104-10337-10014
2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992
CIA OF
2000nA
Memo for the Record
HUND
RELEASE IN FULL
2000
24 November, 1998
ར་བ་ན་
Subject: JFK Records Review Lessons Learned
The CIA's JFK Collection is made up primarily of
records pulled together for the Warren Commission, House
Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and the
Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB). It contains a
significant amount of duplication and non-JFK related
material. The current index is flawed and contains gaps.
Release standards were liberal; basically only source
identities and information, names of agents, employees under
cover, Agency locations and foreign liaison activities were
redacted. There is no evidence in the Collection to indicate
that the Warren Commission conclusions were wrong.
I. The JFK Act
Mandated review and declassification projects can be
two-edged swords. The JFK Act forced the Agency to review
records that should have been opened years ago.
The legal
requirement to presume release, backed up by an independent
review, resulted in the opening of documents that clearly
would not have been released under other programs. However,
the Act and the Review Board created by the Act imposed un-
realistic deadlines, inflexible standards and procedures
which created a major drain on all Agency review resources
and had an over-all negative effect on the Agency's release
program.
..
Unrealistic Deadlines: The release dates set by the
Act did not take into account the start-up time and costs
(searches, inventorying and indexing) of a project of this
magnitude, nor the time it would then take for a page-by-
page review and sanitization of classified documents. For
example, initial indexing of the collection was done on a
crash basis using overtime employees and resulted in a
flawed database. The revising, re-indexing and updating of
that database took several thousand man-hours and continues
today.
Mandated Procedures:
NARA's and ARRB's interpretation
of the law created a time-consuming, labor-intensive review
process that meant an inordinate amount of time was spent by
both the Agency and Board staff on issues which were
marginal to the story and to processing decisions by the
Board. For example:
a.
Under the JFK Act every piece of paper in the
collection was considered a “unique” assassination record.
The result is a staggering amount of chaff and duplication.
13-00000
For example, one cable was files and processed 58 times in
the collection.
b. The ARRB required that all sanitized documents be
reviewed by the Board and that each postponement (deletion)
be acted on individually. Even after the Board changed
procedures and accepted staff recommendations instead of
reviewing each document, the detailed tracking, recording
and coding of every deletion within each document required
processing resources well beyond what would be considered
reasonable for such a project. A most sanitized documents
contained multiple deletions (one contained more than 1600
deletions and many over 100).
Inflexible Standards: The level of evidence required
by the Board to postpone what was generally considered
protectable information was extremely high and usually
required docmentation of “current harm”. Defenses based on
general principles such as official cover or sources and
methods were not acceptable. This required the Agency to
dedicate significant resources to prepare evidence to
support recommended postponements. Again, much time was
spent on issues that were marginal to the JFK story. For
example, several major evidence packages involving several
offices and presentations by senior agency officers and
officials were needed to secure Board agreement to protect
Agency physical locations and names of employees and other
persons not related to the JFK story.
Three times during the six years of the project, including
most of this past year, the JFK review effectively shut down
all other aspects of the Historical Review Program and had
to borrow additional resources from other offices and review
projects to meet deadlines. The JFK review will continue to
require a significant portion of HRP's resources through
FY99.
II. The Process
There are a number of basic lessons from the JFK review
that are applicable to other historical/systematic review
projects:
*
We need reviewers with broad Agency experience, which
can be either managerial or substantive.
*
We need to establish early on what information is
already in the public domain and address the issue of
“official release" in the context of each project.
*
Develop a strategy/policy with the IROS concerning the
release of information. Be smart about it; do not accept
stonewalling by them on relevant information that can be
13-00000
released. At the same time, avoid confrontations with them
on marginal or non-relevant information.
*
On-site Directorate reviewers are the most effective
way to handle the internal coordination requirements of a
large project. Without the DO's JFK team on site it would
have been impossible to complete the JFK project.
*
Develop guidelines and processes for coordinating Third
Agency documents; include other agencies in discussions; do
not drop documents into the black hole of other agencies'
FOIA offices without this advance discussion.
*
Maintain written, up-to-date, project-specific
declassification guidelines. This is no small task. A
“declassification guide" must be flexible; no guide can
anticipate all the issues which will arise in a review.
After six years, we were still revising the JFK guidelines
in the last month of the project.
*
In establishing deadlines, allow sufficient time to do
a thorough, professional job as required by the project
activities (see Unrealistic Deadlines above).
*
Ensure we have adequate support people for routine
processing tasks; declassification involves both tough
substantive analysis--and a lot of routine processing.
* If possible, inventory/index all materials before the
review and processing begins. Experienced indexers are a
Identification of duplicate documents should be a key
part of any inventory or index.
must.
III The Requests
(being drafted)
Attachment I. [incomplete draft attached]
Description of the JFK Collection
Attachment II. (being drafted]
[statistical summary of collection including size and status
of documents (RIFS, SANS, DIFS, NBR, etc.)]
13-00000
DRAFT
CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
REL
FULL
2000
12 December, 1998
Memo for the Record
Subject: JFK Records Review Project and Lessons Learned
The CIA's JFK Collection is made up primarily of
records pulled together for the Warren Commission, House
Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and the
Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB). It contains a
significant amount of duplication and non-JFK related
material. The current index is flawed and contains gaps.
Release standards were liberal; basically only source
identities and information, names of agents, employees under
cover, Agency locations and foreign liaison activities were
redacted. There is no evidence in the Collection to indicate
that the Warren Commission conclusions were wrong.
I.
Background (1992-1995)
The setting up of the Historical Review Program by DCI
Gates in early 1992 coincided with growing interest in
Congress to require federal agencies to declassify records
related to the assassination of President Kennedy. DCI Gates
decided to start declassification process before Congress
passed legislation:
*
*
testified before Congress on 12 May 1992 about CIA`s
new openness policy and announced the declassification
of the first folder of Oswald's 201 (also known as the
pre-assassination file).
six boxes of the Oswald's 201 were reviewed and
transferred to NARA by Oct. 1992.
The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
Act of 1992 (JFK Act) was signed 26 October 1992:
*
*
it called for Presidential-appointed Assassination
Records Review Board composed of non-government
individuals;
established “a presumption of immediate disclosure"
for records relating to the assassination.
For first two years of its existence, the Historical
Review Program focused primarily on the review of JFK
assassination records:
13-00000
*
*
there were two major releases of Agency records (August
1993 and August 1994) of approximately 227,000 pages;
joint HRG/DO teams reviewed additional assassination
related collections at National Archives (Warren
Commission), the SSCI (Church Committee and the Ford
Presidential Library (Rockefellow Commission) plus
numerous referrals from other federal agencies (FBI,
State, Army, etc.).
Due to delays in the appointment of its members and the
time required to hire and clear a staff, the ARRB did not
actually begin reviewing documents until May 1995. It became
clear in immediately that the ARRB would require the release
of far more information than the Agency had released in the
1992-94 review. In mid-1995 HRG began a re-review of the
previously released sanitized documents:
*
*
approximately 80% of the 227, 000 pages release in
1993-94 contained deletions
resources were taken from other projects and added
to JFK project to meet Board's monthly deadlines.
II. The JFK Act and the ARRB
Mandated review and declassification projects can be
two-edged swords. The JFK Act forced the Agency to review
records that should have been opened years ago.
The legal
requirement to presume release, backed up by an independent
review, resulted in the opening of documents that clearly
would not have been released under other programs. However,
the Act and the Review Board created by the Act imposed un-
realistic deadlines, inflexible standards and procedures
which created a major drain on all Agency review resources
and had an over-all negative effect on the Agency's release
program.
Unrealistic Deadlines: The release dates set by the
Act did not take into account the start-up time and costs
(searches, inventorying and indexing) of a project of this
magnitude, nor the time it would then take for a page-by-
page review and sanitization of classified documents. For
example, initial indexing of the collection was done on a
crash basis using overtime employees and resulted in a
flawed database. The revising, re-indexing and updating of
that database took several thousand man-hours and continues
today.
Mandated Procedures: NARA's and ARRB's interpretation
of the law created a time-consuming, labor-intensive review
process that meant an inordinate amount of time was spent by
13-00000
both the Agency and Board staff on issues which were
marginal to the story and to processing decisions by the
Board. For example:
a. Under the JFK Act every piece of paper in the
collection was considered a “unique” assassination record.
The result is a staggering amount of chaff and duplication.
For example, one cable was files and processed 58 times in
the collection.
b. The ARRB required that all sanitized documents be
reviewed by the Board and that each postponement (deletion)
be acted on individually. Even after the Board changed
procedures and accepted staff recommendations instead of
reviewing each document, the detailed tracking, recording
and coding of every deletion within each document required
processing resources well beyond what would be considered
reasonable for such a project. A most sanitized documents
contained multiple deletions (one contained more than 1600
deletions and many over 100).
Inflexible Standards: The level of evidence required
by the Board to postpone what was generally considered
protectable information was extremely high and usually
required documentation of “current harm". Defenses based on
general principles such as official cover or sources and
methods were not acceptable. This required the Agency to
dedicate significant resources to prepare evidence to
support recommended postponements. Again, much time was
spent on issues that were marginal to the JFK story. For
example, several major evidence packages involving several
offices and presentations by senior agency officers and
officials were needed to secure Board agreement to protect
Agency physical locations and names of employees and other
persons not related to the JFK story.
Three times during the six years of the project, including
most of this past year, the JFK review effectively shut down
all other aspects of the Historical Review Program and had
to borrow additional resources from other offices and review
projects to meet deadlines. The JFK review will continue to
require a significant portion of HRP's resources through
FY99.
III. The Process and Lessons Learned
There are a number of basic lessons from the JFK review
that are applicable to other historical/systematic review
projects:
*
We need reviewers with broad Agency experience, which
can be either managerial or substantive.
13-00000
*
We need to establish early on what information is
already in the public domain and address the issue of
“official release” in the context of each project.
* Develop a strategy/policy with the IROS concerning the
release of information. Be smart about it; do not accept
stonewalling by them on relevant information that can be
released. At the same time, avoid confrontations with them
on marginal or non-relevant information.
*
On-site Directorate reviewers are the most effective
way to handle the internal coordination requirements of a
large project. Without the DO's JFK team on site it would
have been impossible to complete the JFK project.
*
Develop guidelines and processes for coordinating Third
Agency documents; include other agencies in discussions; do
not drop documents into the black hole of other agencies'
FOIA offices without this advance discussion.
* Maintain written, up-to-date, project-specific
declassification guidelines. This is no small task. A
"declassification guide” must be flexible; no guide can
anticipate all the issues which will arise in a review.
After six years, we were still revising the JFK guidelines
in the last month of the project.
*
In establishing deadlines, allow sufficient time to do
a thorough, professional job as required by the project
activities (see Unrealistic Deadlines above).
* Ensure we have adequate support people for routine
processing tasks; declassification involves both tough
substantive analysis--and a lot of routine processing.
*
If possible, inventory/index all materials before the
review and processing begins. Experienced indexers are a
must. Identification of duplicate documents should be a key
part of any inventory or index.
IV ARRB Requests for Additional Information and Records
Attachment I.
(see attached draft)
Description of the JFK Collection
Attachment II. (being drafted-will be available 17 Dec a.m.]
[statistical summary of collection including size and status
of documents (RIFS, SANS, DIFs, NBR, etc.)]
13-00000
DRAFT:
9:org - hrp
"req.doc
"
IV
Section III, ARRB Requests for Additional
Information and Records
1. Unlike most declassification projects, the Agency's
involvement in the JFK Project was governed by the dictates
of a Federal statute, the JFK Act, and the powers it vested
in the Board it established the Assassination Records
--
Review Board (ARRB). In particular, under Section 7, the
Act armed the ARRB with the authority to dig for records and
information, specifically:
(1) The Review Board shall have the authority
to act in a manner prescribed under this Act, in-
cluding authority to
*
*
*
(C) (ii) direct a Government office to make
available to the Review Board, and if necessary
investigate the facts surrounding, additional
information, records, or testimony from
individuals, which the Review Board has reason
to believe is required to fulfill its functions
and responsibilities;
*
*
*
(F) hold hearings, administer oaths, and subpoena
witnesses and documents.
This substantial authority provided the "ARRB and its staff
with almost unlimited access to Agency records and
personnel. It also was the basis for a number of specific
requests from the Board to the Agency for additional
information, document searches and explanatory papers. HRP
designated this ARRB activity, "Special Requests." During
its existence the ARRB sent to the Agency fifty-three
special requests, CIA 1-16 and CIA-IR 1-37.
2. Categories of Requests:
13-00000
VA'
Although each request had unique characteristics,
all began as a request by the Board or an ARRB staff member
on behalf of the board for information. The requests fell
generally into five broad categories as follows:
a. Requests for access to basic information which
would help the board understand the CIA, its organizational
structure and how it operated around the time of the
assassination which included: Requests for organizational
charts, briefings, mission statements, etc.; review of over
histories of CIA offices and projects; a review of the
so-called “Breckinridge files;" and, a search for an IG
index of Oswald reports.
b. Requests about methodologies which included: How
cable traffic was handled at HQ during the relevant time
period; the existence and use of the inter-agency source
registry; and, the assignment and use of alias's pseudonyms,
crypts, etc.
c. Requests for subject specific matters which
included: The Mexico City Station annual reports; the
existence of DRE monthly reports; Oswald's pre assassination
files; and, a search for any documents or information
detailing the Agency's involvement in transporting and
processing the Zapruder film.
d. Requests for project specific information and
files, which included: Requests for information and files on
AMWORLD, QKENCHANT, an index to the HTLINGUAL materials, and
the Mexico City electronic surveillance tapes.
e.
Requests for individual specific information
and files, which included both CIA and CIA associated
individuals and non-CIA individuals: Information on
individuals with JMWORLD; detailed information on Sylvia
Duran; a determination of the identify of a particular
"George Bush;" and, the files on William Pawley.
13-00000
3.
How a Request was Worked Following receipt of a
request and HRP tasking the responsible Agency component(s)
to conduct a search, the materials found were first reviewed
by HRP staff members before access was provided to thẹ ARRB
staff. ARRB staff then reviewed the documents and materials
and identified those which it believed were relevant to
their inquiry and these materials were placed in the normal
queue to be reviewed and processed for release. However,
the mere identification of materials did not equate to
automatic release. Rather, if particularly sensitive
information was involved, negotiations took place and, on
occasion, a written statement about the materials was
provided for release vice the actual document(s).
-
47. The Agency's written responses to each request
either a letter or memoranda included, of course, the fact
-
the materials designated were to be processed for release
according to then current guidelines. The ARRB staff then
wrote its own version of the request, search, and response.
Both of these are a part of the public record on this
project.
