Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Ray McGovern on Dealey Plaza


Ray McGovern | Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?
Tuesday 29 December 2009

In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs.  The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”http://tinyurl.com/my4jc5

Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding.  Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail.  Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”
As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned.  No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyersand wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest—not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.

Three of the seven—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting, or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination, and illegal eavesdropping.  In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”

When asked about the letter on the Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors.  With Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip.  He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”

That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule.  While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs—no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.” What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”

Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to Durham’s job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists.  These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Department of Justice guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”

Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”).  Someone has even suggested—I trust, in jest—that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.
In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon.  Holder appears in no hurry.  And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA—that’s right, afraid.

Not Just Paranoia

In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents.  Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly.  Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy.  Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two.” http://tinyurl.com/yl46gl5

What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.

Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work.  Nothing short of torching the Truman Library might conceivably help.  But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.

In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.

The Washington Post published the op-ed on December 22, 1963 in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions.  Other media ignored it.  The long hand of the CIA?

Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”

The Truman Papers

Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed.  He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”
In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director.  Dulles’ forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it.  With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.

Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower.  When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.

Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke.  They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces.  In his notes Dulles explains that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”

Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists.  Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents:”

“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict…What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead…and appeal for aid from the United States

“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots.  American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.

“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed,” added Schorr.

The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro.  After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction.  Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism—and, incidentally, get even.

In his op-ed of December 22, 1963 Truman warned:  “The most important thing…was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.”  It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.

Truman called outright for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.”  (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)
On December 27, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.”  Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”

Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:
With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”

Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging the substantive dog—a serious problem that persists to this day.  For example, CIA analysts are super-busy supporting operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; no one seems to have told them that they need to hazard a guess as to where this is all leading and whether it makes any sense.

That is traditionally done in a National Intelligence Estimate.  Can you believe there at this late date there is still no such Estimate?  Instead, the President has chosen to rely on he advice of Gen. David Petraeus, who many believe will be Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election.

Fox Guarding Henhouse?

In any case, the well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.  Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a targeted domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’ warnings about covert action.
So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri.  On the afternoon of April 17, 1964 he spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed.  No dice, said Truman.

No problem, thought Dulles.  Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him theWashington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

A fabricated retraction?  It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune.  Far from it.  In a June 10, 1964 letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

Dulles and Dallas

Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly.  So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction.  My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination.  Indeed, one or two not-yet-intimidated columnists were daring to ask how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission.  Prescient.

Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet get some ink, and perhaps even airtime, and raise serious questions about covert action.  Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud.  The media had already shown how co-opted—er, I mean “cooperative”—it could be.

As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators—or journalists—tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.

Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up?  

The most up-to-date—and, in my view, the best—dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.

This article first appeared on Consortiumnews.com.


German White Rose


BK NOTES: There was also a Cuban White Rose society of anti-Castro Cubans, who took their name from  this group. 

Rebels Stand Alone
Published on Monday, February 25, 2013 by TruthDig.com

Rebels Stand Alone

by Chris Hedges

I was in the Swiss village of Begnins outside Geneva shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. I spent three days there with Axel von dem Bussche, a former Wehrmacht major, holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for extreme battlefield bravery, three times wounded in World War II, and the last surviving member of the inner circle of German army officers who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

I was reminded of my visit with von dem Bussche, whom I was interviewing for The Dallas Morning News, by the 70th anniversary of the execution of five Munich University students and their philosophy professor who were members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The BBC last week interviewed the 99-year-old Liselotte Furst-Ramdohr, who hid leaflets for the group in her closet and helped make stencils used to paint slogans on walls. [Click here to hear the interview or click here to see the BBC’s article based on the interview.] The six White Rose members managed to distribute thousands of anti-Nazi leaflets before they were arrested by the Gestapo and guillotined. The text of their sixth and final set of leaflets was smuggled out of Germany by the resistance leader Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who was arrested in 1944 and hanged by the Nazis in January 1945. Copies of the leaflets’ language were dropped over Germany by Allied planes in July 1943. Furst-Ramdohr, who was widowed during the war when her first husband was killed on the Russian front, also was arrested by the Gestapo. She was imprisoned but eventually released.

