ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES

AND RESEARCH CENTER

  • About the AARC
  • AARC 2014 Conference Videos
  • Analysis and Opinion
  • COLD WAR CONTEXT
  • The Malcolm Blunt Archives
  • CURRENT FOIA LITIGATION
  • Dan Hardway Blog: Sapere Aude
  • Destroyed Files
  • DOCUMENTS AND DOSSIERS
  • FBI Cuba 109 Files
  • Joe Backes: ARRB Document Release Summaries, July 1995-April 1996
  • MISSING RECORDS
  • News and Views
  • Publication Spotlight
  • Public Library
  • SELECT CIA PSEUDONYMS
  • SELECT FBI CRYPTONYMS
  • CIA Records Search Tool (CREST)
  • AARC Catalog
  • President’s Page
  • AARC Board of Directors
  • AARC Membership

Copyright AARC

Mary Ferrell Foundation: State of the JFK Releases 2021

20 March, 2021|Courtesy of Rex Bradford:

This essay discusses the state of the JFK Records Collection as of March 2021. It describes the background and results of the declassifications which occurred in 2017 and 2018, and alerts readers to the re-review which is taking place this year. Particular focus is placed on 3,598 “withheld in full” records which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) declared would be finally released. Some were, and some weren’t, as will be explained.

A companion page, 2017 Document Releases, discusses the set of records that were released in 2017 and 2018, along with links to read and search them all.

Another companion page, Withheld in Full – 2021 Update, contains an interactive table where the not-released portion of the 3,598 “withheld in full” records may be explored.

Background: The JFK Records Act and the Assassination Records Review Board

Following public outcry over Oliver Stone’s film JFK, Congress in 1992 passed the JFK Records Act. This law created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which from 1994 until 1998 oversaw the declassification of a large number of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy and the various investigations into his murder; this broad effort included a wide swath of formerly-secret records on Kennedy foreign policy on Cuba and Vietnam, and FBI and CIA and other agencies’ files on myriad related topics and individuals.

The revelations from the declassifications of the 1990s have rewritten the story of the formation of the Warren Commission, thrust into prominence Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City in the fall of 1963 and the allegations of Communist conspiracy emanating from that city, and turned that story on its head with the stunning news that Director Hoover – in a memo to the Secret Service and a now-erased presidential phone call – relayed the FBI’s determination that someone had impersonated Oswald there. Also released were formerly-secret notes of Oswald’s interrogation which include an alibi for his whereabouts, buried testimony about the nature of JFK’s wounds (and thus the direction of shots) which was taken by Congressional investigators and then hidden, documents revealing that CIA officers lied about their knowledge of Oswald before the assassination, a Pentagon false-flag operation named Northwoods outlining terrorist acts which could be implemented and then used to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba, written plans kept secret for 35 years to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam, and so much more, far too voluminous to even summarize here.

The JFK Records Act has been in many ways a great success in reaching toward a fuller history of Kennedy’s murder and its context.

The JFK Collection now sits at over 300,000 records comprising over 5 million pages, plus abundant photographic and audiovisual records. The records processed in the 1990s and later all have a unique 13-digit record number assigned to them and are represented in a master collection database. A substantial portion of the 5 million pages, including voluminous Warren Commission files, predate this system, have no record numbers, and do not appear in the database.

But while the ARRB oversaw a massive declassification effort, it also deferred in many cases to government agencies desiring continued secrecy; tens of thousands of JFK records were released with “redactions” (blackouts) – sometimes as small as a name, sometimes entire pages. And thousands of records remained “withheld in full.”

The JFK Records Act mandated that, 25 years after the passage of the Act, all such records should be released in full, barring a determination by the president that “continued postponement is made necessary by an identifable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” and “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The 25-year deadline came on October 26, 2017. But when the 25-year deadline finally arrived, the remaining records were not released in full. Instead, under a process approved by then-President Trump:

  • Over 34,000 documents were released, or re-released with fewer redactions, in 7 batches in 2017 and 2018.
  • Hundreds of documents were declared sealed in accordance with Sections 10 and 11 of the JFK Records Act (IRS and Social Security Administration records are exempt from public disclosure, as are those sealed by court order or donated to the Archives under a restrictive “deed of gift”).
  • On the date of the last batch of releases, April 26 2018, another Trump memorandum authorized a process whereby the more than 15,000 records with remaining redactions would be subject to re-review in 2021.

