacy interest of the individuals in keeping the information confidential.Similar privacy concerns exist with documents containing derogatory informationon particular individuals where the information is based on gossip and rumor. Ourfiles also contain the names of individuals who provided us intelligence informationon a promise of confidentiality. We would not disclose their names in breach of sucha promise. Where we cannot disclose such information to the public, the Agency willmake redactions and summarize the information in order to ensure that the maxi-mum amount of information is released while still protecting the identity of anagent or the privacy of an individual.If legislation is not passed by the Congress and signed by the President regardingthe JFK papers, to enhance public confidence and provide reassurance that CIA hasnot held back any information relevant to the assassination, I will appoint a panelof distinguished Americans from outside of Government to examine whatever docu-ments we have redacted or kept classified. They would then issue an unclassifiedpublic report on their findings.The effort required to declassify the documents related to the assassination ofPresident Kennedy will be daunting. However, it is an important program and I ampersonally committed to making it work. Even in a time of diminishing resourceswithin the Intelligence Community, I have allocation of 15 full-time positions toexpand the History Staff and to form the Historical Review Group that will reviewthe JFK documents and other documents of historical interest.I believe these actions attest to the seriousness of our intent to get these papersdeclassified and released, and to open what remains classified to outside, non-gov-ernmental review. It is against this background that, in response to this Commit-tee's request, I cite our technical reservations about the mechanism established bythe joint resolution to achieve this same result. I intend to address only IntelligenceCommunity concerns; I will defer to the Department of Justice on any additionalproblems posed by the joint resolution.First, vesting in an outside body the determination as to whether CIA materialsrelated to the assassination can be released to the public is inconsistent with mystatutory responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods.Second, I am concerned that the joint resolution contains no provision requiringsecurity_clearances or secure document handling by the Assassination MaterialsReview Board or its staff.Third, I am concerned that the joint resolution does not provide the Agency withthe opportunity to object to the release of CIA information contained in documentsoriginated by Congress or the Warren Commission. Under the joint resolution, docu-ments originated by these entities can be released directly by the Executive Directorof the Assassination Materials Review Board without any review by the Presidentor other Executive Branch agencies.Fourth, the joint resolution provision for a 30-day period for agencies or depart-ments to appeal decisions by the Executive Director to release information may notprovide sufficient time for meaningful review of what could prove to be a largevolume of material at one time.Fifth, and finally, section 6 of the joint resolution, which outlines the grounds forpostponement of public release of a document, makes no provision for postponingrelease of documents that may contain Executive privilege or deliberative process,attorney-client, or attorney work product information. While such privileges couldbe waived in the public interest and, in fact, are not likely to arise with respect tofactual information directly related to the JFK assassination, they would be un-available under the joint resolution in the rare case they might be needed.These are the technical problems that I believe can be solved and that will, infact, expedite the release of documents bearing on the assassination of PresidentKennedy.