54. Lessons learned: A number of things surfaced as
HRP worked to complete these requests which required
considerable explanation, negotiation, and resolution.
a. First among these was the fact there existed an
outside Board which asked for information and carefully
monitored the responses (a very powerful external Board with
subpoena authority), without doubt caused documents and
information to be found and made available that would not
have been provided to an internal declassification project.
b. Second, for any large project such as JFK to be
successful, there is an absolute requirement that each
directorate and independent office identify two responsible
a senior management official who can ensure that
deadlines (particularly deadlines established by an external
persons
--

13-00000
authority) are met; and, a senior focal point officer who
has the substantive knowledge and background to both locate
all relevant material and make decisions on its sensitivity.
c. Third, the individuals identified and appointed
in sub-paragraph "b" next above must be fully versed in the
guidelines which pertain to each specific project. They
cannot rely on FOIA or other guidelines as to the depth of
their searches or the conditions governing release/
redaction/denial of materials.
:
13-00000
ATTACHMENT #1
Oswald Files
CIA'S JFK ASSASSINATION RECORD COLLECTION
Pre-assassination "201" file --approximately 40 documents that existed at the time of
the assassination. Released in 1992 with minimal deletions.
DO 201 File (Approximately 26,000 pages): Agency's primary file for documents dealing
with the assassination or mentioning Oswald; the file is still active. Contains pre-
assassination documents; materials collected after the assassination and during the
Warren Commission investigation; Mexico City files, Garrison investigation materials
plus other documents related to the assassination or Oswald received over the years. A
microfilm copy of file, as it existed in 1978, was sequestered by the House Select
Committee on Assassination (HSCA).
The DO's original (record copy) 201 was transferred to HRG in early 1992; a
declassified version was released in August 1993; it was re-released with fewer
deletions in 1996 under the authority of the ARRB. Additional documents, filed into the
201 after the its transfer to HRG, were released in September 1998.
Office of Security File (2041 pages): Contained key Oswald documents, FBI
investigative reports, newspaper clippings. This file, primarily duplicative of the 201,
was reviewed by the HSCA, but a copy was not sequestered with the rest of the
Agency's “JFK” collection. The file surfaced as a result of an ARRB request in 1997. A
declassified version of the file was released in 1998.
DCD “A” File (41 pages): A microfilm copy of this Oswald file was in the sequestered
collection. The ARRB requested that the original file by reviewed for release.
Marina Oswald's 201 file. A copy of this file from the sequestered microfilm collection
was reviewed and released in 1994. The ARRB requested that the original file be
reviewed for release by September 1999.
The ARRB directed that the classified originals of all documents from the Oswald files
be transferred to NARA for secure storage. These documents were transferred to
NARA in October 1998.
The Sequestered Collection
At the end of its investigation, the HSCA directed that all materials (files,
documents, memos, notes, tapes, etc.) collected or prepared in response to its
investigation be sequestered. This included files made available for review, but not
reviewed by the HSCA staff.
JFK boxes 1-63 (hardcopy): These boxes are the core of the Agency's JFK collection.
They are the working files/materials of the HSCA staff and reflects the wide range of
issues pursued by the Committee. In addition to Agency documents, they include
13-00000
approximately 30,000 pages of notes, letters and memos created by the HSCA or its
staff. The boxes are a combination of files on subjects and persons of interest to HSCA
including documents prepared by the Agency as a result of the investigation, eight
boxes of security files and Mexico City cable chrono files. The boxes contain a
significant amount of duplication (most of the Oswald 201 documents appear multiple
times in this part of the collection). A declassified version was released in August 1993,
then re-released under ARRB in 1997.
JFK Microfilm (72 reels): These reels are copies of Agency files that were made
available to HSCA staff. Although the HSCA interest usually focused on a small portion
of a file, the Committee sequestered the complete file. The microfilm includes
approximately 25 reels of 201 files, 6 reels of Office of Personnel files, 14 reels of
Anti/Castro - Cuban exile material, extensive files on Nosenko and operational and
production files from Mexico City. The microfilm also contains copies of all the Oswald
files except for the security file.
DCI Morning Meeting Minutes
This file contain 442 excerpts from the minutes of the DCI's Morning Meetings
that refer to JFK assassination and related issues and investigations. The initial search
for the minutes was in response to an FOIA. The material was turned over to HRG in
1993 for review and inclusion into the Collection.
Russ Holmes' Working Files (19 boxes)
Russ Holmes was a DO officer initially assigned to work on JFK assassination
records in the mid-70s. He was one of the Agency's liaison officers with the HSCA
during its investigation and subsequently became custodian of HSCA sequestered
collection. He continued in this role until 1992.
As the focal point for JFK related requests, Russ Holmes created a JFK
reference file know as the “Ancillary Collection” (13 boxes). The contents are primarily
duplicative (approximately 80%) of material found in Oswald's 201 and in the
sequestered collection, but organized by subjects and requests. The collection contains
some non-related material reflecting Holmes' involvement in other FOIA, etc. requests.
There were an additional six boxes of unorganized reference material and files from his
office transferred to HRG when he retired. These 19 boxes became know as the "Russ
Holmes Working Files" and were declared assassination records as a collection by the
ARRB. Non-duplicative records from this collection were released in September 1998.
The duplicative material is currently being reviewed and will be transferred to NARA in
early January 1999.
LA Division JFK Task Force Files
The survey undertaken in response to Executive Order ##### located seven
boxes of DO Latin American Division continuing JFK Task Force files and related Cuban
material. The ARRB staff reviewed the boxes; the non-duplicative JFK Task Force
13-00000
documents and selected documents from the Cuban material were designated as
assassination records. 1637 pages from these boxes were transferred to NARA in
October 1998.
New assassination Records -- "M" [Miscellaneous] Series
The ARRB submitted 53 numbered “Requests for Additional Information and
Records" (CIA-# and CIA-IR-# series) plus many informal requests on individuals and
subjects in their search for additional assassination records. Theses requests
generated several 100 additional assassination records including 185 audio tapes from
the Mexico City telephone taps. Additional material related to the JFK Act including DO
cables to the field and working files of the HRP project officer were declared
assassination records in the final actions of the Board. Over 4500 pages and 17 tapes
have been reviewed and prepared for transfer to NARA. The remaining records and
tapes are scheduled for completion by September 1999,.
13-00000
•
.
•
•
•
•
•
CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
RELEASE IN FULL
2000
JFK Assassination Records Collection Act
Five
year Effort; Estimated 100 person years expended
Extraordinary Authorities/ Access/ "non Precedent Setting Releases"
Processed over 14,000 CIA documents upon which the Board took
direct action.
Transferred to the National Archives over 100,000 redacted pages for
the JFK Collection.
Prepared a Declaration of Compliance with the Act, with a detailed
accounting of CIA actions in response to the Board's requests.
Negotiated a detailed Memorandum of Agreement among CIA, the
JFK Board and the National Archives regarding the disposition and
processing of all documents resulting from the five year review.
"The Review Board considered the CIA's compliance with the JFK
Act....to be one of [the Board's] highest priorities." It is particularly
significant that the board fully accepted the Agency's Declaration of
Compliance and reported favorably on the Agency's activities in
response to the Board.
6
During FY 1998, compliance with the legal requirements of the JFK Act
absorbed the preponderant portion of HRP resources. HRP completed necessary
coordination with the JFK Assassination Records Review Board on behalf of the
Agency, an ongoing process since FY 1994. HRP provided a central Agency
focus for a process which:
Coordinated with Board Staff on relevancy and classification on roughly
250,000 pages (many duplicates)
*
Processed over 14,000 CIA documents upon which the Board took direct action.
Transferred to the National Archives over 100,000 redacted pages for the JFK
Collection.
Prepared CIA's Declaration of Compliance with the Act, a detailed accounting
of CIA actions in response to the Boards requests.
Negotiated a detailed Memorandum of Agreement among CIA, the JFK Board
and the National Archives regarding the disposition and processing of all
documents resulting from the five year review.
The Board's report of 30 September 1998 states that "The Review Board
considered the CIA's compliance with the JFK Act....to be one of [the Board's]
highest priorities." It is particularly significant that the board fully accepted the
Agency's Declaration of Compliance and reported favorably on the Agency's
activities in response to the Board.
6
13-00000
•
JFK Act - Process
Scope/Deadlines/Decisions defined by law and outside Board.
• Focal Point (HRP) Serves Primarily as: (1) Moderator
between Board and Components, (2) Bookkeeper, (3)
•
•
•
Consistency Keeper.
Everything reviewed by Focal Point (HRP) and the appropriate
component (Often many times).
Components often take strong initial position but recede in
face of strong arguments.
Senior Agency Managers unaware of intricacies of the Process
unless problems come up.
• Exceptions: Issues Taken to Board by senior management:
Cover, Employee Names, Facilities Stations.
7
Without making a value judgment on the merits of the JFK Act, it is possible to
characterize the process which the Act dictated for CIA.
The scope/deadlines and decisons were defined in the law and by the
Assassination Records Review Board, an outside body. Over the course of the
history of this effort (5 years), CIA, as did other agencies, developed (and
redeveloped) processes and responses to the Board. For the most part the
detailed work by the Staff was at a level which did not involve senior managers
unless a major problem arose.
When problems did arise, Senior Agency officials were asked to make
presentations to the Board and, in all cases, consensus was achieved. No issues
from CIA had to be appealed to the President, the formal procedure in the Act
for resolving differences between Agencies and the Board.
7
13-00000
•
JFK Lessons Learned
Statutory Mandates are Not Efficient
-
Requirements to declassify All drives out focus on important
Standards for Declassification are Invariably Different
- Projects of equal merit without a statute are orphaned
Structure and Planning
-
-
-
Good Communications with Oversight Body
Expertise in Subject matter and Information Management
Strategy, Concepts and Policy known and Understood:
• Guidelines (flexible),
• Deadlines (reasonable),
•
Responsibilities
Understanding of Final Product Desired:
•
Media, Databases, indexes, etc.
•
Support of Senior Management
8
Our experience is that statutory mandates such as the JFK Act are very inefficient. The specific
requirements of the act, including Board administrative decisions, required us to :
•
Address all possibly related documents, no matter how insignificant.
•
Engage in lengthy negotiation processes over an almost endless number of documents.
• Establish databases for management of the documents and workflow
• Treat documents in ways different from all other release programs. That did not have the benefit
Postpone plans for systematic declassification on other programs for which we had no legal
mandate.
• Our expectation is that there will be more of such mandates, including the recently enacted Nazi
War Crimes Disclosure Act. Similar proposals are under consideration for human rights violations in
central america. What we have learned from our JFK experience is that:
• We need to remain in very close coordination with the Oversight body to assure that we are
not going down the wrong street and will have to repeat efforts.
• We have found that annuitants "who know the territory" can be extremely valuable as a
resource for finding and understanding the senstitivity of material.
• We know that we have to organize within the Agency and to gain agreement early on with
regard to strategies for managing the effort, including agreement on what the final product is to
be and how we are to get there.
• We also need to keep senior management attention on what we are doing so that they are not
surprised at the end, which not only causes delays in an orderly process but can lead to
significant misunderstandings between senior participants.
• We are trying to apply these lessons learned to our planning for the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act.
of a
13-00000
13-00000
SECRET
OIM 99-0281
29 October 1999
MEMORANDUM FOR:
FROM:
SUBJECT:
Chief, Information Review Group, OIM
Charles A. Briggs
JFK Declassification Project, OIM
The JFK Declassification Experience
1. My assumption in preparing the attached is that
I was asked because: a) for seven-plus years I've been
involved in the project; and b) my past Agency assign-
ments, including being the first DO Information Review
Officer, gave me the opportunity to see declassification
from many vantage points: from a legalistic directorate-
oriented, either-or standpoint (taking full advantage of
allowed exemptions), to a "corporate" Agency-wide strategy
to foster credibility while protecting secrets that should
remain secret. My comments and conclusions reflect that
experience and do not necessarily reflect the views of HRP
management.
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unless
2. Historically, the Deputy Directors have not
paid much attention to information management
there's a problem. Then the approach has been: what went
wrong; who's to blame; how can we ensure that this doesn't
happen again; what lessons have we learned? What this JFK
experience reiterates is the need for a proactive, not just
reactive, flexible strategy, with corporate Agency direction
through the Deputies to their Information Review Officers.
And the IROS, who, in essence, determine credibility and
resource impact, should be supergrades, with experience
in at least two directorates. Because information release
has become a major management issue, the Executive Director
is the obvious officer to ensure consistent and informed
implementation of release policy.
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3. Considerable skepticism in the public, the media,
and, unfortunately, the Congress results from the in-house
conclusion that denial is justifiable in the absence of
"official acknowledgment" of Executive Branch information,
even though such information is already in the public
domain, from senior Agency officials' publications,
Congressional investigations, books by former Cabinet-level
NSC members, even Presidents. This inflexible legal
strategy may win the battle and lose the war. Lawsuits are
a lot more expensive than negotiation.
4. The Agency Task Force that in 1992 considered
some of the aspects of DCI Gates' "openness" philosophy
did not have the benefit of the JFK experience. I sugges€
that a senior-level panel be established to consider an
objective look at the need for continued classification
of generic versus specific sources and methods information,
particularly that already in the public domain and when
dealing with matters of high public or historic interest.
HR 70-14, referring as it does in paragraph e. (4) to
"Guidelines for Declassification" in Executive Order 12356,
does not promote the tactical approach which is suggested
in the Comments section on page eight of the attached.
Дисивет вия
Charles A. Brigos
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29 October 1999
MEMORANDUM FOR:
FROM:
SUBJECT:
Chief, Information Review Group, OIM
Charles A. Briggs
JFK Declassification Project, OIM
The JFK Declassification Experience
1. (AIUO) BACKGROUND: The impact of the JFK
declassification law on Agency resources and information
release decisions was dramatic and to the DO, traumatic. The
resource trauma stemmed from the unanticipated number of years
required to complete the project. In a memorandum for the DCI
dated 11 June 1993, the then-Director of the Center for the
Study of Intelligence outlined a plan for implementing the
'openness philosophy" espoused by both DCIS Gates and Woolsey
through a series of "Cold War Declassification” projects. He
noted that priority, by virtue of a Congressionally-mandated
deadline of 22 August 1993, had been given to declassification
of the JFK collection; however, he said, "with the end of the
JFK activity in sight," resources could be applied to the
other projects. Six years later (actually seven since the
project got underway), we are almost finished.
2. (AIUO) The substantive, versus administrative,
trauma stemmed from the fact that the JFK Act superseded
all other existing laws, including FOIA, the Privacy Act,
the DCI's authorities, as well as Executive Orders and
Regulations.¹ The Act presumed release. It did allow for
appeal but only to the President from the DCI. It allowed
'postponements" but only if clear and convincing evidence
was presented for each requested postponement and that
release would demonstrably impair the national security.