The White Rose has been lionized by postwar Germans—one of its members, Alexander Schmorell, was made a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church last year, and squares and schools in Germany are named for the resisters—but in the BBC interview Furst-Ramdohr curtly dismissed the adulation of the group.

“At the time, they’d have had us all executed,” she said in speaking of most Germans’ hatred of resisters during the war.

Although history has vindicated resistance groups such as the White Rose and plotters such as von dem Bussche, they were desperately alone, reviled by the wider public and forced to defy the law, their oaths of national allegiance, and public opinion. The resisters, once exposed, were condemned in vitriolic terms by most of the German public, and their lopsided trials were state-choreographed lynchings. Von dem Bussche said that even after the war he was spat upon as he walked down a city street. He and those like him who made a moral choice to physically defy evil teach us something extremely important about rebellion. It is, when it begins, not safe, comfortable or popular. Those rare individuals who have the moral and physical courage to resist must accept that they will be pariahs. They must live outside the law. And they must be prepared to be condemned.

"Somebody, after all, had to make a start,” one of the White Rose members, Sophie Scholl, said on Feb. 21, 1943, at her trial in a Nazi court. “What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”

Von dem Bussche, who died in 1993, took part as a 20-year-old lieutenant in the invasions of Belgium, Luxembourg, France—where a French sniper blasted off his right thumb and he was shot through the shoulder—and Poland. He was stationed after the invasion of Poland in the town of Dubno in the western Ukraine. His military unit was ordered to secure an abandoned air base, and the young officer watched as the SS took some 2,000 Jews into the airfield.

“The Jews were trucked in from the surrounding countryside, stripped and forced by the black-uniformed officers toward long, deep trenches,” von dem Bussche told me when I interviewed him. “They were shot in their heads by an SS officer with a machine pistol and then the next row was made to lie down and shot in their heads. It is not an easy memory to live with, especially as I considered myself, as an officer of the German army, to be an accessory to these murders.”

It was then that he decided to defy Hitler. But it would only be in 1943, when it was clear that the Germans were losing the war, that he and a small group of other officers led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg began to plot to assassinate Hitler. The conspirators did not defy the Nazi regime on behalf of the Jews, von dem Bussche conceded, but to save the country from defeat, dismemberment and catastrophe.

“One motive, along with just stopping the killing, was the most valid, to stop the Russians east of Poland,” he said of the plotters. “If we had managed to keep the Russians out, Europe would have been spared the division and pain of the last 44 years.”

By 1943 von dem Bussche was a captain. He was asked to model the army’s new winter coat for Hitler at the Wolfsschanze, the Nazi leader’s headquarters in East Prussia. He and von Stauffenberg managed to get silent fuses—the German fuses hissed when lit—and plastic explosives from the British underground. Von dem Bussche also had two hand grenades. He planned to physically seize Hitler and ignite the grenades in a suicide mission intended to kill the führer and perhaps other high-ranking Nazi officials in the room. The code name for the operation was “Overcoat.”

Von Stauffenberg at the time told von dem Bussche, “I am committing high treason with all my might and means” and added that under natural law the rebels had a duty to use violence to defend the innocent from the horrific crimes of the state.

Von dem Bussche was summoned to Hitler’s headquarters in November 1943. He waited for three days about 10 miles away. He rarely left his room. He woke up every morning and wondered, he said, if he would be alive in the evening and “if my nerve would hold.” But the train carrying the winter uniforms was bombed by Allied warplanes, and von dem Bussche was sent back to the Russian front, where he lost a leg in the bitter fighting.