It is now 2021.

CONTINUE READING AT MARY FERRELL FOUNDATION

RELATED: WITHHELD IN FULL – 2021 UPDATE

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: JFK, JFK records, JFK Records Act, Kennedy assassination, NARA, National Archives

Rolling Releases After October 26: The Current Status by Rex Bradford

13 November 2017|For the numbers people among us, I’ve updated the 2017 Documents Project page above to break down the 4 document releases so far, by formerly withheld vs. redacted, and by agency within each group.  Some interesting findings while compiling it.  See the table at the top of the linked page.
I found numerous errors in the online download page – record number column not matching the pdf filename for more than a dozen of them.  I also discovered that 13 documents in the Oct 26 have since that date been recategorized from “formerly withheld in full” to “formerly redacted” (now 39 withheld and 2852 redacted; on Oct 26 there were 52 and 2,839).
I ran some other tests on the data and found a few more surprises.  Prime among them was that it appear that 375 of the documents released do not appear in the NARA online database at all.  Many of these are from the “withheld in full” set, and don’t appear on the supposedly-definitive 2016 FOIA spreadsheet of 3,571 records.  I can find no NSA records in the online database, for example, but 244 of them have been released now.  Similarly for Army INSCOM files (none in NARA db), though I know some have already been out in Archives in paper form since Joan Mellen’s DeMohrenschidt book references a few of them.
Thus it is becoming less and less clear what the universe of documents being processed really is, nor how we can ascertain it.
Read more at Mary Ferrell Foundation HERE.

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: CIA, JFK records, JFK Records Act, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy assassination, NARA

Statement by AARC president, James H. Lesar

21 October, 2017|Jim Lesar, President of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), issued the following statement:

     The AARC congratulates President Donald J. Trump on announcing in a tweet today that as President he will allow the release of JFK-assassination records to go forward as provided by the JFK Act which Congress unanimously passed in 1992.  President Trump’s decision is correct, and it rightly attributes the prolonged blockage to Executive Branch agencies, particularly the CIA, when Congress mandated such information to be released as promptly as possible.

     While President Trump’s tweet contains a possible face-saving out, conditioning such release on the “receipt of further information,” Lesar pointed out that these agencies and the National Archives have had 25 years to produce such information, they have not done so.  Post hoc justifications to further delay release are not warranted in light of the clear congressional mandate requiring full disclosure by October 26, 2017.  Lesar noted that the release has the support of both political parties, as both Sen. Charles Grassley and Sen. Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, have introduced legislation endorsing release of the records.

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: AARB, CIA, JFK assassination records, JFK records, JFK Records Act, Kennedy assassination, NARA, President Donald Trump, Release of JFK documents, Secret files

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Newsletter Signup

    Your Name (required)

    Your Email (required)

    Send checks to:
    AARC
    930 Wayne Ave.
    Unit 1111
    Silver Spring, MD 20910

    Office: (844) JFK-2017

    Menu

    • Contact Us
    • Warren Commission
    • Garrison Investigation
    • House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)
    • Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)
    • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
    • Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
    • LBJ Library
    • Other Agencies and Commissions
    • Church Committee Reports

    Recent Posts

    • FILED: Notice of Appeal in the FOIA case for records on DH Byrd, Werner von Alvensleben and the Doolittle Report.
    • Last Second in Dallas: A Granular Account of the Final Second of the Assassination
    • Memphis Conference 13 – 15 April
    • A New Essay by Professor David R. Wrone (No. 1)
    • A New Essay by Professor David R. Wrone (No. 2)
    Copyright 2014 AARC
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Tools