Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 38]
place them in some context. CIA's collection of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy consists of approximately 250,000-300,000 pages of material. This includes 64 boxes of copies and originals of information provided to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations and 17 boxes of material on Lee Harvey Oswald accumulated after President Kennedy's assassination. Unfortunately, and for reasons that I do not know, what we are dealing with is a mass of material that is not indexed, is uncatalogued, and is highly disorganized--all of which makes the review process more difficult. The material contains everything from the most sensitive intelligence sources to the most mundane news clippings.These records include documents that CIA had in its files before the assassination, a large number of records that CIA received later as routine disseminations from other agencies, as well as the reports, correspondence, and other papers that CIA prepared in the course of the assassination investigations. I should emphasize that these records were assembled into the present collection as a result of specific inquiries received from the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. I have prepared a chart that illustrates this point.As you can see, prior to President Kennedy's assassination CIA held only a small file on Lee Harvey Oswald that consisted of 34 documents (amounting to 124 pages), some of which
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 39]
originated with the FBI, State Department, the Navy, and newspaper clippings. (Although I reported slightly smaller numbers to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs earlier this week, a subsequent count by my staff revealed these exact numbers.) Only 11 of these documents originated within CIA. I brought along a copy of Oswald's file as it existed before the assassination so that you can see first-hand how slender it was at the time. As I have already noted, we have declassified the CIA documents in this file with quite minimal deletions and provided them to the National Archives. The records in this file dealt with Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 and his activities after his return in 1962. By contrast, it was only after the assassination that CIA accumulated the rest of the material on Oswald--some 33,000 pages--most of which CIA received from other agencies after November 22, 1963.There has been some comment on this pre-assassination Oswald file and how little it contained. I want to reemphasize that this is but the first installment--an example of our intentions. All of the assassination-related documents we have will be reviewed for declassification, and we will transfer the declassified documents to the Archives as they are completed, rather than waiting until work on the entirety has been concluded.The committee has asked about documents in our possession generated by other agencies. In fact, much of the material held by5
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 40]
CIA originated with other agencies or departments. For example, in the 17 boxes of Oswald records, approximately 40% of the documents originated with the FBI, and about 20% originated with the State Department or elsewhere. Our staff is still going through the material compiled at the request of the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which includes 63 boxes of paper records and one box that contains 73 reels of microfilm. The microfilms in part overlap material in other parts of the collection. We estimate that within the 63 boxes of paper records, approximately 27% originated with a variety of other U.S. government agencies, private organizations, and foreign and American press.Mr. Chairman, you have also asked about assassination materials that may be held by other Intelligence Community agencies. The FBI will describe its holdings separately, which I assume include both intelligence and law enforcement records. The National Security Agency and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research report, after a preliminary search, that they have identified a relatively small amount of material responsive to previous inquiries by the Warren Commission, the Church Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which did not come into existence until 1961, has identified no assassination material to date, and it anticipates that any holdings it might have would be
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 41]
minimal because its mission at the time of the Kennedy assassination focused upon foreign order of battle.Although our holdings at CIA do include many documents from other agencies, we nonetheless have a substantial collection of CIA documents that will require a considerable effort to review, and, as I said earlier, at my direction, this review for declassification-is now underway. A preliminary survey of these files has provided us some indications 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 defection to the Soviet Union, and Oswald's subsequent activities in Mexico City and New Orleans. They also include a large number of name traces requested by the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as well as material relating to the Garrison investigation and Cuban exile activities.CIA cannot release a number of documents unilaterally because of the limits in the Privacy Act (which protects the names of American citizens against unauthorized disclosure), the sequestration of many documents by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the fact that many of the documents belong to agencies other than CIA. However, we have already taken steps to lift the sequestration, to coordinate with other agencies, and to begin the process of declassification. If necessary, in the absence of legislation, I will ask the House of7
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 42]
Representatives for a resolution permitting CIA to release the results of the declassification effort on the sequestered documents.While I expect a large amount of material can be declassified under our program, I assume that there still will be information that cannot be released to the public for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns or the exposure of intelligence sources and methods. Let me take a moment to give examples of this type of material. During the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, I understand that security and personnel files were requested on a number of Agency employees. These files contain fitness reports (or performance evaluations), medical evaluations and credit checks on individual CIA officers. Although irrelevant to the question of who killed President Kennedy, these and other personal documents ultimately ended up in the sequestered collection of documents. I do not believe that the benefit to the public of disclosure of this information outweighs the clear privacy interest of the individuals in keeping this information confidential. Similar privacy concerns exist with documents containing derogatory information on particular individuals where the information is based on gossip or rumor. Our files also contain names of individuals who provided us intelligence information on a promise of confidentiality. We would not disclose their names in breach of such a promise. Where we cannot disclose such information to the public, the Agency will make redactions and summarize the information in order to ensure that the maximum8
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 43]