The net effect was the release of names, crypts, pseudos,
methods, station locations (within specified dates), file
identifier numbers, and tradecraft generally, which are
protectable under the other laws and which the Agency had
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1 See OGC-92-5325, 14 Dec 92 and OGC-94-52916, 19 Sep 94 (Attachment B)
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learned to live with (See Appendix A for the Assassination
Records Review Board (ARRB) "Standards For Review" and "Key
Distinctions Between Those Under FOIA, Executive Order 12356
and the JFK Act," with examples).
3. (U) Finally, a Presidentially-appointed
assassination review board (the ARRB) had the final say
both on postponement and on relevance, subject only to a
successful DCI appeal to the President. Although a few
appeals were considered, particularly in the early period,
none was made.
4. (U)
The JFK Act called for each agency to review
and transfer its relevant material to NARA by 22 August 1993.
Thus, a significant set of materials was transferred from
CIA to NARA in 1993, reflecting CIA's then-current judgment
on the redactions permitted. Subsequent Board reviews and
ARRB staff inquiries resulted in the addition of material to
that original set of documents, as well as adjustments to the
original set, to reflect Board actions · generally to release
more information. Although many documents have been adjusted
or added to the collection, requiring substantive HRG and DO
reviews as well as administrative actions, the net number of
pages in CIA's JFK Collection at NARA is about 260,000.
SIZE AND NATURE OF THE COLLECTION
5. (U)
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The material requiring line-by-line review
included 17 boxes called the Oswald 201 File; 64 boxes called
the "
'
Segregated Collection" File, containing those documents
made available to the House SubCommittee on Assassinations
(HSCA) during its 1978 investigation; 23 boxes of HSCA
referrals
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a reference
staff notes in longhand and type, draft sections
of the HSCA final report, correspondence on HSCA letterhead,
trip reports anything referred to us by the National
Archives (NARA) for review of possible Agency equities;
19 boxes called "The Holmes Collection"
collection used by the then-DO focal point for FOIA and other
JFK queries, Russell Holmes; Presidential libraries material,
Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission testimonies,
National Security Council papers, PFIAB Minutes and other
Community papers made available through the ARRB staff; and
13 boxes called "Miscellaneous," including follow-on
questions from the ARRB, a previously overlooked Latin
American Division working file, DCI calendars, some DI/OCI
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"Dailies." Box 64 of the "Segregated Collection" consisted
of 72 reels of microfilm of complete files from which the
material reviewed by the HSCA staffers was drawn: CIA staff
personnel and security files; a duplicate Oswald 201 file;
26 reels of 201 files on Cubans, Russians, and Americans
linked with Oswald, the JFK assassination, and the several
investigations; DO project history files, and so on.
6. (AIUO) Included were printed text, almost illegible
Thermofax, photographs, computer listings, typed 3×5 cards,
buckslips, routing sheets, handwritten scraps
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every
imaginable form of documentation, with a tremendous amount
of duplication, in one instance, 54 copies of a Mexico City
cable. Every one of these pieces of paper had to be handled
according to NARA instructions, as a unique document for
inclusion in the NARA collection for public access and with
an Identification Aid for research assistance and retrieval.
Among other things, the collection reflected little attention
to procedures propounded by NARA itself for Records
Management, including destruction of duplicate copies.
7. (AIUO) The pressure to meet an initial Congress-
ionally-mandated release date of 22 August, 1993 with the
NARA-required Research Identification Forms, resulted in a
crash effort at indexing done, mainly, by individuals on
loan from the directorates on an overtime basis and generally
unfamiliar with the collection and the subject matter. Thus,
a major factor in inconsistent redacting of multiple copies
of the same document in different boxes was a function of the
quality of the indexing and the effort of the reviewers to
cope with constantly changing guidelines. Inadvertent
release was inevitable.
THE REVIEW PROCESS
8. (AIUO) The majority of the reviewers were
independent contractors with many years of experience,
in some cases senior management experience in at least two
directorates. Two HRG reviewers had been Information Review
Officers themselves as supergrades, one in the DO, the other
in the DA. After the HRG review with suggestions for release
in full or with redactions, the documents went to a DO review
team. The DO agreement or disagreement was reflected on each
document, and the package was returned for a senior-level HRP
review prior to forwarding to the ARRB.
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9. (AIUO) As complicated and frustrating as the
process was, it wouldn't have worked at all without the on-
site presence of the DO team with their link to DO/IMS and
the area divisions in Headquarters. Not surprisingly, the
DO Headquarters tended to use the familiar FOIA standards,
under which much more information could be withheld than was
defendable under the JFK law. A major part of the JFK story
was Oswald's trip to Mexico City; it took several months for
the DO to agree to allow acknowledgment of the existence of
a station in Mexico City and many more months to release the
name, pseudo, and tenure of the chief of station
information, except for the pseudo, long since in the public
domain.
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10. (AIUO) Another long time debate concerned
acknowledgment of teltap and photo surveillance by the
Mexico City Station on the Soviet and Cuban embassies and
consulates both discussed in open literature but disguised
as unidentified sensitive source materials in the Warren
Commission report, along with a cropped photo and transcripts
of telephone conversations that came to the station from
somewhere. One issue, for a long time, was acknowledging
that the teltaps were station activities. The ARRB insisted
on nearly total release of Mexico City Station traffic,
history, personnel, and project approvals because Oswald's
trip to Mexico City remained one of the most controversial
conspiracy theory aspects of the JFK story. Proof of
Oswald's presence there, of his contact with the Soviet
and Cuban embassies and consulates, and the reasons
therefore, of the station's unfamiliarity with him prior
to the assassination became evident through release of the
detailed information on the teltap and photo operations.
11. (AIUO) After the ARRB staff received the Agency
reviewed material, discussion of the validity of the
deletions (the "postponements") occurred. In the early
stages there was a tendency for the Agency Information Review
Officers in the directorates to deny rather than release, to
test using FOIA standards until challenged, then back off.
In a couple of instances, assertions were made that the
information that the ARRB said should be released was so
sensitive that an appeal to the President would be made but
it wasn't. The net result of the deny-until-pushed approach
was an absence of credibility, leading the ARRB to include
the following statement in its Final Report to the President
on 30 September 1998:
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"A small number of CIA staff officers, almost
exclusively in the Directorate of Operations,
unnecessarily impeded the process and damaged
the Agency's interests by resisting compromise
with all-or-nothing positions."
12. (AIUO) As time passed and both Agency and ARRB
staffers became better educated in attempting the balance
between the public interest and the legitimate need for
secrecy, credibility improved, the ARRB members delegated
the negotiation process to the staff. Previously; every
postponed word, phrase, or paragraph had to the approved
by the Board. Toward the end, only remaining disagreements
were passed by the staff to the Board.
THE ISSUE OF RELEVANCE
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13. (AIUO) The ARRB, under the law, determined
relevance of file material the Agency could not do so
although it could and did, eventually quite successfully,
negotiate. Because of the impact of the Oliver Stone movie
'JFK,” reflecting a 70-80% public view that the Warren
Commission conclusion that Oswald acted on his own was wrong,
the ARRB pursued all the major conspiracy theories. Thus,
Agency files on the USSR's handling of American defectors,
entry and departure controls on foreigners, alien employment
and marriage with Soviet citizens, and, particularly, KGB
interest in Oswald, and Nosenko's claim to have reviewed
Oswald's KGB file in Moscow were declared relevant
the whole Nosenko bona fides issue. Agency contact with the
Mafia to arrange for Castro's assassination, not known to the
Warren Commission, were obviously relevant and, by extension,
assassination as an Agency activity was considered relevant
hence, all such testimony before the Church Committee had to
be reviewed. Of particular interest was the plot against
Lumumba because of the involvement of the former Chief of the
Technical Services Division, which division was also involved
in the Castro assassination planning.
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as was
14. (U) The major conspiracy theory of interest
to the Board concerned Cubans: either alleged Castro
involvement because of his awareness of plotting against
himself or Cuban exiles, furious with JFK for the Bay of Pigs
failure. Thus, all files on Agency support to the many Cuban
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exile groups and CIA involvement in Project MONGOOSE were
declared relevant. Hundreds of JMWAVE cables, Mexico City
Station documents, and Cuban names, and many with their
crypts, were released.
15. (U) Those records that the Board concluded
"truly had no apparent relevance to the assassination"
were designated "not believed relevant” (NBR). Cooperative
negotiation resulted in about 50,000 pages being declared
NBR.
INADVERTENT RELEASES/FOREIGN LIAISON CONCERNS
16. (AIUO) As noted above, inadvertent releases were
inevitable. The contributing factors included: guidelines
that changed almost continuously as negotiations with the
ARRB reduced the claims of current sensitivity; inaccurate
and incomplete records on the cover status of retirees; an
initial tendency, consistent with FOIA practices, to deny
crypts but to release true names- the crypt implying an
Agency relationship- if the text did not imply same. (Later:
duplicate copies plus mosaic pattern analysis made linkage of
some crypts and true name quite easy.); and a surge of
inexperienced reviewers loaned during the closing days to
meet the agreed NARA deadline for the remaining files.
17. (S) The inadvertent releases of former employees
names resulted in a few individual complaints but no known
foreign government or liaison service complaints. Four
foreign governments opposed release of their information.
when queried, but no inadvertent releases were involved.
(See Appendix C.) The worst slip appears to have been the
name of a former NOC, living abroad, who, upon being
informed, demanded and received compensation for the
violation of his confidential relationship with CIA and the
FBI. The other outraged former employee, also living abroad,
threatened to contact the President if it became known in his
adopted country that he had been CIA. His true name, on a
great many documents, is the only redaction; he was of
considerable interest to the Board as a key player in the
HSCA investigation because he was the Mexico Branch chief
and was initially appointed by the DDO to be the focal point
for JFK assassination information and briefings. The HSCA
allowed him to testify in alias, and the ARRB allowed the
substitution of his alias wherever his true name appeared;
however, the Board ruled that his true name should be
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released in May 2001 or on his death if before that date.
Given the volume of the documents in which his name appeared,
there were inadvertent releases of his true name.
IMPACT OF THE JFK RELEASES ON FUTURE DECLASSIFICATION
PROGRAMS
18. (AIUO) Whether the JFK Act is, or should be
considered, precedent-establishing has been argued since
its passage. It addresses a unique, highly emotional event,
of obvious interest to the public; and it should serve as a
catalyst for future declassification policy discussion. But
it should not be considered to have set a legal precedent.
What should result is what the ARRB directed in the case
of exact duplicate documents: that they all be handled.
consistently, with the same, or no, redactions. Other
documents concerning the same or a similar event, not exact
duplicates but relevant to the issue, and not subject to the
tight legal demands of the JFK legislation, could be reviewed
in accordance with the exemptions allowed under the FOIA or
the Executive Order. However, the basic factor in deciding
on release or denial should not be the avoidance of
embarrassment through inconsistent or inadvertent release.
It should be the current need for protection of sources and
methods.
19. (U) The JFK experience did demonstrate that a
traditional generic sources and methods denial is not always
necessary, defendable, or smart. Instead of being negatively
reactive, it may well be tactically smarter to be proactive
to better ensure protection of important secrets. More on.
that below.
•
•
20. (AIUO) LESSONS LEARNED:
Don't cut costs on indexing.
Use experienced indexers.
Aim for indexing all materials before review and
processing begins. A key focus should be identification
of duplicate documents.
Use retirees with broad Agency experience under staff
supervision. Because the most common release problems
usually involve DO material, seriously consider an on
site-DO team.
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•
•
Develop and keep updating written guidelines, including
those for coordinating third-agency documents
Establish early what is already in the public domain..
Take a fresh look at the "official release" philosophy,
particularly as concerns former DCIs, Cabinet Officers,
Presidents, and Congressional investigations.
• Develop better information on the cover status of retired
employees.
Avoid confrontation on marginal or non-relevant
information.
Avoid stonewalling on relevant information.
Because the Information Review Officers are the key
implementers of information release policy, ensure that
the guidance given them by their Deputy Directors has
Agency corporate equity.
21. (AIUO) COMMENTS: Information Management,
Information Warfare, Information Handling, Information
Declassification: at least three of these terms have
elicited groans from senior Agency management and a
preference to have someone else, some staffer, deal with
the subject, keeping the boss out of trouble and minimally
informed. But inflexible insistence on continued
classification of dated information, particularly that
known to the public, ignorance of what has already been
declassified and released, and counterproductive stonewalling
these factors have caused trouble and will cause more
trouble as the "Information Age" matures.
22. (C) In 1976, then DDI Ed Proctor wrote to the DCI,
citing "the need to rationalize the classification process."
A 1977 memorandum for the Agency's Executive Committee by two
of the current HRG contract reviewers urged the development
of an O/DDCI level (the Executive Director position having
been abolished) policy review of flap potential in
information release and a computer-supported index to
released documents. At various times in the 1970s,
consideration was given to establishing a fifth Directorate
of Information Handling. After a good bit of internal
agonizing, DCI Gates in April 1992 signed off on HR 70-14
to make "significant historical information available without
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damage to national security." Subsequently, a central
management focal point was established in the Office of
Information Management and a system that addresses part of
the indexing goal and, with its mandatory declassification
"metrics" (millions of pages of released documents),
modulates some of the outside criticism alleging that CIA
is reneging on "openness."
23. (AIUO) What is missing is a Year 2000 look at
secrecy. When the FOIA law was passed and the Agency was
traumatized by receipt of 150 public requests a day for
information, we were able to make case law in the courts and
protect sensitive sources and methods by non-arbitrary and
non-capricious use of allowed exemptions. It is obvious
today that a more forward-thinking strategy than the "no
comment" of the 1950s and the "answer the question only as
asked" of the 1970s is needed the JFK experience
demonstrated both the counterproductive result of an all-or-
nothing defense and that credibility and compromise can be
gained without current sensitivity loss. And the fact that
Chairman Porter Goss has joined with Senator Moynihan in
proposing the existence of an outside group on the model of
the JFK Assassination Review Board as arbiter in the
government declassification arena is a very clear signal.
24. (AIUO) In my view (and as was the case, briefly,
in the past), this extremely complicated, frustrating, and
ubiquitous topic requires the personal attention of the
Executive Director with “corporate" Agency focused guidance
to the Deputies for their personal attention and policy.
guidance to the IROs. And because the IROS, as the
implementors of their Deputies' policies, determine the
credibility and resource impact levels, they should be
supergrades and experienced in at least two directorates.
25. (AIUO) The eventual development of a credible
association with the JFK ARRB was a function of: (1) the
patience and diplomacy of the HRP/JFK Project Officer,
Barry Harrelson and (2) the presence, on site, of the DO
team, without whom this exercise could not have been
completed. Ironically, as is so often the case when an
individual or group is between a rock and a hard place,
as the DO team was between the DO desk officers, the DO/IRO,
and the HRP reviewers, there were allegations of their having
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been co-opted.