Von dem Bussche, 6 feet 5 inches tall and with cobalt-blue eyes and a voice that rumbled like a freight train during the interview, refused to describe what he or the other plotters did as heroism. He detested words like “honor” or “glory” when they were applied to warfare. He had no time for those who romanticized war. He said he had no option as a human being but to resist. He acted, he said, to save his “self-esteem.”

“There was no hero stuff involved, none at all,” he said. “I thought this was an adequate means to balance out what I had seen. I felt that this was justifiable homicide and was the only means to stop mass murder inside and outside Germany."

His was the 10th thwarted attempt on Hitler’s life. There would be one more.

On July 20, 1944, von Stauffenberg carried two small bombs in a briefcase to a meeting with Hitler. He struggled before the meeting to arm the bombs with pliers, a difficult task as he had lost his right hand and had only three fingers on his left hand after being wounded in North Africa. He managed to arm only one bomb. He placed the briefcase with the bomb under the table near Hitler. He left the room and was outside at the time of the explosion, which killed four people—including Hitler’s security double—but only slightly wounded Hitler, who was shielded by a table leg. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels announced over the radio that Hitler had survived. Hitler spoke to the nation not long afterward. Von Stauffenberg and other conspirators were captured and hastily executed by a firing squad.

Von dem Bussche, recovering in a Waffen-SS hospital outside Berlin from the loss of his leg, anxiously followed the news of the assassination attempt on the radio. He listened to Hitler’s angry tirade against the “traitors” who had attempted to kill him. He knew it would not be long before the SS appeared at his bedside. He spent the night eating page after page of his address book, which had the name of every major conspirator who was under arrest or dead. The British explosive material from his aborted suicide bombing was in a suitcase under his bed. He asked another officer to spirit the suitcase out of the hospital and toss it into a lake. He was repeatedly interrogated over the next few days but because none of the other plotters had implicated him, even under torture, he managed to elude their fate.

He suffered lifelong guilt over his survival. As a rebel he did not succeed, at least not in killing Hitler and terminating the regime. He felt that as an army officer, even with his involvement in the assassination plots, he remained part of the murderous apparatus that unleashed indefensible suffering and death. He worried that he had not done enough. The brutality and senselessness of the war haunted him. The German public’s enthusiastic collusion with the Nazi regime haunted him. And the ghosts of the dead, including those he admired, haunted him. He understood, as we must, that to do nothing in a time of national distress is to be complicit in acts of radical evil.

“I should have taken off my uniform in the Ukraine,” he told me on the last afternoon of my visit, “and joined the line of Jews to be shot.”

© 2013 TruthDig.com

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/25-0
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Harry Livingstone's Kaleidoscope on Horne


Kaleidoscope: A Review of Douglas Horne's Inside the Assassination Records Review Board [Paperback]

Book Description
Publication Date: November 13, 2012

This is the new line. The JFK case is solved, and has been for a long time. The JFK case is really very simple. I know that may sound ridiculous to many who have studied the mystery, but most of us began that study on the wrong footing and did not understand that underlying the alleged evidence was a massive sham and shell game designed to get us off the track. Once derailed, it has seemed impossible to "solve: the case." In order to think clearly about it, we must sweep away and throw out a great deal of trash, often deliberately put there to screw us up. Conspiracies do things like that to cover the truth. There are three shell games-the original one; a second that soon followed the assassination soon run by a group who provided leadership for the so-called "research community" that proclaimed the murder was a conspiracy, and, often keeping their true agendas and provenance secret, played a game with true facts in the evidence while either sabotaging it, or actually tying everyone up in knots with puzzles and games. The horrid truth is that far too much of the conflict and disputes about evidence were staged to make us appear to retain a semblance of democracy after Kennedy was gone through a violent overthrown of his administration. The third shell game followed the murder by 18 years, and was inserted by novelist David s. Lifton. This was the most destructive of all, and it still plays a rôle in the controversy, creating vastly more controversy, and now threatens to close down any further inquiry whatsoever due to the age of the case, the death of key witnesses, and ennui in the new generation.


