Thursday, June 14, 2012

NARA Continues Withholding of JFK Assassination Records





AARC
Jim Lesar, President
1003 K Street N.W., Suite 640
Washington D.C. 20001
Tel (202) 393-1921
(301) 328-5920

June 12, 2012

Contact: Jim Lesar (301) 328-5920 or (240) 899-5075
Dan Alcorn (703) 442-0704

National Archives Decides to Withhold Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Declines Request for 50th Anniversary Declassification Project

The National Archives today refused the request of a Washington non-profit public interest group to declassify secret records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in time for the 50th anniversary of that tragic event in 2013 (see attached 6/12/12 letter of Gary Stern, General Counsel of the National Archives). The Archives reversed a commitment by Assistant Archivist Michael Kurtz made at an Archives public forum in 2010 at which time he stated the remaining secret Kennedy assassination records would be released by the end of 2013. The Archives today says that Kurtz “misspoke” when he made that commitment to the public.

Kurtz’ promise to process the secret JFK related documents fulfilled President Obama’s expressed desire that his administration be the most open in history. Today’s reversal of release of these records defeats President Obama’s pledge that his be the most open administration in history.

The National Archives states that it does not know the extent of secret files in its collection related to the Kennedy assassination, but that CIA is withholding 1, 171 classified documents related to the assassination. The Archive’s acknowledges that in 2006 the CIA speeded up releases of documents with releases dates through 2010, but that CIA declines to do so for the remaining documents due to “logistical requirements” even though, according to the National Archives, only 1, 171 CIA documents of undetermined volume remain to be declassified.

The request for release of the secret documents was made by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), a Washington, D.C. non-profit public interest group in a letter signed by several of its board members and attorneys Mark Zaid, Charles Sanders and Prof. G. Robert Blakey, who served as the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The letter made the point that the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in 2013 will result in widespread discussion and news coverage, and that the government documents related to the assassination should be made public in order for a fully informed discussion.

LETTER FROM GENERAL COUNSEL TO NARA GARY STERN: 

National Archives
June 12, 2012
Jim Lesar, President
Assassination Archives and Research Center
1003 K Street, NW, Suite 640
Washington, DC 20001

By Email and First Class Mail

Dear Mr. Lesar:

I write in response to the letter of January 20, 2012, from you and five colleagues to David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, requesting that the National Archives and Records Administration review the remaining classified documents that were “postponed” from public disclosure in accordance with the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 in time for the 50th anniversary of the assassination in November 2013.

We share your passion and commitment to providing access to JFK assassination records as quickly as possible. As your letter recounts, the JFK Act established a rigorous process for declassification review and release that was administered by the Assassination Records Review Board until 1998. For any assassination records that were not released by the ARRB, subsequent release could be postponed until a date certain not to exceed 25 years from the enactment of the JFK Act, i.e., no later than 2017.

The JFK Act Collection consists of a total of approximately 5 million pages, and less than 1% of the documents in the collection are “postponed in full” until 2017. I note that your letter states that in 2010, Assistant Archivist “Michael Kurtz revealed that the CIA continues to withhold approximately 50,000 pages of JFK assassination-related records.” I would like to clarify that NARA has never counted, and thus does not know, the actual number of pages that are postponed in full. Dr. Kurtz accurately stated that “less than one percent” of the total volume of assassination records was still being withheld; he also provided our rough estimate that the collection totals approximately five million pages. Thus, it appears that the 50,000 page number in your letter may have been derived by incorrectly calculating a full one percent of five million pages. All we do know is that the CIA withheld in full a total of 1,171 documents as national security classified (there is a small number of other agency documents also postponed in full, principally for law enforcement).

Your letter asks NARA to submit these remaining 1171 documents “currently withheld by the CIA” for declassification review as part of the National Declassification Center’s (NDC) project to complete the declassification of the “400 million page backlog” identified in the President’s December 29, 2009, Memorandum Implementing Executive Order 13526, by December 31, 2013. We recognize that, in a 2010 public forum, Dr. Kurtz stated that the postponed JFK assassination records would be included as part of the NDC project. However, as we have tried to explain before, Dr. Kurtz misspoke. Rather, because the postponed JFK assassination records have already been subject to a full and complete government-wide declassification review, they are not part of the 400 million page backlog of records that have yet to receive a final review.

