104-10331-10309 CONFIDENTIAL . A NOTE FOR: John F. Pereira @ DA FROM: DATE: 02/20/95 11:33:42 AM SUBJECT: IdAids As you may remember the Board, ie, David Marwell, took issue on several counts with the Id Aids and the disks that we recently provided. Their concerns, 4in number, and my recommendations to remedy those concerns are fisted helew. Seme-of their concerns can be relieved, some may not. The larger issue is the amount of resources that may be needed to make the kinds of adjustments they require. Initially we are talking about the 11 Oswald boxes. The-remainder of the file will be harder to adjust ‘because of the large amount of decuments/idAids, because the file is not in its original form (3rd Agency, HSCA} and because the audit is not completed (IdAids matched to documents in file). There is also the lurking possibility that to provide t the missing data we may be forced to access the file data manually. Concern 1: Classification Status The original classification status of the document was not previded on the IdAid. This issue is not a new one, it has been discussed before with . NARA, Fit data recorded on the Id Aid reflects the fms of the IdAid— and/or the version of thedocument currently at NARA:- namely all are Unclassified. The data is in our file, however, sinceit was not a romped “dorb lL. ~ prccnamy field at input there may be instances where the field is blank. ; : Coot pink mA dasha, Recommendation: Have(Cynde query for blanks in the field to determine if there are a lot of blanks and, if the numbers are right, make the pregram change. if the numbers are not right, ie, large number of blanks in this field, we need to regroup. Concern 2: Non Matching Hard Copy idAid and Digital id Aid Mr. Marwell produced 2 versions of the same index record - 1 from the <p hard copy idAid collection we provided and one from the disks we provided, | have talked toCynde about this and she has checked the ? program and firmly believes it to be impossible te have 2 versions of the same record. | will talk toJim’on Tuesday but | view this as a human error. | will also call NARA and ask them to pull this record for comparison. My searches have produced no duplicates. Recommendation: Talk to Mr, Marwell again to find aut exactly how he found the duplicate record and if more were discovered. Depending on his reply { would suggest that this he categorized as a human error. Concern 3: “Referred " Documents having a classification status In his manipulation of the disk data Mr, Marwell discovered numerous instances where a document was marked for referral/coordination and _ also carried a classification status, eg, RIF, SAN, DIF. He reasons that if a document is referred it should carry a “P” fer. Pending i in the classification status field. (Cynde informs me that the program inserts a Chefaria arking when the document originator is anything hut CIA. This 4 marking w was as not inserted by the indexers but by the program. The theory being that if the document was not CIA it wasjis coordinated. It was also reasoned that if/when the decument had completed its coordination run it ‘was provided to NARA with an appropriate idAid. The original August release included IdAids for those documents pending coordination - the IdAids appropriately stamped with “Pending Coordination” - but no documents were attached. The difficulty here is a difference in CONFIDENTIAL ¢
13-00000 ce: CONFIDENTIAL interpretation of what the electronic data is te the hard copy, eg, what the “referred” marking means. It seems that the providing of the interim IdAids for these documents in the process of coordination may have complicated the issue. (A clear case of too much epenness!) The difficulty alse may be NARAs since we presumed that the provided =~ documents would be inter-filed in the basic file. = a Recommendation: Reprogram to take out the “referred” markings. Barry tells me that the coordination is-almost completed and by the time that the Board gets ready to leak at documents the “trailing” coordinations will be complete. Concern 4: Carriage returns in the Comments field , Qrv (aa Ww % -C loan. “wp Wir. Marwell is concerned that these superfluous digital marks would complicate NARA's life. The carriage returns are a natural input reaction in the typing of narrative text in the Comments field. . “ime ee eT fn Recommendation: Program to remove the carriage returns when thay . 3 occur in the Comments field. 7 CONFIDENTIAL