Paperback: 478 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 13, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1481012274
ISBN-13: 978-1481012270
Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.9 x 8.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #966,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)


Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars An unbelievable waste of time (mine, and yours !) December 30, 2012

Peter Janney Responds 

A review by Peter Janney, author of "Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace."

It's very difficult to decide how to best express my outrage over Harry Livingstone's feeble, sorry attempt to trash Doug Horne's five-volume 2009 masterwork documenting the U.S. government's medical cover-up of the JFK assassination, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. Several issues misrepresented by Livingstone and one of his book's reviewers need to be addressed. I'll try to do so as succinctly as possible, without descending into the gutter, as H.L. has on numerous occasions. But this may take some time, since I am attempting to set right the wholesale misrepresentations and distortions in a book over 470 pages in length.

First, a word about the true methodology of the Review Board and how it made its decisions about which depositions to take, for example. Doug Horne began his work as a Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team, and about halfway through his three-year stint at the ARRB, he was promoted to the position of Team Leader (i.e., "Chief Analyst for Military Records," a Supervisory Analyst position). The only times that Doug Horne addressed the Review Board as a body was in relation to recommendations about the release of DOD records on Cuba and Vietnam policy. Doug never addressed the Board Members, as a body, about any medical issues. The only person allowed to do that, or to recommend taking any depositions, was the Executive Director of the Staff: David Marwell, for the first three years; and Jeremy Gunn, after his departure, for the better part of the fourth and final year of the ARRB's existence. All ten ARRB depositions of autopsy witnesses and participants were first proposed to the Board by Executive Director Marwell, who was himself (like the Board Members) a Warren Commission true believer. The Board voted unanimously to conduct all ten of these depositions, primarily because the former Chair of the HSCA, Congressman Louis Stokes, encouraged them in 1994 to do all they could to "clarify the record" in the medical arena, after admitting that all the HSCA managed to do was to sow confusion and dissention in this crucial area of the evidence. While it is true that Horne championed taking the depositions of the two FBI agents at JFK's autopsy, as well as the two Navy x-ray techs, his recommendations to do so had to first pass muster with his boss, T. Jeremy Gunn, who was not only Head of Research and Analysis on the staff, but also General Counsel. Gunn possessed two Master's degrees, a PhD, and a Law Degree; furthermore, he was an experienced deposition attorney in the private sector before coming to the ARRB. Gunn found these suggestions worthy of serious consideration, and so did David Marwell, who recommended them to the Board.

While Horne did pass a memo recommending deposing some of the 1963 Dallas treating physicians to the Board's Chairman, Jack Tunheim, in July of 1998 just prior to the ARRB's shutdown (after Tunheim had invited direct staff recommendations on any issues), we don't know today whether Tunheim or the other Board members ever read this document. While the Board ultimately did decide to conduct a joint deposition of five of the Parkland physicians who treated President Kennedy the day of his assassination, it is obvious that they made this decision reluctantly, and almost certainly in response only to an intense call-in and fax campaign waged by the JFK research community. Their decision to depose some Dallas treating physicians was an expedient one, made only to assuage an upset research community; and the execution of the event was badly bungled by those who set it up. (You simply never take multiple depositions at the same time, as Horne warned other staff members at the time; furthermore, to take these depositions in Dallas without the autopsy photos - instead of in Washington where the photos would have been available - reduced the effectiveness of the exercise by at least 90 per cent.)

In conclusion, then, any claim that Horne, acting as a "loose cannon," improperly influenced the JFK Review Board to stray outside its proper mandate, is both specious, and false. The Board voted to take all of its medical depositions in an attempt to clarify an incomplete medical record, and their attitude was "let the chips fall where they may." In writing his magnum opus, Horne, as a former staff member who served as the principal assistant to the General Counsel during the 10 depositions of JFK autopsy witnesses, was simply (and properly) providing his opinions about the importance of key sections of that new testimony to our understanding of JFK's assassination and the ensuing cover-up. After all, he was there as the 10 depositions were taken, and was steeped in the medical evidence for three full years, and so had many valuable observations to make, and perceptions to report about the mindset and varying veracity of those who were deposed.

