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# FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARDclosure-oriented than President Reagan's order. The current Executive Order applies to all Executive branch records and, unlike the JFK Act, requires agencies to engage in a systematic declassification of all records more than 25 years old. The Executive Order gives agencies five years-until April 2000-to declassify all *classified* information that is (1) more than 25 years old, and (2) is of permanent historical value unless the "agency head" determines that release of the information would cause one of the nine enumerated harms. The Executive Order provides for continuing protection for sources and methods where disclosure would damage the national security. It also protects, inter alia, information that involves diplomatic relations, U.S. cryptologic systems, war plans that are still in effect, and protection of the President. 8> We need to separate sources from methods: This could be the most-lasting effect of the Board.> Steven Garfinkle> April 14-1998The JFK Act guidelines that governed the disclosure of records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy were detailed in section 6 of the JFK Act.9 The JFK Act allowed the Review Board to postpone the release of assassination records only where the agencies provided clear and convincing evidence that one of five enumerated harms would occur if the Review Board released the record and that the harm outweighed the public interest in disclosure. The statute allowed protection of intelligence agents and intelligence sources and methods if the agency could show that the agent, source, or method currently required protection. The statute further allowed the Board to protect the identity of living persons who provided confidential information to the government if the agency could show that disclosure of the person's identity would pose a substantial risk of harm to the person. The JFK Act allowed the Review Board to postpone release of information if release would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy or if release would compromise the existence of an understanding of confidentiality between a government agent and a cooperating individual or foreign government. Finally, the JFK Act allowed the Review Board to protect current information concerning protection of government officials.## 2. Key Distinctions Between Standards of Release Under the FOIA, the Executive Order, and the JFK ActIn considering whether the JFK Act was necessary to guarantee public access to assassination records, Congress evaluated the effectiveness of both the FOIA and the then-current Executive Order 12356. Both the House and the Senate concluded that the FOIA and the Executive Order, as administered by the executive branch, had failed to guarantee adequate public disclosure of assassination records.At the time that the JFK Act became law, the largest collections of records concerning the assassination were under the control of the FBI, the CIA, and the Congressional Committees who investigated the assassination. The FOIA provides special protections for each of these entities, and thus could not serve as the mechanism for maximum disclosure of assassination records. First, the FOIA exempts CIA operational files from disclosure.10 Second, the FOIA provides broad-based protection for law enforcement files and therefore allows the FBI to protect a substantial amount of its information from disclosure.11 Third, the FOIA does not apply to unpublished Congressional records.12 Congress found that the FOIA did not require adequate disclosure in those records that it did cover. Thus, Congress believed that the FOIA was not a satisfactory mechanism for guaranteeing disclosure of assassination records. 13President Clinton did not sign Executive Order 12958 until April 17, 1995-over two years after Congress passed the JFK Act. Clearly, the terms of the Executive Order applied to most assassination records since they were of permanent historical value and were over 25 years old. Even if President Clinton's Executive Order had been in effect prior to 1992, it could not have achieved the maximum disclosure accomplished by the JFK Act. The problem with the Executive Order is that it allowed "agency heads" to make the decision to exempt records from automatic declassification provided that the "agency head" expected that disclosure of the records would result in one of the nine enumerated categories of harm. As many sections of this Report explain, the Review