04-10740-10384 “#3. MEMORANDUM FOR: Depu FROM: _ John Insp SUBJECT: " Oswa er ME eT te ate Lar so ert ttn ne te ee i 1 December 1976 hater ty Director of Central Intelligence H. Waller ector General Id Documents -- Action Taken —— FE et: ean erered 1. Attached herewith is an edited version of the memorandum on Kesster's article 27 November 1976. in the Washington Post forwarded to you on 2. In an effort to obtain all .the information that is avail- the Office-of Security, at the behest of the able on this matter, Inspector General, ha into the reported lea Agency files and reco including the transla tion, the typist at t They state that it is time it will take to Vi s initiated a formal security investigation ks, This is to be confined to an analysis of LF rds and to present and former Agency employees, tor formerly assigned to the Mexico City Sta- he Station at that time and Mr. David Phill conduct these investigations. ips. rtually impossible to estimate the length of 3. The Office of the General Counsel has been engaged since April 1976 in perusin FOIA purposes. Jt is containing Agency inf declassified by mid-D telephone taps in Mex Oswald 201 files cons Other files with poss dent Kennedy include tions material that i Schweiker report; 2 1] Security; varying amo and DCI files. g the Oswald 201 files, page by page, for estimated that 75 percent of that material ormation will be sanitized, if needed, and ecember 1976. The information relating to ico City, however,-has been deleted.’ The ist of 11 1/2 safe drawers of material. ‘ble relevance to the assassination of Pras j- the following: 12 safe drawers of Cuban Opera- s being reviewed in connection with the /2 safe drawers of material in the Office of unts of related material in the Mexico City Station files; soft files; Rocca Files; CI/SIG files; OGC files £2 TMPDET CL BY 055636 | 8853
14-00000 4. The Taspector General has also recommended that the Mexico -. Branch of LA Division send a cable to the Mexico Station inquiring -as to what records may still be there relating to the period of Oswald's visit to Mexico and afterwards. As of this date, we have not located the original transcripts of the telephone intercepts of - Qswald's 1963 telephone conversations in Mexico City. We are hoping that the prescnt intensive search will unearth then. 5: The-kinds of information currently being deleted by the Of- fice of General Counsel from Oswald documents under Freedom of Infor- mation are as follows: - a. Information confirming the existence of an Agency station in-a named city (country) abroad. b. Cryptonyins and pseudonyms. c. Identities of Agency staff employees. d. Identities of agents (foreign intelligence sources). identi- ! h. In a number of instances the kind of information cited above, if subject to public disclosure, would still (thirteen years later) have a damaging effect on U.S. foreign affairs, national security interests and/or intelligence operations and classification is still justifiable under Executive Order 11652. Nm
14-00000 Sees “4. Identities of Agency components and internal Agency filing instructions. j.°. Information concerning activities or behavior patterns of people not even incidentally involved in the assassination whose personal privacy would be un- justifiably invaded should the information be released. k. ‘Identities of U.S. law enforcement officials. 6. I cannot guarantee that the OGC sterilizations, following guidelines described in the attached memorandum, are generally as minimal as you may want. As you can see, this process has been coing on since last April, thus it would be a major undertaking to begin all over again. I will look further into this, but if you | ultimately conclude that there should be a different standard for FOIA releases on this subject than on others, we may have a very: large job aheac of us. pDO, OGC and the FOIA office should be heard from. , 7. With regard to the Sprague investigation, our intention would be to let Sprague or his investigators have generatly un- fettered access to our relevant files here in this building. Those documents he wishes to take out would be given a minimal steriliza- tion. Those documents which he wishes to have’ taken out and declas- sified would be sterilized for that purpose. 1 anticipate that the problems will occur as we disagree over what may be declassified. His instincts will be to want to put as much as passible in the public domain. But,.we will have to face those pridges when we came to them. Much will depend upon the kind of agreement OLC will be able to negotiate in advance on security matters. John H. Waller Attachment - a/s cc: OGC watt OLC w/att Assistant to DDC] w/att