Second, the attempts by Livingstone to cast doubt upon the authenticity and importance of the "Boyajian report" appear to me to be a deliberate attempt by Livingstone to invalidate a key new piece of evidence which tended to destroy one of his own theories. [Livingstone does not believe that JFK's wounds were surgically altered prior to autopsy, and is unforgiving of David Lifton for raising the possibility in 1981.] For those who may not be fully familiar with the "Boyajian report," it is an after-action memo written by Sergeant Roger Boyajian, USMC, who headed the security detail sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital from the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. It was typed and submitted on November 26, 1963, just four days after JFK's assassination (and one day after his funeral). The key statement in this report (which was about the security actions taken to safeguard President Kennedy's body and his autopsy) which so offends Harry Livingstone is wherein it states that JFK's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 1835 hours (6:35 PM civilian time), a full 20 minutes before the Andrews AFB motorcade carrying the bronze ceremonial Dallas casket arrived out in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Livingstone's objections are without foundation, to wit:

- His claim that the document was not signed, and is therefore `suspect' or possibly even a forgery, is nonsense. Former Sergeant Boyajian possessed an onionskin carbon copy of his 1963 report, and mailed a validated photocopy of that onionskin copy to the ARRB staff after being interviewed by Doug Horne on the phone in 1997. Anyone who knows anything about military correspondence in the early 1960s, in the age of manual typewriters, knows that onionskin copies were never signed. Only original documents were signed. The point here is that Boyajian himself was the source of the document, and validated it himself, both orally in a telephonic interview, and later in the cover letter by which he sent a copy of it to the ARRB.

- One reviewer's claim that Horne disingenuously attempted to hide the fact that Boyajian had no memory of the details of that night, when interviewed in 1997, is false. Doug Horne himself wrote the ARRB staff call report following the telephonic interview of Boyajian in which he (Doug) stated up-front that Boyajian could no longer remember specifics of the events of Nov 22nd, 1963, except that he did supervise the detail from Marine Barracks, and the fact that he did prepare and submit to higher authority the after action report dated Nov 26th, 1963. Doug also personally placed in the Archives, in 1998, Boyajian's letter to the ARRB, claiming a bad memory, but also authenticating the copy of his report he provided to the ARRB. To suggest that Horne was attempting to hide the fact the Boyajian could no longer remember details of the events surrounding the autopsy is a scurrilous and unfounded accusation.

- Even worse, it ignores the real point: Boyajian provided the document to the ARRB, and he authenticated it as what he prepared in November of 1963. That is all that really matters. The Boyajian report is a contemporaneous document of profound importance, that was both provided to the ARRB, and authenticated, by its author in 1997. It is of similar importance to the reports written by the treating physicians in Dallas at Parkland Hospital on Nov 22nd, 1963.

-The Boyajian document describes the same event witnessed by Navy men Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch - the unaccountably early arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda, 20 minutes prior to the arrival of the Dallas casket from Andrews AFB - thus proving that there was a shell game going on with the President's body the night of his autopsy. This document, and the very consistent recollections of Dennis David ever since 1975, together prove a break in the chain of custody of President Kennedy's body, and also cause us to ask the truly important question: what was going on with President Kennedy's body between its arrival at Bethesda at 6:35 PM, and the second delivery of the Dallas casket (with JFK's body placed inside it again) by the Honor Guard at 8:00 PM? Doug Horne has provided the answer in his book: the authorities at Bethesda Naval Hospital were expanding JFK's cranial wound during illicit, clandestine surgery prior to the beginning of the official autopsy at 8:15 PM, in order to remove all evidence of shots from the front. The expanded cranial defect was then photographed and x-rayed, and the damage thus recorded was misrepresented as having been caused by "the assassin's bullet." Harrison Livingstone, because of his longstanding and well-known personal animus against David Lifton, is adamantly opposed to Doug Horne's reinterpretation of Lifton's original thesis in Best Evidence (1981). Read more ›
Was this review helpful to you?
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Unfathomable attack on an excellent book February 2, 2013
I heard about this booklet from the pen of Livingstone some time ago, but only just got to look it over.