Both the DO team and HRG were seen, at times,
as "the enemy." That kind of in-house idiocy needed instant
quashing.
26.
(AIUO) CONCLUSIONS: The JFK Project cost far
too much, took far too long, produced no information to
change the conclusion that Oswald acted alone. But it did
make available to the public previously withheld operational
material to negate what DCI Gates had called the most
heinous of the conspiracy theories: that CIA was involved
in the assassination of the President of the United States.
The resource impact was a function of: the unique
requirements of the law; the crash nature of the initial
release; the National Archives decision that every duplicate
must be reviewed and indexed as a unique document; less than
satisfactory indexing, contributing to inadvertent releases
and time wasted in checking for consistency in the handling
of duplicates; problems in determining the cover status of
retired employees; and stonewalling.
27. (AIUO) Although there was inconsistency and
inadvertent release and some resultant retiree anger, we
know of no significant national security breech. Previously
withheld information from the Church Committee hearings and
from the Presidential libraries declared relevant by the ARRB
will be titillating and may stimulate FOIA requests, but the
variance from FOIA rules was not a legal justification for
withholding under the JFK law.
28. (U) If this experience leads to a serious
objective look at the theory and practice of secrecy in
this changed world, perhaps the cost will have been worth it.
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Charles A. Briggs
Attachments:
A.
B.
C.
Excerpt from Final Report
of the ARRB (Standards)
OGC Memorandum
Foreign Government Information
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FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
closure-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 sys-
tematic 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 perma-
nent historical value unless the "agency
head" determines that release of the informa-
tion would cause one of the nine enumerated
harms. The Executive Order provides for
continuing protection for sources and meth-
ods where disclosure would damage the
national security. It also protects, inter alia,
information that involves diplomatic rela-
tions, U.S. cryptologic systems, war plans
that are still in effect, and protection of the
President.⁹
arate sources
d be the
of the Board.
The JFK Act guidelines
that governed the disclo-
sure of records relating to
the assassination of Pres-
ident Kennedy were
detailed in section 6 of
the JFK Act.' 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 per-
son. 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 com-
promise the existence of an understanding
of confidentiality between a government
agent and a cooperating individual or for-
eign government. Finally, the JFK Act
allowed the Review Board to protect cur-
rent information concerning protection of
government officials.
42
2. Key Distinctions Between Standards
of Release Under the FOIA, the Execu-
tive Order, and the JFK Act
In considering whether the JFK Act was nec-
essary to guarantee public access to assassi-
nation records, Congress evaluated the effec-
tiveness 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 adminis-
tered by the executive branch, had failed to
guarantee adequate public disclosure of
assassination records.
10
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 Commit-
tees 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 disclo-
sure. Second, the FOIA provides broad-
based protection for law enforcement files
and therefore allows the FBI to protect a sub-
stantial amount of its information from dis-
closure." Third, the FOIA does not apply to
unpublished Congressional records. 12" Con-
gress 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.¹³
President 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 sec-
tions of this Report explain, the Review
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CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD COMMON
Board found that "agency heads" tended to
be quite reluctant to release their agencies'
secrets. The Executive Order, while well-
intentioned, failed to provide for any inde-
pendent review of "agency heads"" decisions
on declassification. Thus, although the Exec-
utive Order's standards for declassification
appeared to be disclosure-oriented, the Exec-
utive Order failed to hold agency heads
accountable for their decisionmaking.
The JFK Act did require agencies to account
for their decisions. To ensure such account-
ability, Congress included four essential pro-
visions in the JFK Act: first, the JFK Act pre-
sumed that assassination records may be
released; second, the JFK Act stated that an
agency could rebut the presumption of dis-
closure only by proving, with clear and con-
vincing evidence, that disclosure would result
in harm and that the expected harm would
outweigh any public benefit in the disclo-
sure; third, the JFK Act created an independent
agency-the Review Board-whose mandate
was to ensure that agencies respected the
presumption of disclosure and honestly pre-
sented clear and convincing evidence of the
need to protect information; and fourth, the
JFK Act required agencies to provide the
Review Board with access to government
records, even when those records would not
become part of the JFK Collection. Without
these accountability provisions, the JFK Act
would not have accomplished its objective of
maximum release of assassination records to
the public. So, while the FOIA and the Exec-
utive Order each expressed the goal of
obtaining maximum disclosure, the JFK Act
ensured that the goal would be met. The two
accountability provisions that relate directly
to the Section 6 grounds for postponement-
the presumption of release and the standard
of proof are discussed in detail below. The
third provision discussed below is the
Review Board's obligation to balance the
weight of the evidence in favor of postpone-
ment against the public interest in release.
a. JFK Act presumes disclosure of
assassination records.
The most pertinent language of the JFK Act
was the standard for release of information.
According to the statute, "all Government
records concerning the assassination of Pres-
ident John F. Kennedy should carry a pre-
43
sumption of immediate disclosure." The statute
further declared that "only in the rarest cases is
there any legitimate need for continued protection
of such records."15
b. JFK Act requires agencies to provide clear
and convincing evidence.
If agencies wished to withhold information
in a document, the JFK Act required the
agency to submit clear and convincing evi-
dence that the informa-
tion fell within one of the
narrow postponement
criteria.16
The bill create
sumption on
ments. The onu
who would with
to prove to the R
the American
documents mus
public scrutiny
Senator John C
May 12, 1992
Congress selected the
clear and convincing evi-
dence standard because
"less exacting standards,
such as substantial evi-
dence or a preponder-
ance of the evidence,
were not consistent with
the legislation's stated goal" of prompt and
full release." The legislative history of the
JFK Act emphasized the statutory require-
ment that agencies provide clear and con-
vincing evidence.
There is no justification for perpetual
secrecy for any class of records. Nor can
the withholding of any individual
record be justified on the basis of gen-
eral confidentiality concerns applicable
to an entire class. Every record must be
judged on its own merits, and every
record will ultimately be made available -
for public disclosure.18
When agencies did present to the Review
Board evidence of harm that would result
from disclosure, it had to consist of more
than speculation.
The [Review] Board cannot postpone
release because it might cause some con-
ceivable or speculative harm to national
security. Rather in a democracy the
demonstrable harm from disclosure must
be weighed against the benefits of
release of the information to the public."
The Review Board's application of the clear
and convincing evidence standard is covered
in more detail in Section B of this chapter.
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FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
Section B includes a discussion of the "Rule
of Reason" that the Review Board ultimately
adopted with regard to receiving evidence
from the agencies.
c. JFK Act requires the Review Board to
balance evidence for postponement against
public interest in release.
Assuming that agencies did provide clear
and convincing evidence that information
should be protected from disclosure, the
terms of section 6 required that information
not be postponed unless the threat of harm
outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
As used in the JFK. Act, “public interest"
means "the compelling interest in the prompt
public disclosure of assassination records for
historical and governmental purposes and
for the purpose of fully informing the Amer-
ican people about the history surrounding
the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy.'
"20 The Review Board interpreted
the balancing requirement to mean that agen-
cies had to provide the Review Board with
clear and convincing evidence of the threat of
harm that would result from disclosure.
However, to the extent that the JFK Act left
room for discretion in evaluating the histori-
cal significance, or public interest, of particu-
lar assassination records, it was the Review
Board-not the agency that originated the
document that was to exercise this discre-
tion. The burden was on the agencies to make
the case for postponement, not to judge the
level of public interest in a particular docu-
ment. The JFK Act established the Review
Board as a panel of independent citizens with
expertise as historians and archivists pre-
cisely in order to secure public confidence in
such determinations."1
d. Segregability and substitute language.
When the Review Board determined that the
risk of harm did outweigh the public interest
in disclosure, it then had to take two addi-
tional steps: (1) ensure that the agency
redacted the least amount of information
possible to avoid the stated harm, or "segre-
gate" the postponed information, and (2)
provide substitute language to take the place
of the redaction.
44
3. Federal Agency Record Groups and
the Standards Applied to Them.
The JFK Act defines "assassination records"
to include records related to the assassination
of President Kennedy that were “created or
made available for use by, obtained by, or
otherwise came into the possession of" the
following groups: the Warren Commission,
the four congressional committees that inves-
tigated the assassination, any office of the
federal government, and any state or local
law enforcement office that assisted in a fed-
eral investigation of the assassination."
When it passed the JFK Act, Congress
intended for the JFK Collection to include the
record groups that it identified in section
3(2), but it also intended for the Review
Board to consider carefully the scope of the
term "assassination record" and to issue an
interpretive regulation defining this crucial
term.23 The Act requires government agencies
to identify, organize, and process those assas-
sination records that are defined as assassi-
nation records in section 3(2). Chapter 6 of
this report explains how the Review Board
interpreted its responsibility to define and
seek out "additional records and informa-
tion." Set forth below is a description of some
of the core government holdings on the
assassination which were released under the
standards of the Review Board.
The FBI's "core and related" files.
The FBI's "core and related" files consist of
those records that the FBI gathered in
response to FOIA requests that it received in
the 1970s for records relating to the assassi-
nation of President Kennedy. The "core" files
include the FBI files on Lee Harvey Oswald
and Jack Ruby, as well as the FBI's Warren
Commission files and the JFK assassination
investigation file. The "related" files include
FBI files on Lee Harvey Oswald's wife
Marina and mother Marguerite, Oswald's
friend George DeMohrenschildt, and the
Oswalds' Dallas friends Ruth and Michael
Paine. The FBI began its processing of the
core and related files in 1993. The Review
Board applied strict standards to its review of
postponements in the core and related files.
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD "COMMON LAW"
b. CIA's Lee Harvey Oswald "201" file.
CIA opens a 201 file on an individual when it
has an "operational interest" in that person.
The CIA opened its 201 file on Lee Harvey
Oswald in December 1960 when it received a
request from the Department of State on
defectors. After President Kennedy's assassi-
nation, the Oswald 201 file served as a depos-
itory for records CIA gathered and created
during CIA's wide-ranging investigation of
the assassination. Thus, the file provides the
most complete record of the CIA's inquiry in
the months and years immediately following
the assassination.
C.
The FBI's "House Select Committee on
Assassinations"(HSCA) Subject Files.
During the HSCA's tenure, the Committee
made a number of requests to the FBI for
records that the Committee believed might
be relevant to their investigation of the
Kennedy assassination. In response to the
HSCA's requests, the FBI made available to
the HSCA staff approximately 200,000 pages
of FBI files. The FBI began its processing of
the "HSCA Subject" files in 1993, The Review
Board applied its "Segregated Collection"
guidelines (explained below) to the HSCA
subject files.
d. The CIA's "Segregated Collection" files.
i
HSCA investigators gained access to CIA
files. Upon completion of the HSCA's work,
the CIA kept separate the files that it had
made available to the HSCA and retained
them as a segregated collection. This collec-
tion is divided into two parts: paper
records
and microfilm. CIA made 63 boxes of paper
records available to the HSCA staff. The
paper records consist, in many cases, of par-
ticular records that CIA culled from various
files. The 64th box of the CIA's segregated
collection contains 72 reels of microfilm and
represents the entire set of files from which
records were made available to the HSCA.
Thus, in many cases, the microfilmed files
contain material well beyond the scope of the
HSCA investigation and may, for example,
cover an agent's entire career when only a
small portion of it intersected with the assas-
sination story.
e. FBI records on the congressional commit-
tees that investigated the assassination.
The JFK Act defined "assassination record"
to include records relating to the Kennedy
assassination that were used by the congres-
sional committees who investigated events
surrounding the assassination. 24
Before President Clinton appointed the
Review Board, the FBI collected and began to
process its administrative files relating to its
involvement with each of these committees.
In large part, the records contained in the
Bureau's administrative files related to topics
other than the Kennedy assassination. To the
extent that the Review Board found records
in these files that concerned topics other than
the Kennedy assassination, it designated the
records not believed relevant (or "NBR" as-
that acronym is defined infra) and removed
them from further consideration.
f. Requests for Additional Information.
Congress included in the JFK Act a provision
that allowed the Review Board to obtain
additional information and records beyond
those that were reviewed by previous inves-
tigations. Chapter 6 of this report explains
the requests that the Review Board made and
the assassination records designated as a
result of those requests.
B. DECLASSIFICATION STANDARDS
The Review Board's primary purpose, as out-
lined in section 7(b) of the JFK Act, was to
determine whether an agency's request for
postponement of disclosure of an assassina-
tion record met the criteria for postponement
set forth in section 6. Section 6 consisted of an
introductory clause, which established the
"clear and convincing evidence" standard,
and five subsections that set forth the criteria
under which the Review Board could agree
to postpone public disclosure of assassina-
tion-related information.
1. Standard of Proof: Clear and
Convincing Evidence
Text of Section 6
Disclosure of assassination records or par-
ticular information in assassination records
45
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FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
to the public may be postponed subject to the
limitations of this Act if [agencies provide]
clear and convincing evidence that [the
harm from disclosure outweighs the public
interest in release.]
a. Review Board guidelines. For each recom-
mended postponement, the JFK Act requires
an agency to submit "clear and convincing
evidence" that one of the specified grounds
for postponement exists. 25 The Review Board
required agencies to submit specific facts in
support of each postponement, according to
the Review Board's guidelines for each post-
ponement type.
t gulf exists
and their
Doubts about
natter are a
d so I think
hearing is to
b. Commentary. Although the agencies
argued that the clear and convincing evi-
dence standard could be
satisfied by a general
explanation of those
agencies' positions in
support of postpone-
ments, the Review Board
determined that the clear
and convincing evidence
requirement was a docu-
ment-specific one. Thus,
the Board required agen-
cies to present evidence
that was tailored to indi-
vidual postponements
within individual docu-
ments.
ons. Why does
to be with-
ent in time,
rests are
back of
here legiţi-
spect? Who
protected?
which
are
The JFK Act clearly
required agencies to pro-
vide clear and convinc-
ing evidence in support
of their postponements,
but it did not establish a
mechanism for when and
how such evidence should be presented. The
legislative history provides a clue as to Con-
gress' intent: "[T]o the extent possible, con-
sultation with the government offices creates
an understanding on each side as to the basis
and reasons for their respective recommen-
dations and determinations."26 The Review
Board did consult with government offices to
determine fair, efficient, and reasonable pro-
cedures for presenting evidence.
The Review Board began its review of assas-
sination records by considering pre- assassi-
nation records on Lee Harvey Oswald. In an
46
attempt to arrive at consistent decisions, the
Board asked the staff to present the records
on an issue-by-issue basis. For example, with
FBI records, the Review Board first sched-
uled a group of FBI records for review and
notified the FBI of the meeting date at which
it intended to vote on the records. The
Review Board invited the FBI to present its
evidence. Second, the FBI requested that it be
allowed to brief the members of the Review
Board. At the briefing, the FBI presented its
position to the Board-both in an oral pre-
sentation and in a "position paper." The FBI's
"position papers" summarized the FBI's gen-
eral policy preferences for continued classifi-
cation of certain categories of information.
