AARC
Jim Lesar, President
Tel (202) 393-1921
(301) 328-5920
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 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.
LETTER FROM GENERAL COUNSEL TO NARA GARY STERN:
National Archives
Jim Lesar, President
Assassination Archives and Research
Center
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
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 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
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
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.
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
The records, requested by the nonprofit Assassination
Archives and Research Center CIA .)
Among those seeking expedited disclosure were Notre
Dame Law School 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 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.
The idea was popular with the public. As Baker reported, NARA Nov.
22, 2013 , the fiftieth anniversary of the Dallas
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:
AARC: http://aarclibrary.org/
JFK Records Act:
Rerun: Castro Cover Story:
Glenn L. Carle : Castro: Tbe Evil Genius
NSA: Chile United States Chile
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