I must say I enjoyed Livingstone's early output. He had interesting thoughts, and his first couple of books are worthwhile.

This latest is incongruous blabbering, in my opinion, and not worthy of anyone's bookshelf.

I have no idea what Mr. Livingstone has against Doug Horne. Horne's massive quintuple treatise on working for the ARRB is the very best collection of information on the medical aspects of the JFK case. The book, I feel, is among the most valuable works in my collection.

I can't make heads or tails out of Livingstone's apparently vendetta against Horne titled Kaleidoscope. His points don't stand up when you compare them to Horne's work with the ARRB. It's like Mr. Livingstone is on another, rather angry planet where up is down and he is blasting out his own version of crazy events.

Books like this hurt the author, more than the target.

Do yourself a favor, if you are interested at an in depth look at the complexities of the medical side of the JFK case, the newer released witness testimony, and the case for alteration of evidence, and buy Mr. Hornes first rate work.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Bridger
We have six eyewitnesses who provide proof that the president's body entered the morgue at 6:35/6;45pm, well before the motorcade with Mrs.K arrived at the entrance of the Bethesda Hospital.

The Boyjian report says a casket entered the morgue at 6:35pm. He did not describe the casket. Dennis David said he and his detail of men brought a shipping casket into the anteroom of the morgue at 6:45pm. The closeness of the times strongly suggest Boyajian and David are describing the same event.

Inside the morgue were photographer Riebe, x-ray technicians Reed and Custer, plus medical technician O'Connor who were in the morgue before the shipping casket was taken in or shortly thereafter, observed the shipping casket as well as the president being taken out of a body bag.

I can only speculate as to why Boyajian did not include in his report
the fact that he observed the arrival of the bronze casket twice. Perhaps he was ordered not to by a higher up, like Galloway, who was part of the cover-up. But why does this matter?

I think the six eyewitnesses prove the early arrival.And we should accept the purpose was to alter the wounds and extract evidence indicative of shots from the front. The surgery that Dr.Humes uttered as annotated in the Sibert and O'Neill report was surgery that he himself had just done. The utterance was to convince the FBI Agents that he (Humes) was seeing the surgery for the first time and that it had been done by someone else.

Lifton foreshadowed multiple enties of the casket and his has been found to be correct. Horne has expanded on it and he is correct. The undersigned has written on the subect and has corroborated both men. See the web site "Dark Corners"

Jim Rinnovatore

JFK 50 at the Alamo



The Alamo 4 AM March 6 1836 

Floyd: Alamo stewards might take notes from Dallas’ JFK presentation
Jacquielynn Floyd

Published: 25 February 2013








The crowds that lined up over the weekend in San Antonio to get a look at William Barret Travis’ famous “victory or death” letter were a gratifying testament to history’s enduring claim on modern consciousness.

With luck, the temporary return of Travis’ dramatic message to the Alamo, where it was written 177 years and (as of Tuesday) two days ago, signals a kind of marketing milestone. It’s time for the Alamo to assume a serious, scholarly position as a cultural and historical monument.

Not to say that the 1836 siege doesn’t endure as a thumpingly swell action story, because it does. Without the story, the building is a pleasingly scenic Spanish colonial mission chapel; without the building, the story is just another distant battle date for long-suffering history students to memorize.

It’s the combination that makes the Alamo such a popular attraction, but the public’s interest hasn’t always been as well rewarded as it should.

More than a century of proprietary-if-well-meaning stewardship by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas narrowed the Alamo’s focus to the Texans killed in its defense, turning what should be a living portal to history into a quasi-religious shrine, presenting the story in limited and highly subjective terms.

