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Final Report of the ARRB

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Final Report of the ARRB CHAPTER 6 PA RT I: TH E QU E S T F O R AD D I T I O N A L IN F O R M AT I O N A N D RE C O R D S I N FE D E R A L GO V E R N M E N T OF F I C E S A major focus of the Assassination Records fully evaluate the success of the Review Review Board’s work has been to attempt to Bo a r d’s approach is to examine the Review answer questions and locate additional infor- Bo a r d’s rec o r ds as well as the assassination mation not previously explored related to the rec o r ds that are now at the National Arc h i v e s assassination of President John F. Kennedy. and Records Administration (NARA) as a di r ect result of the Review Board’s req u e s t s . The Review Board’s “Requests for Ad d i t i o n a l Information and Records” to government Mo re o v e r , because the Review Board’s req u e s t s agencies served two purposes. First, the addi- we r e not always consistent in theme, the chap- tional requests allowed Review Board staff ter is necessarily miscellaneous in nature. members to locate new categories of assassi- nation rec o r ds in federal government files. In Scope of Chapter some files, the Review Board located new assassination rec o r ds. In other files, it discov- Section 3(2) of the JFK Act defined the term e red that the file contained no re l e v a n t “assassination record” to include all records rec o r ds. In both cases, the Review Board staff that were “created or made available for use memorialized their findings in written mem- by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the oranda, with the hope that the public would possession of” any official entity that investi- be able to easily determine what files the staff gated the assassination. reviewed. Second, the additional re q u e s t s allowed Review Board staff to request back- This chapter does not discuss those records gr ound information that could assist in the that government offices identified for inclu- review of rec o r ds that it had identified as rel - sion in the JFK Collection. evant to the assassination. For example, Section 7(j)(1)(C)(ii) of the JFK Act empow- Review Board staff members might encounter e red the Board to direct government off i c e s particular cryptonyms, abbreviations, infor- to make available “addi- mant symbol numbers, file numbers, or offi c e tional information and designations in assassination re c o rds, but We cannot prevent the specula- re c o rds” that the Review tion that someone did cover up, could only determine the meaning of those B o a rd believed it needed but the arguments that a cover- ab b r eviations, numbers, and codewords by to fulfill its re s p o n s i b i l i- requesting and reviewing additional files. ties under the Act. A s up continues and will continue, the JFK Act specifically can somewhat at least, be less- While the Review Board made most of its i n s t ructed the Review ened.What has been lost cannot be replaced. But what we do additional requests to the FBI and the CIA, it B o a rd to go beyond have can be made public. We also made requests to other agencies, such as the scope of pre v i o u s should have access and our stu- the Secret Service, the Department of State, inquiries, the Review dents should have access to and the National Security Agency (NSA). The B o a rd tailored its addi- what still exists. government offices answered each of the tional requests to encom- pass those materials that —Bruce Hitchcock, May 1997 Review Board’s requests for additional infor- no previous investiga- mation and rec o r ds, as the Pr esident John F. tive body had identified Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1 as assassination-related. This chapter cov- 19 9 2 (JFK Act) req u i re d . This chapter serves ers o n l y those re c o rds that the Review as an overview of the Review Board’s req u e s t s B o a rd sought, pursuant to its authority, to rather than as a complete detailed explanation request additional information and of each request. The only way for the public to re c o rd s . 81 It is widely known that the Wa r ren Com- 1. Pre-Assassination Records mission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations conducted extensive The question of what U.S. government investigations of Jack Ruby, and, as a re s u l t records existed on Lee Harvey Oswald on government offices processed voluminous November 22, 1963, has never been answered Ruby re c o rds. The Review Board made to the satisfaction of the public. Thus, a pri- only two additional requests for informa- mary goal of the Review Board was to clarify tion and re c o rds concerning Ruby. There- the pre-assassination re c o rds held by the f o re, this chapter does not have a separate agencies which were most involved in the section on Ruby. Similarly, the JFK Collec- post-assassination investigation. tion contains a considerable number of re c o rds concerning Lee Harvey Oswald’s a. CIA. activities in New Orleans, but the Review B o a rd made only a few requests for addi- At the time of the assassination, the CIA held tional information and re c o rds re g a rd i n g four types of records which contained infor- Oswald in New Orleans. mation on Lee Harvey Oswald: a 201 or per- sonality file which was released to the public A. RECORDS RELATED TO LEE HARVEY in 1992; an Office of Security file which OSWALD nearly duplicated the pre-assassination 201 file; HTLINGUAL re c o rds; and re c o rd s The Review Board’s additional re q u e s t s within a general file on U.S. citizens who had focused upon locating all records concerning defected to another country. Lee Harvey Oswald held by the U.S. govern- ment. The Review Board requested each i. Security file. CIA’s search of its Office agency to check their of Personnel Security database produced the One if the problems of secrets is archives, files, and data- original Office of Security’s subject file on that Americans are incapable of bases for information Lee Harvey Oswald (#0351164) established keeping secrets very long. Any- directly related to either circa 1960. The first volume of the Security thing like this would have Lee Harvey Oswald or file contains 19 documents, similar but not leaked out by now. his wife Marina Oswald. absolutely identical to the pre-assassination —Richard Helms, Given that many con- volume of Oswald’s 201 file. The Review February 7, 1996 spiracy theories allege B o a rd identified an additional six docu- U.S. government involve- ments, which appear to pre-date the assassi- ment with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the nation, in later volumes of the Security file. assassination, the Review Board was particu- Although the HSCA reviewed the Office of larly interested in locating re c o rds that agen- Security file in 1978, Congress did not include this file with the other material cies had created or main- viewed by the HSCA that it sequestered. tained prior to the We did not understand how Consequently, this file did not end up in the assassination. In some intelligence agencies worked. CIAsequestered collection.2 As a result of the The CIA “gave [us] nothing cases, the Review Board Review Board’s request, CIA transmitted its more than what was asked for. simply released more Office of Security file to the John F. Kennedy Every time we asked for a file, information from files Assassination Records Collection (JFK Col- we had to write a letter.There that the public has long lection) at NARA. were no fishing expeditions. known about, such as —Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway the CIA 201 file on Lee ii. Records in the defector file. CIA estab- Harvey and Marina lished its 12-volume Office of Security Defec- Oswald or the FBI files tor file (#0341008) circa 1950 for the purpose on Lee Harvey Oswald. In other cases, the of re c o rding information on U.S. citizens Review Board’s additional requests led to who defected to other countries and informa- the release of new re c o rds, such as the CIA’ s tion on foreign citizens who were consider- security file on Lee Harvey Oswald, or ing defecting to the United States. The resulted in the release of previously denied Review Board staff reviewed the entire defec- re c o rds, such as the original files on the tor file for records related to Lee Harvey Oswalds from the Immigration and Natural- Oswald. The staff located records on Lee ization Service (INS). Harvey Oswald, including research notes, 82 press clippings, and duplicates of records and recommended to the FBI that these found in the Security file, and identified the records be included in the JFK Collection.
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