URGENT: SUPP. FILING FOR JFK BOARD
Originator: CIA
From: EDMUND COHEN
To: LEE S. STRICKLAND
Document date: 02/12/1998
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

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TO:

FROM:

OFFICE:

DATE:

Lee S. Strickland @ DA

Edmund Cohen

OlM

02/12/98 07:45:43 PM

SUBJECT: gRe: URGENT: Supp. Filing for JFK Board

Lee: Good paper, here are my suggestions.

1. The damage discussion drawing upon field input is the stronger part of the paper and perhaps should

come at the beginning of the paper (just reorder the questions they asked us).

2. In footnote 15 l'd drop the Virginia Law Review. Doesn't add much and confusing since next sentence

talks about DOD OGC views which are relevant to Naval Proceedings not the Law Review.

3... Can we press the DO for the missing station response. It raises an unnecessary issue as to why

there was too little time to get a response from that station when we were able to get three other

responses from equally important or more important stations.

4. paragraph 17 line six - after word "deepest" think you should add the word "official."

5. para 18 (first para of quote line 10) "Addees" add a [bracket] indicating what this means - we know, the

Board is likely to be mystified

Finally, in the affidavit, do we need to add some qualifiers about the classification review process. The

affidavit states:

If an article has been deemed to contain classified

information by its author, and it is subsequently requested to

be released, it will be reviewed by either the History Staff,

the Historical Review Program, or more recently by the

Publications Review Board -- pursuant to the personal

manuscript standards -- to allow declassification or the

creation of an unclassified version. By deeming or marking a

given article as classified, we represent only that this

personal writing contains some information of a proprietary

(hence classified) nature to the US Government; that fact does

not alter the nature of this private work or convert it into

an official federal record containing official government

information.

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It is true that articles written by former employees would go to the Publications Review Board, but this is

not the case with respect to current employees. In the latter case, prepublication review falls within the

purview of Directorate management, and probably should be reviewed by the Agency Release Panel.

Moreover, it may be confusing to equate classified information which may appear in a clasified Studies

edition with "proprietary" information which would not.

I also am concerned about the following statement:

I,

as well as several of my predecessors, can recall no cases

of interference by Agency management with the publication

decisions of the Board, no matter how sensitive the subject

matter or critical of the Agency. Indeed, it is the

antithesis of official information and the embodiment of

personal, academic scholarship and work.

The very intent is

academic in the context of educational mentoring from one

individual to those in succeeding generations.

It is clearly true that the editorial board should decide if the article is of the quality to be in Studies and to

decide if the topic is appropriate to that journal. It also is clear that Studies can and does contain

information critical of the Agency. But there is a "need to know" principle that must be enforced that

would not tolerate 'a subject "no matter how sensitive" to be published. What if there is a highly

compartmented program that should not be shared more broadly. We should not suggest that CSI would

have the right to open that compartment or suggest that management could not determine that such a

topic could not be given broader dissemination, even in a classified edition of Studies.

R. Bruce Burke@ DCI, Martin J. Boland @ DA, Victoria L. Pepper@

Sent on 12 February 1998 at 07:45:43 PM

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