amount of information is released while still protecting the identity of an agent or the privacy of an individual.If legislation is not passed by Congress and signed by the President regarding the JFK papers, to enhance public confidence and to provide reassurance that CIA has not held back any information relevant to the assassination, I would appoint a panel of distinguished Americans from outside of government, perhaps including distinguished former jurists, to examine whatever documents we have redacted or kept classified. They would then issue an unclassified public report on their findings.The effort required to declassify the documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy will be daunting. However, it is an important program, and I am personally committed to making it work. Even in this time of diminishing resources within the Intelligence Community, I have directed the allocation of 15 full-time positions to expand the History Staff and to form the Historical Review Group that will review the JFK documents and other documents of historical interest.I believe these actions attest to the seriousness of our intent to get these papers declassified and released, and to open what remains classified to outside, non-governmental review. It is against this background that, in response to the committee's request, I cite our few technical reservations about the mechanism established by the joint resolution to achieve this same result. I
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 44]
intend to address only Intelligence Community concerns; I will defer to the Department of Justice on any additional problems posed by the joint resolution.First, vesting in an outside body the determination as to whether CIA materials related to the assassination can be released to the public is inconsistent with my own statutory responsibility to protect intelligence sources and methods.Second, I am concerned that the joint resolution contains no provision requiring security clearances or secure document handling by the Assassination Materials Review Board or its staff.Third, I am concerned that the joint resolution does not provide the Agency with the opportunity to object to the release of CIA information contained in documents originated by Congress or the Warren Commission. Under the joint resolution, documents originated by these entities can be released directly by the Executive Director of the Assassination Materials Review Board without any review by the President or other Executive Branch agencies.Fourth, the joint resolution provision for a 30-day period for agencies or departments to appeal decisions by the Executive Director to release information may not provide sufficient time for meaningful review of what could prove to be a large volume of material at one time.
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 45]
Fifth and finally, section 6 of the joint resolution, which outlines the grounds for postponement of public release of a document, makes no provision for postponing release of documents that may contain Executive privilege or deliberative process, attorney-client, or attorney work-product information. While such privileges could be waived in the public interest and, in fact, are not likely to arise with respect to factual information directly related to the JFK assassination, they would be unavailable under the joint resolution in the rare case that they might be needed.These are technical problems that I believe can be solved in ways that will, in fact, expedite the release of documents bearing on the assassination of President Kennedy.But, again, whatever the future course of this legislation, CIA is proceeding even now to review for declassification the relevant documents under its control. Further, we will cooperate fully with any mechanism established by the Congress and the President to declassify all of this material.
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 46]
# Statement of Admiral William O. Studeman, USNDeputy Director of Central IntelligenceBefore the Subcommittee on Economic and Commercial LawCommittee on the JudiciaryU.S. House of Representatives20May1992RELEASE IN FULL2000Mr. Chairman, I am here today at your request to provide our views on House Joint Resolution 454, "The Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992," and to describe the nature of documents held by the CIA that relate to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak on this important matter.Let me begin, as the Director did last week in testifying on this subject, by emphasizing that I am in complete agreement with the purpose underlying the joint resolution--that efforts should be made to declassify and make available to the public as quickly as possible government documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We hope that opening up and giving journalists, historians and, most importantly, the public access to governmental files will help to resolve questions that still linger over 28 years after the assassination. Further, we believe that maximum disclosure will discredit the theory that CIA had anything to do with the murder of President Kennedy.
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 47]
Even before introduction of this joint resolution, the Director recognized the need for greater public access to CIA documents of historical importance. Two months ago, he announced the establishment of a new unit within CIA that will be responsible for declassifying as many historical documents as possible consistent with the protection of intelligence sources and methods. This new unit, the Historical Review Group, in the Agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence, will review for declassification documents 30-years-old-or-older, and national intelligence estimates on the former Soviet Union that are 10 years old or older. In addition to the systematic review of 30-year-old documents, the Director has directed the History Staff in the Center for the Study of Intelligence to assemble CIA records focusing on particular events of historical importance, including the assassination of President Kennedy. The Historical Review Group will then examine the documents for the purpose of declassifying the records.Because of high interest in the JFK papers, we are not waiting for legislation or other agencies to start declassifying documents belonging to CIA. The Historical Review Group already has begun its review of the documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy, and the first group of these records, including all CIA documents on Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination, has been declassified with quite minimal deletions and transferred to the National Archives for release to the public. This is but a small fraction of what we have,2
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 48]
but it is an indication of our commitment immediately to begin review for declassification of this material. And, indeed, as I speak, the reviewers are going through a substantial number of documents, and we anticipate that many of these will be released shortly.As we carry out our program to declassify Kennedy assassination documents, our goal will be to release as many as possible. In fact, the Director recently-approved new CIA declassification guidelines for our Historical Review Program which specifically direct a presumption in favor of declassification. The Director believes that we can be very forward leaning in making these documents available to the public, and he has instructed the Historical Review Group to take this attitude to heart. In this spirit, the Agency is making publicly available these new guidelines for historical review and declassification.In connection with these historical review guidelines, the Director has recently commissioned a task force to review Agency procedures under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The mission of this task force is to ensure that our internal FOIA procedures are consistent with the approach that I have described for historical declassification. Although the task force will have to explore the difference between current documents that often are requested under FOIA and 30-year-old documents that are placed into the historical review program, our intention is to bring to the3