Third, the Review Board staff researched
existing law on each of the FBI's "positions"
and determined that the arguments that the
FBI put forth in support of its JFK Act post-
ponements were essentially the same argu-
ments that the FBI offers to courts for FOIA
cases. Of course, in legislating the declassifi-
cation standards of the JFK Act, Congress
intended for the JFK Act standards—and not
the FOIA standards-to apply. Aware of con-
gressional intent, the Review Board rejected
the FBI's general policy preferences on the
basis that the arguments did not constitute
the clear and convincing evidence necessary
to support a request for a postponement
under section 6. The FBI did appeal the
Review Board's decisions to the President,
but the Review Board's document-specific
interpretation of the clear and convincing
evidence standard ultimately prevailed
when the vote was withdrawn.
i. "Rule of Reason." Of course, some assassi-
nation records are of greater interest than
others. With regard to records that had a
close nexus to the assassination, the Review
Board strictly applied the law. For example,
the Review Board voted to release in full
nearly all of the information in the FBI's pre-
assassination Lee Harvey Oswald file and the
bulk of the information in the HSCA's report
on CIA activities in Mexico City-the
"Lopez" report-because of the high public
interest in that material. With regard to the
FBI files, the FBI believed that its arguments
were compelling enough to merit appeals to
the President on nearly all of the Review
Board's decisions on the pre-assassination
Lee Harvey Oswald records. The FBI, the
Review Board, the White House Counsel's
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD COMMON LAW"
Office, and ultimately the Department of
State spent a substantial amount of time
resolving the issues that arose in the appeal
process, and for those important records that
were at issue, the Review Board considered
its time well-spent. The Review Board simi-
larly dealt with other key records and spent
as much time as was necessary to deliberate
and decide upon those records.
The postponement-by-postponement review
at each early Review Board meeting proved
to be a slow and careful process. The post-
ponement-by-postponement review proved
to be a necessary educational process for the
Board members. The Board members were a
group of five citizens who were selected not
for their familiarity with the subject of the
assassination, but for their professional com-
petence in history and law. Thus, through
reviewing individual documents at its early
meetings, the Board essentially educated
itself about the assassination.
While the Review Board did need time to edu-
cate itself and to develop its policies, the
Board's pace eventually increased. In an effort
to streamline its work, the Review Board con-
sulted with federal agencies such as the CIA
and FBI to work out an approach for review of
records that would allow the Review Board to
make informed decisions, but not require
agencies to spend hundreds of hours locating
evidence for and providing briefings on each
postponement within an assassination record.
The first step to developing a reasonable
approach was for the Review Board to for-
mulate general rules for sustaining and
denying postponements. The Review Board's
"guidance" to its staff and the agencies
became a body of rules-a Review Board
"common law." Once the Review Board noti-
fied an agency of its approach on a particular
type of postponement, the agency learned to
present only those facts that the Review
Board would need to make a decision. For
example, with regard to FBI informants, the
Review Board notified the FBI of what it con-
sidered to be the relevant factors in its deci-
sionmaking. In other words, it defined for the
Bureau what it considered to be "clear and
convincing" evidence. Then, the Review
Board worked with the FBI to create a one-
page form titled an "Informant Postpone-
ment Evidence Form" that the FBI could use
to provide evidence on an informant. (See
illustration.) The form allowed the FBI to
simply fill in the answers to a series of ques-
tions about the informant in question, which
in turn allowed the Review Board to focus on
those facts that it deemed to be dispositive in
a particular document. This approach had
the added benefit of providing consistency to
the Review Board's decisionmaking.
A large number of records that the JFK Act
defined as "assassination records" proved to
be of very low public interest. The JFK Act
required the Review Board to process all
records that were "made available" to the
Warren Commission and the Congressional
Committees that investigated the assassina-
tion, whether or not the records were used by
the Commission or the committees. Many of
these records, while interesting from a histo-
rian's perspective, are not closely related to
the assassination. For those documents that
were of little or no public interest, the Review
Board modified its standards in the two ways
described below.
A. “NBR" Guidelines: Records that Review
Board judged were "not believed relevant" to the
assassination. For those records that truly had
no apparent relevance to the assassination,
the Review Board designated the records
"not believed relevant" (NBR). The “NBR"
Guidelines allowed the Review Board to
remove irrelevant records from further con-
sideration. Records that the Review Board
designated "NBR" were virtually the only
groups of records that the Review Board
agreed to postpone in full. Thus, the Review
Board was always extremely reluctant to des-
ignate records "NBR" and rarely did so.
B. Segregated Collection Guidelines. For those
records that were not immediately relevant,
but shed at least some light on issues that the
congressional committees that investigated
the assassination explored as potentially rele-
vant to the assassination, the Review Board
created the "Segregated Collection Guide-
lines." The segregated collections records,
although marginally relevant, were not
appropriate for “NBR" designation, as the
"NBR" Guidelines would have resulted in
withholding records in full. Instead, the
Board passed the "Segregated Collection"
Guidelines, which ensured that the Review
Board staff would review every page of the
47
13.00000
Final Report OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW Board
marginally relevant records, but would not
require agencies to present the same amount
of evidence in support of postponements.
The regulations that the Review Board
adopted on November 13, 1996, define "Seg-
regated Collections" to include the following:
(1) FBI records that were requested by the
HSCA in conjunction with its investigation
into the assassination of President Kennedy,
the Church Committee in conjunction with
its inquiry into issues relating to the Kennedy
assassination, and the Pike Committee and
Rockefeller Commission that investigated
issues related to the assassination; (2) CIA
records including the CIA's segregated col-
lection of 63 boxes as well as one box of
microfilm records (box 64) and several boxes
of CIA staff "working files." The Review
Board adopted revised guidelines on April
23, 1997 in an attempt to streamline the
review process of postponements in the seg-
regated collections, and ensure a page-by-
page review of all documents in the segre-
gated collections. The guidelines state,
"... even with the assumption that our oper-
ations may be extended through Fiscal Year
1998, the Review Board cannot hope to com-
plete review of postponements in the Segre-
gated Collections under the current method
of review." Where the Review Board's stan-
dards differed between core files and segre-
gated collection files, the guidelines set forth
below note the distinction.
Thus, throughout its tenure, the Review
Board sought to be vigorous in applying the
law, but, in order to complete its work, found
it necessary to employ a "rule of reason."
2. Intelligence Agents
Text of Section 6(1)(A)
... clear and convincing evidence that the
threat to the military defense, intelligence
operations, or conduct of foreign relations of
the United States posed by the public disclo-
sure of the assassination record is of such
gravity that it outweighs the public interest,
and such public disclosure would reveal—
(A) an intelligence agent whose identity
currently requires protection……
48.
a. CIA officers.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board usually protected the names of CIA
officers who are still active or who retired
under cover and are now living in potentially
risky circumstances. The Review Board usu-
ally released names of deceased CIA officers
and the names of CIA officers whose connec-
tion to the CIA was public knowledge. When
the Review Board postponed names, it usu-
ally substituted the phrase, “CIA Employee."
ii. Commentary. Names of numerous CIA
officers appeared in the CIA's assassination
records. The Review Board and the CIA had
to confront the challenge presented by the
statute, which requires name-specific evi-
dence, but gathering such evidence proved to
be time-consuming and burdensome for the
CIA and the names of CIA officers in the
records were not always relevant to the
assassination. The statute, of course, states
that the only way that the Review Board
could protect names of intelligence agents
was if the CIA provided clear and convincing
evidence that the CIA officer's identity "cur-
rently" required protection.
The CIA initially believed that the solution to
the above-referenced challenge was for the
Review Board to agree with CIA that the
names of all CIA officers within the JFK Col-
lection should be postponed until the year
2017. The CIA supported its request for blan-
ket postponements with two arguments: first,
since many CIA employees are "under
cover," CIA argued that its intelligence gath-
ering capability depended on employees
maintaining cover, and, second, even though
the majority of CIA officer names in the Col-
lection are names of retired CIA employees,
CIA is bound by a confidentiality agreement
to protect the relationship. Many of these for-
mer employees objected to release of their
former Agency affiliation, complaining that it
violates this agreement and suggesting that
such release might jeopardize business rela-
tionships or threaten personal safety.
Mindful of the JFK Act's requirement that
agencies provide name-specific evidence, the
Review Board would not agree to CIA's
request for blanket postponements of CIA
names. Instead, the Review Board requested
CIA to provide evidence for each name.
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD COMMON LAV
The CIA, however, was reluctant to produce
name-specific evidence and, on occasion,
CIA failed to furnish evidence when it
promised to do so. CIA's initial refusal to
supply evidence on individual names was
met, not with the wholesale release of names
by the Board, but with a firm insistence that
the Agency meet the requirements of the Act.
The Review Board released the names of a
few individuals who were of central impor-
tance to the assassination story early in the
process, but gave the Agency a number of
additional opportunities to provide specific
evidence on other names.
For example, in December 1995, the Review
Board designated one day of their meeting
"name day," and invited CIA to provide evi-
dence for names the Review Board had
encountered in CIA records during the previ-
ous six to seven months. On that day, CIA
again requested the Review Board to sustain
the postponement of all CIA names. The
Review Board did not want to jeopardize the
personal safety of individuals and gave CIA
more time to provide evidence. The Board set
other "name days" in May 1996 and May.
1997. As deadlines for submission of evi-
dence approached, CIA agreed to release
some names, but in most cases, continued to
offer less than satisfactory evidence on those
they wished to protect. Gradually, the CIA
did begin to provide supporting evidence of
the postponement of individual names.
By May 1996, the Review Board had decided
what evidence would meet the clear and con-
vincing evidence standard. If the CIA pro-
vided evidence that the individual retired
under cover or abroad, or evidence that the
individual objected to the release of his or her
name when contacted (CIA agreed to attempt
to contact former employees), the Review
Board would protect the CIA officer's name.
Moreover, where the CIA specifically identi-
fied an ongoing operation in which the indi-
vidual was involved or CIA could demon-
strate that the person was still active with
CIA, the Review Board would protect the
name. Because the JFK Act required the
Review Board to balance the potential harm
from disclosure against the public interest in
release, there were cases in which the Review
Board determined that, even though the CIA
had provided the required evidence, the
Review Board believed that the individual
49
was of sufficiently high public interest that it
would require the CIA to provide additional
evidence before it would consider protecting
the name. In these cases, the Review Board
asked CIA to provide information on the
employee's current status, his or her location,
and the nature of the work he or she did for
the CIA.
The Review Board determined that names
were of high public interest when the CIA
officer at issue had a substantive connection
to the assassination story or where the CIA
officer's name appeared in CIA's Oswald 201
file. By July 1997, the Review Board had
determined that where CIA officer names did
not fit within one of the "high public inter-
est" categories, it would require CIA to pro-
vide significantly less evidence in support of
its requests for postponement. Given the
large number of CIA officer names in the CIA
records, the Review Board determined that it
had to adopt the practical high public inter-
est/low public interest approach, particu-
larly since it had limited time and resources
available to complete its own review of CIA
records. The Review Board would have pre-
ferred to review each name at the same high
level of scrutiny that it used to review names
of high public interest. Nevertheless, the
Board's approach compelled the CIA to
release many more names than it would have
desired.
b. "John Scelso" (pseudonym).
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board protected the true name of the individ-
ual known by the pseudonym of John Scelso
until May 1, 2001 or three months after the
decease of the individual, whichever comes
first.
ii. Commentary. The CIA employee who
was head of CIA's division "Western Hemi-
sphere 3" during the period immediately
after the assassination of President Kennedy
testified before the HSCA and the Church
Committee under the "throw-away" alias
John Scelso. His true name appears on hun-
dreds of documents in the JFK collection,
many of which were the product of the
Agency's extensive post-assassination inves-
tigation that spanned the globe. In reviewing
this particular name, the Review Board's
desire to satisfy the public's interest in release

13-00000
FINAL REPORT OF THE AS
ASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
clashed with the CIA's strong evidence in
support of postponement. Initially, the Board
was inclined to release Scelso's true name, but
the Agency argued convincingly against
release. CIA provided evidence on the current
status of the individual, shared correspon-
dence sent by him, and even arranged an
interview between him and a Review Board
staff member. As an interim step, the Review
Board inserted his prior alias “Scelso" as sub-
stitute language. (See illustration.) Then, at its
May 1996 meeting, Board members deter-
mined to release “Scelso's" true name in five
years or upon his death.
OUS BIRCH O'NEAL
QM INDEX
CLASSIFIED MESSAGE
UNIT
C/CI/SIG
U INDER
OECRET
EXT } 5367
DATE: 23 NOV 63.
□ HIE IN CS FILE NO.
TO
1 MEXICO CITY
CSICOPY
FROM: DIRECTOR
CONFICI/SI
(c)
INFO : DCI, D/DCI, DOP, ADOPCI/CI/OPS, CI/IC 2, FI, 'SR 7, WH 7,
Os 2, VR.
✗
TO
IMMEDIATE MEXI
INFO
REF: MEXI 6453 (IN 36017)
23517 182
ERLEN
DEFERRED
ROUTINE
IMMEDIATE
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRA! 8.4886
RELEASE AS SANITIZED
1995
1. IMPORTANT YOU REVIEW ALL LIENV
✓ 
LIENVOY
TRANS
TAPES AND
ANSCRIPTS SINCE 27 SEPTEMBER TO LOCATE ALL MATERIAL
POSSIBLY PERTINENT TO SUBJECT REF.
2. DISPATCH SOONEST BY SPECIAL COURIER, STAFFER IF
NECESSARY. FULL TRANSCRIPTS AND ORIGINAL TAPES IF
AVAILABLE ALL PERTINENT MATERIAL.
3.
☑REC
ORIGINAL TAPES AVAILABLE?
END OF MESSAGE
CLASSIFICATION REVIEW
CONDUCTED ON 16 APR 1975
E-IMPDET CL BY 0/2 LOS
CS Comment: *Reported that on 1 October 63, an American male who said
his name was Lee Oswald was at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.
0:200-5-41
RELEASING OFFICEA
✓ C/WH
40-541
Document Number
for FOIA Review ort
APR 1976
CS COPY
COORDINATING OFFICERS
201-289248
200-5-41
2370063
REPRODUCTION BY OTHER THAN THE ISSUING OFFICE IS PROHIBITED.
SCELSO
WH/3
AUTHENTICATING
OFFICER
c. Information that identifies CIA officers.
Copy No.
i. Review Board guidelines. For specific
information that, if released, would reveal
the identity of an individual CIA officer that
the Board had voted to protect, the Review
Board protected the information.