And I say this from an insider perspective: My great-uncle Dolphin Ward Floyd, six generations removed, was among the dead. Naturally, I incline to the view of the defenders as heroic freedom fighters rather than ungrateful land-grabbing rebels, but pretending they were a divinely anointed band of holy warriors omits a lot of awfully interesting history.

If the state waited a little too long to tactfully transfer custodianship of the Alamo from the Daughters to the people (in the form of the Texas General Land Office, which assumed control last year), at least there is still a building of which to maintain custody.
The same cannot be said for the site in its entirety. Indifferent preservation efforts and development squabbles have reduced the old fort’s footprint by 70 percent. Most of the 2 million-plus visitors who tour the site every year don’t realize the oak-shaded plaza out front was actually once enclosed within the fort’s walls.

Nor do they recognize that Travis’ own quarters and other Alamo structures once stood along a block now occupied by a strip of nonrelated, staggeringly tasteless tourist emporia.

“Considering the abuse heaped on it through the ages,” wrote Texas Monthly senior editor Gary Cartwright in 2008, “it’s a miracle the Alamo survives at all.”

If the Alamo’s stewards are still fumbling toward a lasting formula for how to present the ever-compelling site, they might take a lesson from (surprise!) Dallas.

The site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination isn’t entirely analogous to the Alamo, but there are similarities.

Unlike the Alamo, of course, Dealey Plaza wasn’t jealously guarded — it was pretty much neglected during the self-hypnotic decades while the city tried to pretend nothing-happened-here-and-there’s-nothing-to-see.

But in more recent years, The Sixth Floor Museum — and, latterly, the city itself — has done a reasonably successful job of responding to enduring public interest in the site. The result is a thorough and fairly respectful presentation that acknowledges dissent without allowing the site to degenerate into a lurid conspiracy carnival.

Obviously, these are dramatically dissimilar venues. But both sites act as tangible magnets for a public hunger to grasp watershed events in our own history.

The best way to satisfy that hunger is with established fact and scholarship, candidly and respectfully presented — and with a minimum of theme-park tourist hokum. History is compelling enough without it.

   The world famous "Victory or Death" letter was penned by Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis while besieged within the Alamo by the Mexican army in San Antonio de Bexar. 

The Travis letter is universally regarded as one of the most heroic letters ever written.  Facing almost certain death, Travis vowed never to surrender or retreat and to "die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country — Victory or Death."

  The Travis letter is dated February 24, 1836.  Some have mistakenly referred to this as Travis' last letter from the Alamo. He wrote at least four more letters. Travis wrote a letter to General Sam Houston dated February 25, 1836 and three letters dated March 3, 1836.  One of Travis' letters dated March 3, 1836 which urgently requested aid for the Alamo was received by the Convention at Washington, Texas on March 6, 1836.  The delegates to the Convention at Washington had declared the independence of Texas four days before on March 2, 1836

   Travis never did surrender or retreat.  After a thirteen day siege by thousands of Mexican soldiers under the command of Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Alamo fell on March 6, 1836.  All of the Alamo's 189 defenders, including William Barrett Travis, were killed.  The country he and the others died for, the Republic of Texas, was only four days old.

   The original "Victory or Death" letter written by William Barrett Travis on February 24, 1836 is located in the Texas State Library and Archives in Austin, Texas.


The Travis Letter
Commandancy of the The Alamo
Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World—
Fellow Citizens & compatriots—
     I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna — I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man — The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken — I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls — I shall never surrender or retreat.  Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch — The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.  If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country — Victory or Death.

William Barrett Travis.
Lt.  Col. comdt.

P. S.  The Lord is on our side — When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn — We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.





JFK Assassination - What Do We Really Know?


The Kennedy Assassination: 47 Years Later, What Do We Really Know?
inShare NOV 22 2010, 8:00 AM ET


Despite the enduring popularity of conspiracy theories about President John F. Kennedy's death on November 22, 1963, it's a mainstream consensus that these theories have always been essentially the work of cranks, popularized by a national appetite for mystery and entertainment. In recent years, this consensus has been reinforced by Vincent Bugliosi's massive, critically acclaimed book, Reclaiming History, along with Tom Hanks's related HBO special.