Because of the mandated December 31, 2013 deadline for our review and processing of the extremely large set of backlog records, the NDC must target its efforts exclusively on records contained within that backlog. In addition, because we are limited in the resources we can assign to these special reviews, we try to balance historical impact, public interest, and extent of other government agency involvement in order to manage government-wide declassification resource constraints as efficiently and effectively as possible.

As you know, the JFK Act authorized unprecedented powers for the ARRB, including the ability to overturn an agency decision on declassification, with the President as the only appeal authority. Although agencies did appeal ARRB decisions, President Clinton did not overturn any access determinations on appeal. The power wielded by he ARRB meant that more records were declassified and made available under the JFK Act than would have been released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or any currently applicable review provision of the prior or current Executive Order on Classified National Security Information.

As previously mentioned, the 1171 remaining postponed documents will be released in 2017, unless the President personally certifies on a document by document basis that continued postponement is necessary and that the harm from disclosure is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. Moreover, as you point out, the JFK Act clearly intended for periodic releases prior to the 2017 date. To date all of the periodic release dates have been met, including in 2006, when the CIA made preemptory releases of all documents that were postponed from release until 2010. Thus, the only documents in the Collection that are still withheld in full for classification reasons are the 1171 CIA documents that the ARRB agreed should not be released until 2017.

We recognize that the remaining records are of high public interest and historical value, and we appreciate your stated desire not to have to wait five more years to obtain access to these records. Give this public interest, we have been consulting with the CIA to see if it would be possible to review and release any of these remaining documents in time for the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination in 2013. Although the CIA shares the NARA’s interest in wanting to be responsive to your request, they have concluded there are substantial logistical requirements that must take place prior to the release of these remaining records and there is simply not sufficient time or resources to complete these tasks prior to 2017. Accordingly, we will not be able to accommodate your request.

Thank you for your interest in this matter. Please share this letter with the co-signatories to your letter, and let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Signed
GARY M. STERN
General Counsel         
NARA
8601 Adelphi Road
Suite 3110
College Park MD 2074-06001
T. 301-83703026

National Archives will continue to hold Kennedy assassination records secret
By Karl Dickey

West Palm Bech Libertarian Examiner

The National Archives today refused the request of aWashington non-profit public interest group to declassify secret records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in time for the 2013 50th anniversary of that tragic event.

The Archives reversed a commitment by Assistant Archivist Michael Kurtz at an Archives public forum in 2010, at which time he stated the remaining secret Kennedy assassination records would be released by the end of2013. The Archives today said Kurtz "misspoke" when he made that commitment to the public.

Kurtz' promise to process the secret JFK related documents fulfilled President Obama's expressed desire that his administration be the most open in history. Today's reversal to release these records defeats President Obama's pledge that his has be the most open administration in history.

The National Archives states that it does not know the extent of secret files in its collection related to the Kennedy assassination, but that CIA is withholding 1,171 classified documents related to the assassination. The Archive's acknowledges that in 2006 the CIA speeded up releases of documents with release dates through 2010, but that CIA declines to do so for the remaining documents due to "logistical requirements" even though, according to the National Archives, only 1,171 CIA documents of undetmined volume remain to be declassified.

The request for release of the secret documents was made by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), a Washington, D.C.  non-profit public interest group in a letter signed by several of its board members and attorneys Mark Zaid, Charles Sanders and Prof G Robert Blakey; who served as the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The letter made the point that the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in 2013 will result in widespread discussion and news coverage, and that government documents related to the assassination should be made public in order for a fully informed discussion.



Bowing to the CIA, the National Archives says it won't release 1,100 secret assassination documents in 2013  BY JEFFERSON MORLEY


Acquiescing to CIA demands for secrecy, the National Archives announced Wednesday that it will not release 1,171 top-secret Agency documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy in time for the 5oth anniversary of JFK’s death in November 2013.

“Is the government holding back crucial JFK documents,” asked Russ Baker in a WhoWhatWhy piece that Salon published last month. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In a letter released this week, Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives and Record Administration, said the Archives would not release the records as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing declassification campaign. Stern cited CIA claims that “substantial logistical requirements” prevented their disclosure next year.