50
ii. Commentary. Whenever the Review
Board voted to protect the identity of an indi-
vidual throughout federal agency assassina-
tion records, it had to be realistic enough to
realize that some information about individu-
als is so specific that release of the information
would reveal the individual's identity. Exam-
ples of specific identifying information include
home addresses, birth dates, job titles, names
of family members, and other less obvious, but
equally revealing pieces of information.
d. Names of National Security Agency
employees.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board protected the names of all National
Security Agency employees that it encoun-
tered. The Review Board would have consid-
ered releasing names of National Security
Agency employees if it determined that a par-
ticular name was extremely relevant to the
assassination.
ii. Commentary. Due to the nature of NSA
information, few NSA employee names
appeared in NSA's assassination records.
Even though the Review Board did not often
encounter NSA employee names, it did have
to vote on those names that it did confront..
NSA's policy of not releasing the names of its
employees conflicted with section 6(1)(A) of
the JFK Act that presumed release of such
information unless NSA could prove that
individual NSA employee names required
protection. NSA argued that the release of any
names, other than those of publicly acknowl-
edged senior officials, jeopardized the poten-
tial security of U.S. cryptographic systems
and those individuals. As it did with the
names of other intelligence agents and offi-
cers, the Review Board considered the names
of NSA officers on a document-by-document
basis. Given the nature of NSA information,
the Review Board members agreed that none
of the few names which appear in the docu-
ments, and for which NSA requested protec-
tion, was of high enough public interest or
central to an understanding of the assassina-
tion story. Thus, it protected the names.
3. Intelligence Sources and Methods,
and Other Matters Relating to the
National Security of the United States
Text of Section 6(1)(B) and (C)
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD COMMON LAW"
.. clear and convincing evidence that the
threat to the military defense, intelligence
operations, or conduct of foreign relations of
the United States posed by the public disclo-
sure of the assassination record is of such
gravity that it outweighs the public interest,
and such public disclosure would reveal—
(B) an intelligence source or method which
is currently utilized, or reasonably expected
to be utilized, by the United States Govern-
ment and which has not been officially dis-
closed, the disclosure of which would inter-
fere with the conduct of intelligence
activities; or
(C) any other matter currently relating to
the military defense, intelligence operations
or conduct of foreign relations of the United
States, the disclosure of which would
demonstrably impair the national security of
the United States;
a. CIA sources.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board handled CIA sources, assets, infor-
mants, and specific identifying information
under standards similar to the Board's deci-
sions for CIA officers. Where the Review
Board believed names held a high level of
public interest, either because the name was
central to the story or because assassination
researchers expressed interest in the name,
the Review Board subjected them to close
scrutiny. The Board generally protected the
identity of foreign nationals unless they were
of high public interest and then the Review
Board required CIA to provide specific evi-
dence in support of its claimed postpone-
ments. The Review Board protected domestic.
sources, assets and informants where CIA
demonstrated that release would jeopardize
ongoing operations or harm individuals. If
CIA did not provide evidence of one of the
two above-referenced harms, the Review
Board released the name at issue. In addition,
where the public already knew the names of
individuals who were connected to the CIA,
especially if the government had previously
released the information, the Review Board
released the information.
ii. Commentary. The Review Board
addressed the issue of whether to postpone or
release source names at the same time that it
considered CIA employee names, and
encountered the same problems as it had in
the review of CIA employee names. As with
CIA employee names, CIA was reluctant to
provide name-specific evidence to the Review
Board, opting instead to offer general princi-
ples supporting CIA's request that the Review
Board redact all names.
The Review Board should co
sider a variety
to the need to postpo
sure of intelligenc
methods, includin
the record, whethe
particular source or m
already well known by
lic (e.g. that the Soviet
in Mexico City was
during the alleged visit
Harvey Oswald) and
the source or method
ently secret, or whether
information it collected
The Review Board ulti-
mately decided to protect
the names of sources,
assets, and informants in
cases where the identity
of the source is of
reduced public interest
because CIA sources live
in countries other than
the U.S. and were more
likely to face harm if the
Board disclosed their
relationship with CIA. In
those records where the
source's identity was of
possible public interest
in relation to the assassi-
nation story or
important to understand-
ing information related to
the assassination, the
Review Board required the CIA to provide
additional evidence to support the protection
of the source's identity.
was
was secret.
---Senate Report on JFK A
July 22, 1992
When the Review Board postponed release of
source names, it did so for ten years except in
cases where a foreign government might
accuse the source of committing treason for
assisting the CIA. In those cases, the Review
Board protected the source's name and iden-
tifying information until 2017.
b. CIA pseudonyms.
i. Review Board guidelines. With only a
few exceptions, the Review Board released
the pseudonyms of individuals. In some
instances, the Review Board used pseudo-
nyms as substitute language for the individ-
ual's true name.
ii. Commentary. Very early in the review
process, the Review Board determined that,
since pseudonyms were a sort of "throw
away" identity for individuals who were
under cover, the Review Board could release
51
13-00000
FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
the pseudonym without harming the indi-
vidual. The CIA did not object to the Review
Board's policy to release pseudonyms. The
CIA did identify several pseudonyms that it
believed to be particularly sensitive, and
demonstrated to the Review Board with clear
and convincing evidence that release of those
pseudonyms would do irreparable harm.
c. CIA crypts.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board released some CIA "crypts"-code
words for operations and individuals. The
Review Board also generally released CIA
"digraphs"-the first two letters of a crypt
that link a particular crypt to a particular
location. CIA often created crypts to refer to
other U.S. government agencies; for example,
the FBI was “ODENVY." The Review Board
made a blanket decision to release all U.S.
government crypts. The Review Board nearly
always released CIA crypts where those
crypts denoted operations or individuals
relating to Mexico City or Cuba. (The
digraph for Mexico City was "LI," and for
Cuba, it was "AM.") For all other crypts, the
Review Board protected the digraph and
released the remainder of the crypt. The
Review Board established a few exceptions,
and where exceptions applied, the Board
required CIA to provide crypt-specific evi-
dence of the need to protect.
ii. Commentary. The Review Board had
to determine whether it believed that release
of CIA crypts would harm CIA operations
and individuals. Section 6(1)(B) and (C) of
the JFK Act provided the standard for post-
ponement of CIA crypts. The Review Board
required the CIA to provide crypt-specific
clear and convincing evidence that CIA cur-
rently used, or expected to use the crypt and
that CIA had not previously released the
crypt. Thus, in order to convince the Review
Board to sustain postponements, the Board
required CIA to research each crypt to deter-
mine whether CIA still used the individual or
the operation and provide that evidence to
the Review Board.
As it did with CIA agent names, CIA initially
requested the Review Board to sustain post-
ponements of all CIA crypts even
"ODENVY"—the CIA's old crypt for the FBI
that CIA had already released in other CIA
52
records. CIA argued that its use of crypts was
an operational method that should remain
secret, even though CIA had replaced most of
the crypts at issue years earlier. CIA believed
that if the Review Board released the crypts,
researchers would be able to piece together
the records and determine the identity of
operations and individuals. CIA further
argued that the burden of locating evidence
on each crypt was too heavy.
The Review Board, conversely, believed that
CIA conceived crypts as a code to hide the
identity of an operation or an individual, and
so the Review Board could release the crypts
and not compromise the operation or the
individual. As with CIA agent names, the
Review Board allowed the CIA ample time to
locate evidence on each crypt. Finally, the
Review Board released a group of CIA crypts
from Mexico City with the "LI" digraph. CIA
eventually agreed to release its crypts and
digraphs in assassination records, and the
Review Board eventually agreed to protect
certain sensitive crypts.
The Review Board recognized that it could
not conduct a crypt-by-crypt review for
every CIA record that it encountered. CIA
records contain hundreds of thousands of
crypts. Given the need to finish its work, the
Review Board decided that, for all crypts
except the "LI," "AM," and "OD" series
crypts, it would agree to postpone the loca-
tion-specific digraph and release the actual
crypts. Thus, the Review Board released most
crypts in the collection and the most relevant
digraphs. The Review Board did make three
exceptions to its general rule: it protected the
digraph in non-core files when (a) the crypt
appeared next to a true name that had been
released, (b) when the crypt appeared next to
specific identifying information, and (c)
when CIA provided clear and convincing
evidence that the Review Board should pro-
tect the digraph.
d. CIA sluglines.
i. Review Board guidelines. "Sluglines" are
CIA routing indicators, consisting of two or
more crypts, that appear above the text in
CIA cables. (See illustration.) The Review
Board released CIA sluglines according to the
same criteria it applied to crypts and
digraphs.
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDs for Review: REVIEW BOARd “Common Law"
ii. Commentary. The Review Board
released CIA sluglines because the Agency
never offered the Review Board any evidence
to explain why the Board should not release
them. An example of a CIA slugline is
“RYBAT GPFLOOR." "RYBAT" is a CIA
crypt that meant "secret," and GPFLOOR
was the crypt that CIA gave Lee Harvey
Oswald during its post-assassination investi-
gation. CIA initially asked the Review Board
to postpone the CIA slugline even where CIA
had released the individual crypts that made
up the slugline elsewhere. For example, in
the case of "RYBAT GPFLOOR," the CIA
agreed to release the crypt "RYBAT" in two
places elsewhere in the document at issue,
and the CIA agreed to release the crypt
GPFLOOR when it appeared in the text. CÏA
told the Review Board that it could not, how-
release the
slugline "RYBAT
GPFLOOR.” CIA offered no substantive
arguments to support its request for post-
ponement of the slugline. Given the statute's
demand that CIA provide clear and convinc-
ing evidence in support of its requests for
postponement, the Review Board voted to
release CIA sluglines.
ever,
e CIA surveillance methods.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board generally released CIA surveillance
methods, the details of their implementation,
and the product produced by them where the
Review Board believed the methods were rel-
evant to the assassination. The Review Board
sustained postponements of CIA surveillance
methods where CIA provided convincing
evidence that the method still merited pro-
tection. Where the Review Board sustained
the CIA's requests for postponement of sur-
veillance methods, it substituted the lan-
guage "surveillance method," "operational
details," or "sensitive operation."
ii. Commentary. As with all its sources
and methods, CIA initially requested the
Review Board to postpone all of its surveil-
lance methods since, CIA argued, CIA cur-
rently conducts surveillance operations. The
Review Board, on the other hand, believed
that it was not a secret that CIA currently
conducts surveillance operations. Moreover,
the Review Board did not believe that its
votes to release CIA surveillance methods in
Mexico City in 1963 would jeopardize cur-
53
rent CIA surveillance operations. Finally, the
Review Board recognized that certain CIA
surveillance operations in Mexico City in
1963 were already well-known to the public
because the U.S. government had disclosed
details about those operations. CIA surveil-
lance, particularly telephone taps and photo
operations, was a major element in the story
of Oswald's 1963 trip to Mexico City. (See
illustration.)
The Board, therefore, concluded that the pub-
lic interest in disclosure far outweighed any
risk to national security and directed release
of the information. However, in records that
CIA proved did contain information about
current operations, the Review Board voted
to postpone the information.
DISTA
NATION
INFO
TO
Slagline
DEFERRED
ROUTINE
CLASSIFIED MESSAGE
DATE
29 NOV 63
FILE
330335
PRIORITY
OPERATIONAL TALE
IMMEDIATE
IMMEDIATE MEXI MANA
RYBAT CPFLOOR
REF MANA 4617
°
Cable Prefix
Crypt
INFO
CLASSIFICATION
290022Z
PUN MNSER
CITE
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
RELEASE IN 
FULL 1995
DUP OF
230-650
6796
-
1. FEEL ERTHYROID 3 SHOULD CO MEXI EVEN THOUGH ALVARADO MAY BE
IN MEXICAN HANDS. ASSUME HE CAN BE USED AS CONSULTANT AT LEAST,
THAT HE WILL KNOW WHETHER HE CAN AND SHOULD CONTACT MEXICAN AUTHORITIES,
AND THAT NEXT WILL CLEAR ANY ACTIVE USE WE MAKE OF HIM WITH THE
ODENNY REP. ODENVY HERE KNOWS HE IS COMING TO MEXI TO HELP.
2. AT 1830 WASHINGTON TIME, WHICH IS ABOUT 1630 YOUR TIME, WE HAVE
NO FURTHER NEWS OR REQUESTS. VE ARE GOING ROME BUT
ON THE WIRE ON SHORT NOTICE.
29/0105Z
INCOMING
filled.
(P-
File: 1-8593
f. CIA installations.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board used date "windows" within which it
released the locations of CIA installations
where the location was relevant to the assas-
sination. Specifically, the Review Board
released the location of CIA installations
relating to Mexico City during the time
period 1960-1969. Likewise, the Review
13-00000
FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
Record reviewed unilaterally by CIA in 1992.
SU*JECT:
Petey in sending the first cable about
CS3: LO
:
Same record after Review Board action in 1995.
ILA I:LULJU: JG:
PROHIBITED
1. Hoch has been witten about the (ty Mexico
Station) ih sending the first cable requesting traces on the
nane Lea OSWALD. : Mas discussed in deve illi book es
case of larings on 10. part of the Soviet cae officer hich
in chew
and unnets and indicate that Dave
..didn't know whát á e sac talking about).
the
4. A ne trace could have been requer cad on the bis is
ofane leat but that wasn't than that
Scazier.
….. it was also part of the "quat “ of
project by the suber of as patches, cable or
Reproduced.
SC JE Z
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
RELEASE IN FULL 1995
"elinding the fint calde abu
OSWALD
REPRUJULI
PROHIBITE
1. Much has been wittes a love o dela (by me Mexico
Rention) hs coding the flat cable requesting traces on the
ARE LE OSMALD. It 
discussed in Devel
case of latinas ca the part of the Soviet caffleer (hich
inview and necessary and indicates at Dave
't know what he 
calking about).
1. Normally the Spanish transcript for the I octeter
conversation 
would 
have been picked up on the orig
2nd of October. 
The Russian language portion weld
to the Busin/gh froad criber one Jed of Catater. e
Fram latien uld have been returned the fellasSEAN (4)
at 
hich time, the Soviet case officer wild hel far
the 
photografic covetge. That cover not have been
in the station before the 7th since till in tha
Caner on the 
3rd of October and Picket up probably on
the 4th
, processed and passedation ca the next work
day ich would 
have been ctober.
3. Later the film was
but at that time, the film
rutl completed ich night take
4.
of the
out of the casere every
the concre entil a fall
or four days.
A Dame trace could have been reques 1nd on bes
dare 
but at man' the SCULL ras that
Station. 
Reacted 
the photograph coverage to in with the
telephone coverage
sings here as U.S.
11ccase oner. It was also part of
Jying a project
reports produced.
the number of dispatch, cobles or
APPROVED PUS RELEASE 1933
A HISTORI REVIEW PROGRAM
3000-51
SEGRET
A
RESPRDUCTION
PROHIBITED
籽
0000151
D 01075
REPRODUCTION
PROHIBITED
SEGRET
001075.
