CROSS REFERENCE SHEET WITH ATTACHMENT (STATEMENT OF ROBERT M. GATES DCI BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS US SENATE, 12 MAY 1992).
Agency: CIA
Originator: CIA
From: NONE
To: WITHHELD
Document date: 08/23/1995
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM

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AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY :

RECORD NUMBER

RECORD SERIES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER

CIA

104-10014-10055

JFK

80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

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TITLE

DATE

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SUBJECTS :

CIA

CROSS REFERENCE SHEET WITH ATTACHMENT

08/23/95

12

OSWALD, L.H.

DOCUMENT TYPE

CLASSIFICATION

SECRET

PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

RESTRICTIONS : 1B

CURRENT STATUS :

RELEASED WITH DELETIONS

DATE OF LAST REVIEW

: 09/08/98

OPENING CRITERIA

COMMENTS

OSW17:V59 1998.09.08.11:21:47:403120:

CLASSIFIED

ATTACHMENT

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Released under the John

Assassination Records

Collection Aet of 1992

144 USC 2107 Notel.

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SECRET

CROSS REFERENCE SHEET

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DATE 23/08/95

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THE ABOVE DOCUMENT(S) ARE CROSS-REFERENCED

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FOR INFORMATION CONCERNING THE LOCATION OF

THE FILE CONTAINING THE RECORD COPY DOCUMENT,

CALL FILES SECTION, EXTENSION 353941.

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STATEMENT OF ROBERT M. GATES

DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

12 MAY 1992

VIews oN SeNAte Joist ResolutIoN 282°

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NW:02

Mr. Chairman, I am here today at your request to provide

my views on Senate Joint Resolution 282, "The Assassination

Materials Disclosure Act of 1992," and to describe the nature of

documents held by the CIA that relate to the assassination of John

F. Kennedy. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak on

this important matter.

Let me begin by stating that I am in complete agreement

with the purpose underlying the joint resolution--that efforts

should be made to declassify and make available to the public as

quickly as possible government documents relating to the

assassination of John F. Kennedy. We hope that opening up and

giving journalists, historians and, most importantly, the public

access to governmental files will help to resolve questions that

still linger over 28 years after the assassination. Further, I believe

that maximum disclosure will discredit the theory that CIA had

anything to do with the murder of John F. Kennedy.

Even before introduction of this joint resolution, I

recognized the need for greater public access to CIA documents

of historical importance. Two months ago, I announced the

establishment of a new unit within CIA that will be responsible

for declassifying as many historical documents as possible

consistent with the protection of intelligence sources and

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methods. This new unit, the Historical Review Group, in the

Agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence, will review for

declassification documents 30 years old or older, and national

intelligence estimates on the former Soviet Union that are

10 years old or older. In addition to the systematic review of

30-year-old documents, I have directed the History Staff in the

Center for the Study of Intelligence to assemble CIA records

focusing on particular events of historical importance, including

the assassination of President Kennedy. The Historical Review

Group will then examine the documents for the purpose of

declassifying the records.

Because of high interest in the JFK papers, I am not waiting

for legislation or other agencies to start declassifying documents

belonging to CIA. The Historical Review Group, at my direction,

already has begun its review of the documents related to the

assassination of President Kennedy, and I am glad to report that

the first group of these records, including all CIA documents on

Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination, has been

declassified with quite minimal deletions and is being transferred

to the National Archives for release to the public. This is, I

acknowledge, a small fraction of what we have, but it is an earnest

of my commitment to begin review for declassification

immediately of this material. And, indeed, as I speak, the

reviewers are going through a substantial number of documents,

and I anticipate that many of these will be released shortly.

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As we carry out our program to declassify Kennedy

assassination documents, our goal will be to release as many

documents as possible. In fact, I recently approved new CIA

declassification guidelines for our 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, and I have

instructed the Historical Review Group to take this attitude to

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

clippings.

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e These records include documents that CIA had in its files

before the assassination, a large number of records that CIA

received later as routine disseminations from other agencies, as

well as the reports, correspondence, and other papers that CIA

prepared 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 deletions, 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:

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You have asked about documents in our possession i

generated by other agencies. In fact, much of the material held by:

CIA originated with other agencies 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 of the 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

large number of name traces requested by the staff of the House

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Select Committee on Assassinations, as well as material relating

to the Garrison investigation and Cuban 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

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 personnel files were requested on a number of

Agency employees. These files contain fitness reports

(performance evaluations), medical evaluations and credit checks

on individual CIA officers. Although irrelevant to the question of

who killed President Kennedy, these and other personal

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111

documents ultimately ended up in the sequestered collection of

documents. I do not believe that the benefit to the public of

disclosure of this information outweighs the clear privacy interest

of the individuals 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 related to

the assassination of President Kennedy will be daunting.

However, it is an important program, and I am personally

committed to making it work. Even in this time of diminishing

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resources within the Intelligence Community, I have directed the

allocation of 15 full-time positions to expand the History Staff

and to form the Historical Review Group that will review the JFK

documents and other documents of historical interest.

I believe these actions attest to the seriousness of our intent

to get these papers declassified and released, and to open what

remains classified to outside, non-governmental review. It is

against this background that, in response to this Committee's

request, I cite our technical reservations about the mechanism

established by the joint resolution to achieve this same result. I

intend to address only Intelligence Community concerns; I will

defer to the Department of Justice on any additional problems

posed by the joint resolution.

First, vesting in an outside body the determination as to

whether CIA materials related to the assassination can be released

to the public is inconsistent with my statutory responsibility to

protect intelligence sources and methods.

Second, I am concerned that the joint resolution contains no

provision requiring security clearances or secure document

handling by the Assassination Materials Review Board or its staff.

Third, I am concerned that the joint resolution does not

provide the Agency with the opportunity to object to the release

of CIA information contained in documents originated by

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Congress or the Warren Commission Under the joint resolution,

documents originated by these entities can be released directly by

the Executive Director of the Assassination Materials Review

Board without any review by the President or other Executive

Branch agencies.

Fourth, the joint resolution provision for a 30-day period for

agencies or departments to appeal decisions by the Executive

Director to release information may not provide sufficient time for

meaningful review of what could prove to be a large volume of

material at one time.

Fifth and finally, section 6 of the joint resolution, which

outlines the grounds for postponement of public release of a

document, makes no provision for postponing release of

documents that may contain Executive privilege or deliberative

process, attorney-client, or attorney work-product information.

While such privileges could be waived in the public interest and

are not likely to arise with respect to factual information directly

related to the JFK assassination, they would be unavailable under

the joint resolution in the rare case that they might be needed

These are technical problems that I believe can be solved in

ways that will, in fact, expedite the release of documents bearing

on the assassination of President Kennedy

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409162)

But again, whatever the future course of the legislation,

CIA is proceeding even now to review for declassification the

relevant documents under its control. Further, we will cooperate

with any mechanism established by the Congress and the

President to declassify all of this material.

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