[104-10337-10001.pdf — page 157]
recent past instituted separate records procedures to safeguard their most sensitive documents. CIA files, for one, are compartmentalized to limit access on the "need to know" principle. As one result, when responding in 1975 to the Church Committee inquiry into the Agency's drug testing program, CIA officials advised that the relevant program file had been destroyed in 1973. In 1978, however, CIA officials admitted to having discovered among the Agency's financial records extant documents which provided additional information about the scope of this program. During the Iran-contra hearings of 1987, moreover, CIA officials, at times, distinguished between official and informal records while NSC official Oliver North admitted to having employed a "do not log" procedure to ensure that his communications to his superior, John Poindexter, were not indexed in the NSC's central records system. Although the FBI maintains a central records system, FBI officials dating from 1940 had authorized a series of special records procedures to ensure that sensitive records were not serialized or filed in the Bureau's central records system or that sensitive information could be withheld if a FBI report was circulated outside the Bureau. These included: the Do Not File procedure for memos requesting and authorizing "black bag jobs;" blue/pink/informal memos for "administrative" matters in which case, was "to be destroyed after action is taken and not sent to files section;" JUNE Mail for reported information received from "sources illegal in nature" or from "most secretive" sources such as "Governors, secretaries to high officials who may be discussing such officials and their attitude;" and administrative pages/cover letters for reporting "facts and information " which could "cause embarrassment to the Bureau, if distribut d." Do Not File and blue/pink/informal memos were to be maintained in "office files" of senior FBI officials (and were to be destroyed every six months), JUNE Mail was to be maintained "under lock and key" in FBI field offices or in the Special File Room at FET headquarters, while administrative pages/cover letters were to be detached whenever the report to which they were appended was "distributed to any agency outside the Bureau."S.J. Res. 282 addresses the inability of requestors to identify all relevant Kennedy assasination records and how and where they might have been filed. Executive agencies are mandated to make available to the Review Board "all assassination materials" even if "uncertain if a record is assassination material" and the Executive Director is authorized to "inquire as to the existence of further records" and then recommend that the Review Board "subpoena such records in the event of denial." Properly placing the burden of ensuring the accessioning of all Kennedy assassination materials on agency officials who are most knowledgable about their agency's records practices, S.J. Res. 282 further enables the Executive Director and staff to identify additional records learned through a close reading of cross references in the "available" documents.Section 6, moreover, addresses the companion obstacle to full disclosure, the discretion which the FOIA allows federal agency officials to withhold categories of information when releasing FOIA-requested documents. Particularly