Board generally released the location of all
CIA installations that were relevant to the
assassination during the time period
between the date of the assassination―
November 22, 1963-and the date that the
Warren Commission issued its report in Sep-
tember 1964. Finally, the Review Board gen-
erally released the location of all CIA installa-
tions that appeared in Oswald's 201 file
during the time period January 1, 1961
through October 1, 1964. The Review Board
did grant CIA a few exceptions to its general
rule, and except for the specific time win-
dows described above, the Review Board
protected all information that identified CIA
installation locations.
The Review Board created substitute lan-
guage for its postponement of CIA installa-
tions to enable researchers to track a particu-
lar CIA installation through the JFK
collection without revealing the city or coun-
try in which it is located. To accomplish this,
54
the Review Board divided the world into five
regions: Western Hemisphere, Western
Europe, Northern Europe, East Asia/Pacific,
and Africa/ Near East/ South Asia. Then the
Board added a number to refer to each differ-
ent location in the region. Thus, "CIA Instal-
lation in Western Hemisphere 1". serves as a
place holder for a particular installation in all
CIA assassination records.
ii. Commentary. Initially, the Review
Board released CIA installation locations in
CIA documents relevant to Oswald's visit to
Mexico City. CIA did not raise significant
objections to the Review Board's release of its
installations in these records.
When the Review Board began to vote to
release the location of additional CIA instal-
lation locations, the CIA did object, but did
not offer evidence of the harm to national
security that it believed would result from
disclosure of the information. The CIA
13-00000
CHAPTER 5: THE Standards FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD "COMMON LAW”
threatened to appeal to the President to over-
turn the Review Board's votes, but the
Review Board's position was that the JFK Act
required release of information where CIA
did not provide convincing evidence to sup-
port their postponements. The Review Board
allowed the CIA ample time to gather and
present its evidence to support its requests
for postponements as both the CIA and the
Review Board hoped to avoid a CIA appeal
to the President.
Ultimately, the CIA determined that it would
trust Review Board members with the infor-
mation that the Review Board required to
postpone the release of the location of a
small number of CIA installations. In an
effort to balance high public interest in the
location of CIA installations and the need to.
protect certain installations, the Review
Board decided to establish date "windows"
within which it would release CIA installa-
tion locations.
The CIA never appealed a Review Board vote
to the President.
g. CIA prefixes (cable, dispatch, field report).
i. Review Board guidelines. CIA cable, dis-
patch, and field report “prefixes" are identi-
fiers that CIA uses on its communications to
indicate the installation that generates a par-
ticular message. Where the Review Board
had voted to release the location of a particu-
lar CIA installation, the Review Board also
voted to release CIA cable, dispatch, and
field report prefixes that the installation gen-
erated. Likewise, the Review Board protected
cable, dispatch, and field report prefixes
where it voted to protect the location of the
CIA installation.
The Review Board replaced the prefixes that
it protected with substitute language similar
to that used for CIA installations. An exam-
ple of substitute language for CIA prefixes is:
"Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in Western
Hemisphere 1."
ii. Commentary. Once the Review Board
voted to release the location of a particular
CIA installation, the Review Board and CIA
did not disagree that the Board should release
cable, dispatch and field report prefixes.
55
h. CIA job titles.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board voted to release CIA employees' job
titles except when the Board's disclosure of
the title might reveal the identity of an indi-
vidual or CIA installation requiring protec-
tion.
ii. Commentary. Although the Review
Board did not believe that it should vote to
protect CIA job titles, standing alone, it some-
times voted to protect titles if they revealed
other information that the Review Board had
voted to protect.
i. CIA file numbers.
i. Review Board guidelines. CIA organizes
many of its files by country and assigns
"country identifiers" within particular file
numbers. The Review Board released nearly
all CIA file numbers that referred to Mexico
City. The Review Board protected the "coun-
try identifiers" in CIA file numbers for all
other countries with the exception of country
identifiers "15" and "19." The Review Board
generally released all CIA "201" or "person-
ality" file numbers where the files related to
the assassination.
ii. Commentary. The CIA rarely objected
to the Review Board's release of its file num-
bers.
j. CIA domestic facilities.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board released references to domestic CIA
facilities where the CIA has previously offi-
cially disclosed the existence of the facility.
The Review Board did not release informa-
tion that would reveal the location of domes-
tic CLA facilities where the CIA provided evi-
dence that the facility was still in use.
ii. Commentary. The Review Board rarely
encountered the issue of whether to release
the location of CIA domestic facilities in
assassination records, as CIA officially
acknowledges most of its domestic facilities.
When the Review Board did vote to postpone
the location of CIA domestic facilities, it
required the CIA to provide extensive evi-
dence as to why the CIA had to keep the loca-
tion of those facilities secret.
1
13-00000
FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
k. 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 congres-
sional documents, the Review Board released
general information about official cover but
protected specific details. With regard to exec-
utive 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 dis-
closed the information at issue.
The Review Board inserted the phrase "offi-
cial cover" as substitute language when it
postponed such information.
ii. Commentary. The Review Board ini-
tially 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 eventu-
ally 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 employ-
ees and agents use aliases and the CIA cre-
ates documentation to support its employ-
ees' 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 sup-
port of postponements that were of low pub-
lic interest and, thus, it did not require the
CIA to provide evidence in support of every
postponement relating to alias documenta-
tion.
m. Foreign intelligence cooperation.
i. Review Board guidelines. The Review
Board postponed references to foreign intelli-
gence cooperation with the CIA.
ii. Commentary. The Review Board vigor-
ously debated the issue of foreign intelli-
gence 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, deter-
mined 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 counter-
intelligence 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 govern-
ment 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
56
13.00000
CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARDS FOR REVIEW: REVIEW BOARD "COMMON LAW”
individual who has provided or is currently
providing information pertaining to national
security matters, the disclosure of which
could reasonably be expected to result in
damage to the FBI's intelligence and counter-
intelligence-gathering capabilities."
The FBI offered the following arguments in
support of its request to keep intelligence
sources' identities secret: (1) Review Board
disclosure of intelligence sources would harm
the FBI's ability to develop and maintain new
and existing sources, because sources would
reasonably believe that the government
would reveal their identities, and (2) disclo-
sure of intelligence sources may subject the
sources, their friends, and their families to
physical harm, ridicule, or ostracism.
The Review Board's interpretation of the
"clear and convincing" evidence standard
required it to reject the FBI's general policy
arguments, and instead required the FBI to
present asset-specific evidence that explained
the particular harm that the FBI expected the
asset to face if the Review Board voted to dis-
close his or her identity. As a general rule, the
Review Board usually protected the identities
of foreign nationals who could be prosecuted
in their home countries for espionage. Like-
wise, where the asset was a United States cit-
izen interacting with foreign government offi-
cials, the Review Board considered whether
the individual was in a position of trust with
the foreign government and whether he or
she might be in danger if the Review Board
disclosed his or her relationship with the FBI.
Unlike the above-referenced scenarios, the
source who was a United States citizen interact-
ing with other United States citizens was gener-
ally evaluated according to the Board's
domestic informant standards.
o. FBI foreign counterintelligence activities.
i. Review Board guidelines. As a general
rule, the Review Board believed that most
aspects of the FBI's foreign counterintelli-
gence activities against Communist Bloc
countries during the cold war period were
well-known, were of high public interest,
and were not eligible for postponement pur-
suant to § 6(1)(B)-(C) of the JFK Act.
ii. Commentary and overview of foreign
counterintelligence appeals. The FBI's assassi-
57
nation records contain information that
reveal many of the FBI's foreign counterintel-
ligence activities during the cold war period.
Beginning in late 1995, the Review Board
considered how it could release as much
information as possible in the records with-
out jeopardizing operations that still require
protection.
In spring 1996, the
Review Board considered
and voted on a group of
FBI records relating to the
FBI's foreign counterin-
telligence activities. In
response to the Review
Board's requests for evi-
dence on the foreign
counterintelligence
records, the FBI had pro-
vided its “position paper"
on foreign counterintelli-
gence activities. In its
paper, the FBI defined
"intelligence activities" as
"intelligence gathering action or techniques
utilized by the FBI against a targeted individ-
ual or organization that has been determined
to be of national security interest." The FBI's
primary argument in support of its request for
continued secrecy of intelligence activities
was that disclosure of specific information
describing intelligence activities would reveal
to hostile entities the FBI's targets and priori-
ties, thereby allowing hostile entities to
develop countermeasures.
In all cases where the Review
Board is considering stpo
ment, it should keep
held information to an abso
minimum, and ensure
postponement is narrow
drawn for the shortest possible
duration. In so doing
Review Board should release
much information from
records as is possible.
-Senate Report on JFK
July 22, 1992
Sections 6(1)(B) and (C) of the JFK Act pro-
vided the standard for postponement. In
addition, the JFK Act's legislative history
instructed the Review Board to consider a
variety of factors related to the need to post-
pone disclosure of intelligence sources and
methods, including the age of the record,
whether the use of a particular source or
method is already well-known by the public,
whether the source or method is inherently
secret, or whether the information collected
was secret.27
The Review Board considered the FBI's evi-
dence and weighed it against public interest
in the records. After careful consideration,
the Review Board decided to release some
foreign counterintelligence information. The
Board's primary reason for releasing such
13-00000
FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD
records was its belief that the FBI's evidence
did not enumerate specific harms that would
result from disclosure.
A. The FBI's May 1996 Appeals to the
President. On May 10 and 28, 1996, the FBI
appealed to the President to overturn the
Board's vote on 17 records relating to the
FBI's surveillance of officials and establish-
ments of four Communist countries-the
Soviet Union, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and
Poland during the 1960s. The FBI's overar-
ching arguments were that disclosure of the
information would reveal sensitive sources
and methods that would compromise the
national security of the United States, and
that disclosure of the targets of the surveil-
lance the four Communist countries-
would harm the foreign relations of the
United States.
The FBI sought to postpone five types of
source and method capabilities: tracing of
funds, physical surveillance (lookout logs),
mail cover, electronic surveillance, and type-
writer and fingerprint identification. The
Review Board's response briefs to the Presi-
dent dealt with each source or method in
turn. Specific details regarding the appeal of
each issue are discussed below.
In response to the FBI's overarching argu-
ment that disclosure of the information
would reveal sensitive sources and methods
and compromise the national security, the
Review Board responded that if the national
security would be harmed by release of this
information, the harm would have already
occurred, since the FBI had already released
both the identities of the target countries and
the sources and methods that the FBI used in
its operations.
In response to the FBI's arguments that dis-
closure of the targets of the surveillance
would harm the foreign relations of the United
States, the Review Board responded in three
parts. First, the information that the FBI
sought to protect is widely available in the
public domain, from both official govern-
ment sources and secondary sources, so if
foreign relations are harmed by disclosure of
the information, then the harm has already
occurred. Second, the FBI simply did not
prove its argument that it may have violated
international law or "diplomatic standards"
58
by employing the sources or methods at issue
since the FBI did not cite the laws or treaties
to which it referred and the Review Board
could not locate any laws or treaties that
were in effect at the time that the records
were created. Third, despite the FBI's asser-
tion to the contrary, the Review Board had
evidence that other governments do acknowl-
edge that, in past years, they conducted for-
eign counterintelligence operations against
other countries.
The Review Board believed that the FBI had
not provided evidence of a "significant,
demonstrable harm" to current foreign rela-
tions or intelligence work. Thus, the Board
asked the President to deny the FBI's requests
for postponement. The White House did not
expressly rule on the appeals. Instead, after
several meetings involving representatives
from the Review Board, the FBI, and the White
House, the White House directed the FBI to
provide the Review Board with specific evi-
dence in support of its postponements. The
White House requested the Review Board to
reconsider the Bureau's specific evidence. The
FBI, in turn, withdrew the first two of its
pending appeals, including some records in
which the Review Board voted to release
information obtained from a technical source.
B. Post-appeal decisionmaking. After fur-
ther negotiations, the Review Board and the
FBI agreed to release most information
regarding its foreign counterintelligence
activities against Communist Bloc countries
as "consent releases." In those few cases
where the Bureau believed that foreign coun-
terintelligence activity against Communist
Bloc countries still required protection, the
Bureau submitted for the Board's determina-
tion postponement-specific evidence.
To the extent that the information in the FBI's
proposed redaction did not meaningfully
contribute to the understanding of the assas-
sination, the Review Board allowed the FBI
to postpone direct discussions of foreign
counterintelligence activities against non-
Communist Bloc countries. With regard to
the FBI's "segregated collections," the
Review Board stated in its segreated collec-
tion guidelines,
4
It is presumed that the FBI will, at least
partially, carry over its post-appeal stan-
13-00000
B

13-00000
OGC-92-53256
14 December 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR: Chief, Historical Review Group
VIA:
FROM:
SUBJECT:
W. George James Rounse
Associate General Counsel
Litigation Divisio
vision,
OGC
Robert J. Eatinger, Jr.
Assistant General Counsel
Litigation Division, OGC
Declassification Guidelines Established by the
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
Collection Act of 1992
1. The enactment of the President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 ("the Act") has
created declassification guidelines that are to some extent
different from the Historical Review Program guidelines
established by the Director of Central Intelligence. In the
continuing review of material related to the assassination of
President Kennedy, the guidelines established by the Act must be
used.
2. The Act's most fundamental changes are the burden it
creates on agencies to justify continued classification of
information, and a requirement that agencies balance the national
security concerns against the public interest. Under the Act,
information must be declassified unless a showing is made by
clear and convincing evidence that release of the information
would demonstrably impair the national security.
3. The Act's guidelines for declassification are found in
its Section 6 and are as follows:
Sec 6. GROUND FOR POSTPONEMENT OF PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF
RECORDS.
Disclosure of assassination records or particular
information in assassination records to the public may be
postponed subject to the limitations of this Act if there is
clear and convincing evidence that--
(1) the threat to the military defense,
intelligence operations, or conduct of foreign
relations of the United States posed by the public
disclosure of the assassination is of such gravity that
13-00000
4.
it outweighs the public interest, and such public
disclosure would reveal-
(A) an intelligence agent whose identity
currently requires protection;
(B) an intelligence source or method which
is currently utilized, by the United States
Government and which has not been officially
disclosed, the disclosure of which would interfere
with the conduct of intelligence activities; or
(C) Any other matter currently relating to
the military defense, intelligence operations or
conduct of foreign relations of the United States,
the disclosure of which would demonstrably impair
the national security of the United States;
(2)
the public disclosure of the assassination
record would reveal the name or identity of a living
person who provided confidential information to the
United States and would pose a substantial risk to that
person;
(3) the public disclosure of the assassination
record could reasonably be expected to constitute an
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, and that
invasion of privacy is so substantial that it outweighs
the public interest;
(4) the public disclosure of the assassination
record would compromise the existence of an
understanding of confidentiality currently requiring
protection between a Government agent and a cooperating
individual or a foreign government, and public
disclosure would be so harmful that it outweighs the
public interest; or
(5) the public disclosure of the assassination
record would reveal a security or protective procedure
currently utilized, or reasonably expected to be
utilized, by the Secret service or another Government
agency responsible for protecting Government officials,
and public disclosure would be so harmful that it-
outweighs the public interest.
