HW 53199 ' Docld: 32341337" Page 6 declassification guidelines for out Historical Review Program _ which specifically direct a presumption in favor of -declassification. I believe we'can be very forward leaning in making these documents available-to.the public, a and I have heart. To understand the magnitude of the effort involved in reviewing these documents for declassification, it is important to place them in some context. The CIA's collection of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy consists of approximately 250,000-300,000 pages of material. This includes 64 boxes of copies and originals of information provided to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations and 17 boxes of material on Lee Harvey Oswald accumulated after President Kennedy's assassination. Unfortunately, and for reasons I do not know, what we are dealing with is a mass of material-that is. not indexed, is uncatalogued, -and _is highly disorganized--all of which-makes the review process more difficult. The material contains everything from the most _ sensitive intelligence sources to the most mundane news
HW 53199 DoclId: 32341337 Page 7? ad-in its files ‘oret rds that CIA received later as routine  disseminations from: other. agencies, as well as. the reports, correspondence, and other’ ‘papers that CIA prepared i in the course of the assassination investigations. I should emphasize that these records were assembled into the present collection as a result of specific inquiries received from the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. I have prepared a chart that illustrates this point. As you can see, prior to President Kennedy's assassination CIA held only a small file on Lee Harvey Oswald that consisted of 33 documents (approximately 110 pages), some of which originated with the FBI, State Department, the Navy, and newspaper clippings. Only 11 documents originated with the CIA. I have brought along a copy of Oswald's file as it existed before the assassination so that you can see first-hand how slender it was at the time. As I have already noted, we have declassified the CIA documents in this file with quite minimal deletioas, and we are providing them to the National Archives. The records in this file dealt with Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 and his.activities after his return in 1961. By contrast, it-was only after the assassination that CIA accumulated the rest of the material on Oswald--some 33,000 pages--most of which CIA received from other agencies after November.22, 1963.-
You have askediabout documents in our possessién“ - generated by other agen s--In fact, much of the material held by a CIA originated with other igencies or departments. For example, in the 17 boxes of Oswald records, approximately 40% of the. documents originated with the FBI, and about 20% originated from the State Department. or elsewhere. Our staff is still going © through the material compiled at the request ofthe Warren . — Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which includes 63 boxes of paper records and one box that contains 72 reels of microfilm. The microfilms in part overlap material in other parts of the collection. We estimate that within the 63 boxes of paper records, approximately 27% of the documents originated with a variety of other U.S. government agencies, private organizations, and foreign and American press. Although our holdings do include many documents from other agencies, we nonetheless have a substantial collection of CIA documents that will require a considerable effort to review and, as I said earlier, at my direction, this review for. declassification is now underway. A preliminary survey of these - _ files has provided us some indications of what they contain. Although the records cover.a wide variety of topics, they principally focus ‘on CIA activities concerning Cuba and Castro, Oswald's. defection to the Soviet Union, and. Oswald's subsequent activities. in Mexico City and New Orleans: “They- also include-a— staff of the House larg * number of name traces requested by | 39341337 Page 8
to the Garrison investigation a dCuban exile activities.” The CIA cannot release a number of documents unilaterally because of the limits in the Privacy Act (which protects the names of American citizens against unauthorized disclosure), the sequestration of many documents by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the fact that many of the documents belong to agencies other than the CIA. However, we have already taken the necessary steps to lift the sequestration, coordinate with other agencies and begin the process of declassification. If | necessary, I will ask the House for a resolution permitting CIA to release the results of the declassification effort on the sequestered a documents. While I expect a large amount of material can be declassified under our program, I assume that there still will be information that cannot be released.to the public for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns or the exposure of intelligence sources and methods. Let me take a moment to give examples of this type of material. During the investigation by the “. «House Select Committee on Assassinations; I understand that security and pérsonnel files were requested on a number of © _ Agency employees. These files contain fitness reports. . (performance. evaluations), medical. evaluations and. credit checks - on, individu ‘CIA officers. Although: irrelevan t to th q estion of. who’ killed: President Kennedy, these and other’ person il HW 53199 Docld: 32341337" Page 9
HW 53199 . Docld: 32341337 _ . of t the individuals i in keeping this information confidential Similar | privacy concerns exist with documents. containing derogatory information on particular individuals where the information is based on gossip or rumor. Our files also contain __names of individuals who provided us intelligence information on _ a promise of confidentiality. We would not disclose their names , in breach of such a promise. Where we cannot disclose such information to the public, the Agency will make redactions and ‘summarize the information in order to ensure that the maximum amount of information is released while still protecting the identity-of-an agent or the privacy of an individual:- - _ If legislation is not passed by Congress and signed by the President regarding the JFK papers, to enhance public confidence and provide reassurance that CIA has not held back any information relevant to the assassination, I will appoint a panel of distinguished Americans from outside of government to examine whatever: documents we have redacted or kept classified. They would then-issue an unclassified public report on their:findings. The effort required to declassify the documents telated to the assassination of President Kennedy will be daunting.