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 49]
13-00000FOIA process a much more positive attitude towarddeclassification and release of Agency records.To understand the magnitude of the effort involved inreviewing the JFK papers for declassification, it is important toplace them in some context. CIA's collection of documentsrelated to the assassination of President Kennedy consists ofapproximately 250,000-300,000 pages of material. This includes64 boxes of copies and originals of information-provided to theWarren Commission and the House Select Committee onAssassinations and 17 boxes of material on Lee Harvey Oswaldaccumulated after President Kennedy's assassination.Unfortunately, what we are dealing with is a mass of material thatis not indexed, is uncatalogued, and is highly disorganized--all ofwhich makes the review process more difficult. The materialcontains everything from the most sensitive intelligence sourcesto the most mundane news clippings.These records include documents that CIA had in its filesbefore the assassination, a large number of records that CIAreceived later as routine disseminations from other agencies, aswell as the reports, correspondence, and other papers that CIAprepared in the course of the assassination investigations. Ishould emphasize that these records were assembled into thepresent collection as a result of specific inquiries received fromthe Warren Commission or the House Select Committee onAssassinations.4
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 50]
Prior to President Kennedy's assassination, CIA held only a small file on Lee Harvey Oswald that consisted of 34 documents (amounting to 124 pages), some of which originated with the FBI, State Department, the Navy, and newspaper clippings. Only 11 of these documents originated within CIA. As I have already noted, we have declassified the CIA documents in this file with quite minimal deletions and provided them to the National Archives. The records in this file dealt with Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 and his activities after his return in 1962. By contrast, it was only after the assassination that CIA accumulated the rest of the material on Oswald--some 33,000 pages--most of which CIA received from other agencies after November 22, 1963.There has been some comment on this pre-assassination Oswald file and how little it contained. I want to reemphasize that this pre-assassination material is but the first installment of all the material that we will review--an example of our intentions. All of the assassination-related documents we have will be reviewed for declassification, and we will transfer the declassified documents to the Archives as they are completed, rather than waiting until work on the entirety has been concluded.We have been asked about documents in our possession generated by other agencies. In fact, much of the material held by CIA originated with other agencies or departments. For example,5
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 51]
in the 17 boxes of Oswald records, approximately 40% of the documents originated with the FBI, and about 20% originated with the State Department or elsewhere. Our staff is still going through the material compiled at the request of the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which includes 63 boxes of paper records and one box that contains 73 reels of microfilm. The microfilms in part overlap material in other parts of the collection. We estimate that within the 63 boxes of paper records, approximately 27% originated with a variety of other U.S. government agencies, private organizations, and foreign and American press.We have also been asked about assassination materials that may be held by other Intelligence Community agencies. The FBI will describe its holdings separately, which I assume include both intelligence and law enforcement records. The National Security Agency and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research report, after a preliminary search, that they have identified a relatively small amount of material responsive to previous inquiries by the Warren Commission, the Church Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which did not come into existence until 1961, has identified no assassination material to date, and it anticipates that any holdings it might have would be minimal because its mission at the time of the Kennedy assassination focused upon foreign order of battle.
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 52]
Although our holdings at CIA do include many documents from other agencies, we nonetheless have a substantial collection of CIA documents that will require a considerable effort to review, and, as I said earlier, this review for declassification is now underway. A preliminary survey of these files has provided us some indications 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 defection to the Soviet Union, and Oswald's subsequent activities in Mexico City and New Orleans. They also include a large number of name traces requested by the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as well as material relating to the Garrison investigation and Cuban exile activities.CIA cannot release a number of documents unilaterally because of the limits in the Privacy Act (which protects the names of American citizens against unauthorized disclosure), the sequestration of many documents by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the fact that many of the documents belong to agencies other than CIA. However, we have already taken steps to lift the sequestration, to coordinate with other agencies, and to begin the process of declassification. If necessary, in the absence of legislation, we will ask the House of Representatives for a resolution permitting CIA to release the results of the declassification effort on the sequestered documents. We hope to work with you, Mr. Chairman, to remove any obstacles that might arise in releasing the sequestered documents.
[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 53]
While we expect that a large amount of material can be declassified under our program, I assume that there still will be information that cannot be released to the public for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns or the exposure of intelligence sources and methods. Let me take a moment to give examples of this type of material. During the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, I understand that security and personnel files were requested on a number of Agency employees. These files contain fitness reports (or performance evaluations), medical evaluations and credit checks on individual CIA officers. Although irrelevant to the question of who killed President Kennedy, these and other personal documents ultimately ended up in the sequestered collection of documents. I do not believe that the benefit to the public of disclosure of this information outweighs the clear privacy interest of the individuals in keeping this information confidential. Similar privacy concerns exist with documents containing derogatory information on particular individuals where the information is based on gossip or rumor. Our files also contain names of individuals who provided us intelligence information on a promise of confidentiality. We would not disclose their names in breach of such a promise. Where we cannot disclose such information to the public, the Agency will make redactions and summarize the information in order to ensure that the maximum amount of information is released while still protecting the identity of an agent or the privacy of an individual.