Thursday, October 20, 2011

ARRB ONI Requests (As of Jan. 29,1998)


ARRB Requests (As of January 29, 1998)


I) The ARRB desires to ensure that ONI record searches have included the categories in attachment...

II) The ARRB requests that ONI conduct an agency-wide search for records related to any investigation that may have been conducted by ONI or NIS into the October 1959 defection of former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald to the USSR;...

III) The Secretary of the Navy recently located a memorandum from the Director, ONI (Rear Admiral Rufus Taylor) to the Director, DIA dated 21 Sep 1964, which forwards an affidavit from Rufus Taylor certifying that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was never utilized as an agent or informant for the Office of Naval Intelligence...


Rear Admiral Rufus Taylor - Director ONI - June 1963 - May 1966

IV) The Secretariat of the Navy also located a memorandum from RADM Taylor to SECNAV, dated 16 April, 1964 which forwarded to Under Secretary Paul Fay a proposed memorandum for his signature, answering certain questions posed by the Warren Commission. (This document, and associated documentation from outside of ONI, is provided here as attachment 4.) This is provided as further evidence that the Director, ONI was from time to time engaged in contact with the Warren Commission in a manner that generated records. Any additional such records that can be located by ONI for the 1963-64 period would be valuable additions to the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives.

V. Finally, attachment 5 forwards yet another document generated by Rufus Taylor, in this case a memo to the CNO, Admiral McDonald, dated 27 Nov 1963. (This record is from the "ONI" file placed in the Archives in 1993 by the NCIS.) The first line of the text indicates there was an ONI office in Dallas, Texas. The ARRB requests that ONI conduct an agency-wide search for assassination-related records from its Dallas field office for the period 1962-64, inclusive, search criteria should include not only obvious subjects such as Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby, but also the broad range of criteria set forth in the 25 Feb 1997 tasking.

April 2, 1998

LCDR R. D. Bastien
Office of Naval Intelligence
4251 Suitland Road,
Washington D.C., 20395-5720

Dear LCDR Bastien,

The purpose of this letter is to memorialize for the record the meeting held on January 29, 1998, between yourself, Jim Goslee, and me from the Assassinations Records Review Board staff. We met on that date at your office in Suitland....


...you were confident that ONI had searched for and had not located any files for the Director of ONI, but suggested that we should search RG 38, and you provided a point of contact for the ARRB...


...A principal purpose of our meeting was to discuss the status of the approximately .8 cubic feet of defector records (considered responsive to the JFK Act by the Review Board staff,...Although LCDR Pike had promised delivery of the originals of those documents to the Review Board within two to four weeks of the April 21, 1997 meeting, and although ARRB staff received a fax from LCDR Pike on May 12, 1997, in which she wrote that she had finished declassifying the ONI material and that we should have it soon, the Review Board was still not in receipt of these documents....You had already assembled the records in your office (now assembled in 7 three ring binders instead of 18 separate folders), and they were briefly reviewed by Mr. Goslee and me in your presence....


....You agreed to devote the resources necessary to complete the creation of RIFs and complete declassification review of ONI equities in the defector records, and deliver same to the ARRB staff.....


....When you called me on Mach 26, 1998,....I informed you that LCDR Pike had recently mentioned to our staff that she had located Naval Attache Records responsive to the JFK Act during her searchers of RG 289, and had placed them in a box that she had labeled "44 U.S.C. 2107." It was unclear from our conversation with her whether this box was left at the Federal Records Center in Suitland, or whether it was located at ONI headquarters. You indicated unawareness of any such box or records...but agreed to conduct a search for the National Archive records alluded to by LCDR Pike in her March 16, 1998 conversation with Review Board staff...


...Please confirm for me, in writing, whether my notes are correct regarding your statement that ONI conducted searches of records centers in San Francisco, Atlanta, and San Diego, and if documentation exists of the dates and results of those searches...

continued:


Eighth Naval District (New Orleans, Louisiana) for any communications regarding Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union.

j. Any records indicating ONI maintained an office in Dallas in 1962-64

k. Record for the period 1959-64 for the commander, Marine Air Reserve Training, for the Naval Air Station at Glenview, Illinois relating to Oswald after his defection that may have been provided by ONI as a result of his Marine Corps Reserve training obligation....

o. The 1963-64 records of the Naval Aide to the President and the Assistant to the Naval Aide, Tazewell Shepard and Oliver S. Hallett, respectively.

p. Any documents involving operations, designated "Code 30" or otherwise related to false defectors, during the period 1957 to 1979 (59?) designed to place false defectors in foreign countries...but not limited to the documents sufficient to show the identities of any such "false defectors" to the Soviet Union during that time.

q. Any records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery related to the autopsy of President Kennedy, including the 1963-64 records for the Surgeon General, the head of the Bureau, and the physician assigned to the White House.

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