“This is a deeply disappointing decision that deprives everyone of a fuller understanding of the JFK assassination,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, who is writing a book about the impact of JFK’s assassination on American politics. “The 50th anniversary of that terrible event is the perfect opportunity to shed more light on the violent removal of a president. This adds to the widely held public suspicion that the government may still be hiding some key facts about President Kennedy’s murder.”

The records, requested by the nonprofit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), will remain secret until at least 2017, when the 1992 JFK Records Act mandates public release of all assassination files in the government’s possession. (Full disclosure: AARC president Jim Lesar is my attorney in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking JFK records from the CIA.)

Among those seeking expedited disclosure were Notre Dame Law School professor G. Robert Blakey, who served as chief counsel for Congress’ JFK investigation in the late 1970s. In an email he accused the NARA of using “bureaucratic jargon to obfuscate its failure to vindicate the public interest in transparency, a goal touted no less than by the Obama administration."

“It beggars the imagination to assert that documents (or portions thereof) can only be released in 2017, but not 2013,” said independent scholar Max Holland in an email. “I can understand a 100-year argument, in order to protect the identity of confidential sources (say a spy in Castro’s Politburo who said he didn’t do it); a 100-year rule would protect him or her. But 54  years versus 50? Doesn’t make sense … While it is true that JFK assassination is the most declassified event in U.S. history, in some respects NARA has done a poor job of carrying out the letter, spirit and intent of the JFK Act.”

The Archives’ decision comes as two former CIA officers have gone public with the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had advance knowledge of JFK’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. In a piece published in the Daily Beast this week, retired CIA officer Glenn Carle claimed that “the Cuban dictator knew of Lee Harvey Oswald’s intention to kill President Kennedy.” Carle also defended a deceased CIA colleague, David Phillips, from allegations of JFK conspiracy theorists that he connived in JFK’s death.

The still-secret CIA records could clarify the issue. The records include more than 600 pages of material on the career of Phillips, the chief of the Agency’s anti-Castro operations in 1963. Phillips oversaw the surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City six weeks before Kennedy was killed. Antonio Veciana, an anti-Castro Cuban who worked for the CIA in the 1960s, told congressional investigators in 1976 that he saw an Agency officer whom he knew as “Maurice Bishop” with Oswald two months before JFK was killed. At the time, the CIA unequivocally denied that Phillips had ever used that name. In the Daily Beast article, Carle, a colleague of Phillips, admitted what the Agency has long denied: that Phillips had used the name “Maurice Bishop.”
A CIA spokesman said the Agency declined to comment on Carle’s claims.

Phillips, who died in 1988, told conflicting stories about what he knew of Oswald before JFK’s murder, but always rejected accusations he was involved in the assassination itself. Phillips may have been sensitive about such allegations because, unbeknownst to JFK investigators, he had been involved in another high-profile political assassination while working for the CIA. In 1999, the nonprofit National Security Archive obtained Agency records revealing that Phillips, as a senior CIA official in 1970, had orchestrated the murder of a Chilean general on behalf of the Nixon White House.

NARA had originally said the 1,171 CIA documents would be reviewed for release. In 2010, assistant archivist Michael Kurtz told a public hearing in Washington that the JFK records would be included in the Obama administration’s ongoing declassification campaign.

The idea was popular with the public. As Baker reported, NARA asked, on its online Open Government Forum, for suggestions from the public about what it could do to create greater transparency. The #1 most popular idea? Get those Kennedy records out—before Nov. 22, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dallas tragedy.

In his letter to the AARC, Stern said that Kurtz “misspoke.” The Archives, he explained, tries “to balance historical impact, public interest, and extent of other government agency involvement [emphasis added] in order to manage government-wide declassification resource constraints as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

In this case, the evident public and scholarly interest in JFK disclosure was outweighed by the CIA’s desire to keep ancient but still-sensitive records out of public view.

“After five decades it is ridiculous that information is still being withheld from the people whose taxes paid for it,” said Sabato.

Ridiculous but true: As the 50th anniversary of the Dallas tragedy approaches, the CIA officials are hiding information about the events that culminated in the death of the liberal president — and the National Archives is helping them get away with it.

Jefferson Morley:

Russ Baker:

Stern Letter:


JFK Records Act:

Rerun: Castro Cover Story:

Glenn L. Carle : Castro: Tbe Evil Genius

NSA: Chile and the United States: Declassified Docs re: CONDOR Chile Coup:

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