The Act therefore superseded the guidelines established
for the Historical Review Program to the extent the Historical
Review Group (HRG) is processing information related to the
assassination of President Kennedy. The specific changes are as
follows.
a. The most basic change is that you must apply a
balancing test before maintaining the classification of any
information. You must balance continued classification
against the public interest in the information. Therefore,
the greater light disclosure of the information would shed
on the assassination of the President, or on the
2
13-00000
government's investigation into that assassination, the more
serious must be the need to continue to withhold the
information for classification to be maintained.
b.
HR 70-14.e(2) states the reviewers of information
advocating continued classification of information will bear
the burden identifying any damage that disclosure could
reasonably be expected to cause to the national security.
The Act defines that burden as one of "clear and convincing
evidence." Further, the Act changes "reasonably could be
expected to cause" to "demonstrably." Therefore, unless a
showing is made by clear and convincing evidence that
release of the information would demonstrably impair the
national security, the information must be declassified.
C. HR 70-14.e(4) addresses the standards for
maintaining the classification of foreign government
information, the identity of a foreign source, and
intelligence sources and methods. It notes that Executive
Order 12,356 presumes that this information is classified.
Under the Act, with respect to these categories of
classified information found with records related to the
assassination of President Kennedy, you must still find
demonstrable damage by clear and convincing evidence
regardless of the presumption in the Executive Order.
Further, with respect to intelligence sources and methods,
the Act requires that they--
(1) be either currently utilized or reasonably
expected to be utilized by the U.S. Government; and
and
(2) that they not have been officially disclosed;
(3) that their disclosure would interfere with the
conduct of intelligence activities.
All of these factors must be met by a showing of clear and
convincing evidence.
d. HR 70-14.e(4) also discusses CIA personnel and
organizational information. The Act only permits the
continued withholding of the identity of an "intelligence
agent" if, by clear and convincing evidence, it can be shown
the person's identity requires protection. Further, the Act
does not permit the withholding of organizational
information unless, by clear and convincing evidence, it can
be shown the disclosure of the organizational data would
demonstrably impair the national security.
e. HR 70-14.e(7) states that the HRG will determine
whether information warrants continued protection pursuant
to statutory or other requirements. The Act supersedes all
other statutory authority for withholding information except
3
13-00000
for a provision of the Internal Revenue Code dealing with
tax return information. This means the Act takes precedence
over 50 U.S.C. § 403 (d) (3) and § 403g, as well as the
Privacy Act, when determining whether to release records
related to the assassination of President Kennedy. The Act
also makes no provision for protecting information on the
basis of executive privilege, such as deliberative process
and attorney-client communications.
5. Certain categories of information may fall into more
than one of the grounds set forth in Section 6 of the Act. We
recommend that you review all of the grounds when determining
whether to release or withhold specific information. For
example, a human intelligence source may fall into grounds (1) (A)
("intelligence agent"), (1) (B) ("intelligence source"), (2)
("living person who provided confidential information to the
United States"), and/or (4) ("understanding of confidentiality
currently requiring protection between a Government agent and a
cooperating individual"). At this point, we do not know how the
Assassination Records Review Board will interpret each of these
grounds. Therefore, if you determine the standards of the Act
are met to permit withholding of certain information, you should
assert as many grounds as may arguably apply as authority for
that withholding.
6. Although the Act severely limits what information may be
withheld from disclosure, it may be possible to protect
information not expressly covered by the Act. However, such
information may be withheld only with the personal authorization
of the President. When the President signed the Act, he issued a
statement that included the following:
My authority to protect [executive branch
deliberations, law enforcement information of the
executive branch, and national security information]
comes from the Constitution and cannot be limited by
statute. Although only the most extraordinary
circumstances would require postponement of the
disclosure of documents for reasons other than those
recognized in the bill, I cannot abdicate my
constitutional responsibility to take such action when
necessary.
7.
The Act provides individuals the ability under the
Administrative Procedures Act to challenge in court final
decisions of the Assassination Records Board. We can expect,
then, court challenges to the Board's decisions to uphold any of
our determinations that certain information meets the criteria
for postponement of release. Additionally, as you know, there
are FOIA litigations for this same material. Plaintiff's counsel
has indicated in court pleadings and orally that he wants the
court to review our redactions not under FOIA standards, but
under the standards of the Act. Thus, you should apply the Act's
standards knowing your judgments may be questioned by the Board,
4
of NARA
Software-per
Honey: Won't
accept 
author
."
for 
each
redaction
13-00000
subsequent court challenges to the Board's action, and the FOIA
cases.
8. If you have any questions concerning the application of
the Act to your review of the assassination records, please call
me on secure extension 76105.
Ral
Robert J. Eatinger, Jr.
P.5....
13-00000
DCI/OGC/RJE:ig 76105/ 15 Dec 1992
OGC-92-53256
Distribution:
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DO/IRO
DI/IRO
DS&T/IRO
DA/IRO
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PCS/PGG
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WGJ
RJE Soft file
OGC Chrono
RJE Signer
13-00000
AGENCY INTERNAL USE ONLY
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
MEMORANDUM FOR: David P. Holmes
Deputy General Counsel
FROM:
SUBJECT:
Ctern
OGC-94-52916
19 September 1994
Robert J. Eatinger. Jr.
Assistant General Counsel
Litigation Division, OGC
DCI Sources and Methods Authority With Respect
to JFK Assassination Records
1. Per your
request, I have attached a copy of the
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of
1992 (ARCA), Pub. L. 102-526, 106 Stat. 3443-3458, reprinted at
44 U.S.C. § 2107 note. For your convenience, I have highlighted
the pertinent provisions that will aid in responding to an
inquiry regarding the statute's effect on the DCI's statutory
authority to protect intelligence sources and methods.
2. The clear language and intent of the law is to supersede
statutes that prohibit disclosure of information, except for some
irrelevant subject areas, such as tax records. The statute
provides that "it shall take precedence over any other law
(except section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code), judicial
decision construing such law, or common law doctrine that would
otherwise prohibit" the disclosure of information subject to the
Act. ARCA § 11(a). This language, taken with the provisions
discussed below which limit the intelligence sources and methods
that may be protected and set a strict procedural scheme by which
information is to be reviewed under the ARCA, effectively
supersedes the DCI's National Security Act authority with respect
to intelligence sources and methods information subject to the
ARCA.
3. Section 6 of the ARCA provides the grounds for which the
release of information may be "postponed." The statute
contemplates that all information will eventually be released.
Indeed, it specifies that all information will be made available
to the public no later than 25 years after the passage of the
ARCA (which occurred in October 1992) unless the president
certifies that continued postponement is necessary. ARCA
§ 4 (g) (2) (D) . With respect to intelligence-related information,
ARCA allows postponement if:
" (1) the threat to ... intelligence operations ... is
of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest, and
such public disclosure would reveal--
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
AGENCY INTERNAL USE ONLY
13-00000
AGENCY INTERNAL USE ONLY
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
SUBJECT:
DCI Sources and Methods Authority With Respect to JFK
Assassination Records
(A) an intelligence agent whose identity currently
requires protection;
(B) an intelligence source or method which is
currently utilized, or reasonably expected to be
utilized, by the United States Government and which has
not been officially disclosed, the disclosure of which
would interfere with the conduct of intelligence
activities; or
(C) any other matter currently relating to
intelligence operations the disclosure of which
...
would demonstrably impair the national security of the
United States."
ARCA § 6 (1) (Emphasis added.)
=
4. The originating agency is to make the first review to
identify information that meets the standards for postponement.
ARCA § 4 (c) (2) (D) (i). For CIA, this effort is being undertaken
by the Historical Review Group, in consultation with the
Directorate of Operations and other appropriate Agency
components. Information the originating agencies identify for
postponement must be transmitted to the Review Board. ARCA
§ 4 (c) (2) (E). The Review Board "shall consider and render
decisions on a determination by a Government office to seek to
postpone the disclosure of assassination records." ARCA §
7 (i) (1). Specifically, the "Review Board shall consider and
render decisions on ... whether an assassination record or
particular information in a record qualifies for postponement of
disclosure under the Act." ARCA § 7 (i) (2) (B).
5. If the Review Board determines to order the disclosure
of information that the originating agency felt met the criteria
for postponement, it "shall notify the head of the originating
body of its determination and publish a copy of the determination
in the Federal Register within 14 days after the determination is
made." ARCA § 9 (c) (4) (A). If the information contained in an
assassination record is "obtained or developed solely within the
executive branch, the President shall have the sole and
nondelegable authority to require the disclosure or postponement
of ... the information under the standards set forth in
Section 6." ARCA § 9 (d) (1) (emphasis added). The President's
decision must be certified to the Review Board within 30 days of
the Review Boards determination. Id. Records postponed by the
· President must be re-reviewed every 5 years. ARCA § 9 (d) (2).
2
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
AGENCY-INTERNAL USE ONLY
13-00000
SUBJECT:
AGENCY-INTERNAL USE ONLY
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
DCI Sources and Methods Authority With Respect to JFK
Assassination Records
6.
I would be happy to discuss this further if you so
You might also want to contact John Pereira (x30373)
since he has met with some or all of the Review Board members.
desire.
Attachment
Robert
Ralst
Eatinger Jr.
PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT
AGENCY-INTERNAL USE ONLY
13-00000
SUBJECT: DCI Sources and Methods Authority w/Respect
to JFK Assassination Records
OGC-94-52916
DCI/OGC/RJEatinger: 76105 (19 Sept 94)
Original
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w/attach) (hand delivered)
OGC Registry (w/attach)
Lit File
RBB (OGC/ILƆ)
C/HRG (J. Pereira-404 Ames)
RJE Soft File (w/attach)
RJE
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PAS-fyi
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13-00000
.:
13-00000
SECRET
Attachment C
Friday, October 29, 1999
Foreign Government Information Contained in JFK Collection
CIA's JFK Collection includes Foreign Government Information (FGI) in a number of forms:
First, some CIA documents in the collection contained FGI but, by general agreement with the
Assassination Records Review Board, the source could be protected by redaction even when CIA and
the Board agreed that substantive information could be released.
Second, documents were provided by foreign governments in the aftermath of the assassination in response
to requests from the US Government for information about the assassination or individuals whose
names may have been associated with it. Such documents subsequently became a part of CIA's
"sequestered collection" and thus were automatically designated by the JFK Board as "Assassination
Records," subject to declassification review. A number of such documents were released in full in the
early years of the project (1992-1994), with the concurrence of the DO/IRO, but OIM has no
documentation regarding coordination with liaison.
Third, in a number of documented cases, the DO consulted with liaison services regarding documents that
were clearly identifiable as from a liaison service, and handling of both the substance and the sources
was discussed with the liaison services and their views obtained. In all such documented cases, the
BOARD agreed to protect the foreign government source and, as appropriate, to postpone the release
of redacted portions or entire documents until the year 2017, reflecting the language of the JFK Act.
The information below reflects those instances of coordination with liaison services that are
reflected in OIM records:
Australian-
--
--
1. (S) A 1968 letter from Charles C. F. Spry, on Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
letterhead, to DCI Richard Helms objected to the proposed release of a Warren Commission document in
which reference is made to the 'Australian security service.' [The Warren Commission document (CD #97)
was a memorandum to Mr. J. Lee Rankin from DDP Helms dated 22 May 1964 reporting an anonymous
caller who described himself as a Polish chauffeur for the Soviet Embassy in Canberra to the US
Embassy there. That memo was sanitized to delete the ‘Australian security service.'] The Board did not
accept the Agency's initial action to "deny in full" Sir Spry's letter and the Board's acceptance of
substitute text provided only additional time to pursue the possibility of full release. Consultations between
and among EA/PAMSI, OGC, and others and queries to the Australian desk, and, in turn, the Station and
the Australian Government brought an acceptable compromise. ASIO authorized the release of a redacted
and retyped version of Sir Spry's letter that did not reveal Sir Spry as the writer and that did not reveal an
ASIO/CIA relationship, and ASIO further stated “this . . . should not be seen as setting any precedent in
releasing ASIO documents." The Board postponed release of the original until 2017.
2. (S) Helms' response to Sir Spry and two related CIA documents were released in sanitized
form that protected the liaison relationship. The release of the redacted portions are postponed until 2017.
3. (S) Cables exchanged between Headquarters and Canberra over the issue_in-Item-l-were-
declared assassination records, but release of the cables was postponed until 2017.
SECRET
LIA 2-82
X5
1.5d
13-00000
SECRET
British
1. (S) The BOARD wanted to release the 1963 British Security Service's (BSS) interview of the
spouse of a West-East defector (Sloboda). The BSS advised the Station that release would be a violation of
privacy rights in the UK. The BOARD agreed that the document was “not intrinsic to assassination story"
and that the document could be postponed until 2017.
2. (S) Another British document in the collection provided information that as of 1982
“KOSTIKOV... was posted in Beirut in 1978 ...: and may still be there." (The author EPSTEIN in
Legend claims KOSTIKOV was Lee Harvey Oswald's KGB case officer in Mexico City.) The British desk
accepted the release of the one pertinent paragraph (one of five paragraphs in the document), and the Board
agreed to postpone until 2017 the release of all other text and source originating information.
3. (S) The BOARD learned of the existence of a British document that the CIA possessed from the
BOARD's examination of FBI files. One member of the BOARD reviewed the entire document and
declared one portion of the document as relevant to the JFK assassination. The four-page section of the
document regarding KGB Active Measures was released in full and further noted that it was from a foreign
government that specifically requested not to be identified.
Canadian
(S) A report received through Canadian liaison channels on West-East defectors (Martin and
Mitchell) is in the collection. As consultations with the Canadian desk were underway, the BOARD
determined the document as not believed relevant and postponed its release until 2017.
Dutch
(S) The BOARD wanted to release two attachments (teltap transcripts) to a dispatch from the
Dutch Station. The matter was coordinated with the Dutch desk, the Dutch Station, and the Director
General of the Dutch National Security Service. As a result, translation substitutions provide the
information from intercepted conversations on the topics of “Mr. Lee (sic)" and Richard Gibson, but
redactions obscure the source of the transcripts, according to guidelines in a letter from the service. Release
of the redacted portions is postponed until 2017.
2
SECRET
LIA 2-82
X5
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