But for all the crazy ideas out there, there remain sober and careful alternative views of the assassination. These theories may or may not ultimately be right, but they represent the continuation of serious discussion of the subject. As the debate continues past the 47th anniversary of President Kennedy's death, let's take stock of five common myths about the state of the debate itself.

1. The belief that secret plotters killed Kennedy was first made popular by Oliver Stone's 1992 movie, JFK.

Popular belief in a conspiracy was widespread within a week of Kennedy's murder. Between November 25 and 29, 1963, University of Chicago pollsters asked more than 1,000 Americans whom they thought was responsible for the president's death. By then, the chief suspect, Oswald -- a leftist who had lived for a time in Soviet Union -- had been shot dead while in police custody by Jack Ruby, a local hoodlum with organized crime connections.

While the White House, the FBI, and the Dallas Police Department all affirmed that Oswald had acted alone, 62 percent of respondents said they believed that more than one person was involved in the assassination. Only 24 percent thought Oswald had acted alone. Another poll taken in Dallas during the same week found 66 percent of respondents believing that there had been a plot. There were no JFK conspiracy theories in print at that time. Oliver Stone was in high school.

2. All serious historians believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy, alone and unaided.

Since 2000, five tenured academic historians have published books on JFK's assassination. Four of the five concluded that a conspiracy was behind the 35th president's murder.

David Kaiser, a diplomatic historian at the Naval War College, and the author of a 2008 book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, concluded that Kennedy was killed in plot involving disgruntled CIA operatives and organized crime figures. Michael Kurtz of Southeastern Louisiana University came to the same conclusion in his 2006 book, The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman Versus Conspiracy.

In a 2005 book, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, Gerald McKnight of Hood College suggested that a high-level plot involving senior U.S. intelligence officials was probably responsible for the president's death. In his 2003 book about photographic evidence,The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination, David Wrone of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point argued that the famous amateur film footage of the assassination proves that Kennedy was hit by gunfire from two different directions. Wrone did not advocate a theory of who was responsible.

A fifth historian, Robert Dallek of UCLA, wrote a 2003 biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. While not about the assassination as such, An Unfinished Life embraced the Warren Commission's lone-gunman finding, relying squarely on Gerald Posner's 1994 anti-conspiratorial best-seller Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

3. No one high-up in the U.S. government ever thought there was a conspiracy behind JFK's murder.

In fact, many senior U.S. officials concluded that there had been a plot but rarely talked about it openly.

Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, publicly endorsed the Warren Commissions conclusion that Oswald acted alone. Privately, LBJ told many people, ranging from Atlantic contributor Leo Janos to CIA director Richard Helms, that he did not believe the lone-gunman explanation.

The president's brother Robert and widow Jacqueline also believed that he had been killed by political enemies, according to historians Aleksandr Fursenko and Tim Naftali. In their 1999 book on the Cuban missile crisis, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964, they reported that William Walton -- a friend of the First Lady -- went to Moscow on a previously scheduled trip a week after JFK's murder. Walton carried a message from RFK and Jackie for their friend, Georgi Bolshakov, a Russian diplomat who had served as a back-channel link between the White House and the Kremlin during the October 1962 crisis: RFK and Jackie wanted the Soviet leadership to know that "despite Oswald's connections to the communist world, the Kennedys believed that the president was felled by domestic opponents."

In the Senate, Democrats Richard Russell of Georgia and Russell Long of Louisiana both rejected official accounts of the assassination. In the executive branch, Joseph Califano, the General Counsel of Army in 1963 and later Secretary of Health Education and Welfare, concluded that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy.* In the White House, H.R. Haldeman, chief of staff to President Richard Nixon, wanted to reopen the JFK investigation in 1969. Nixon wasn't interested.

Suspicion persisted in the upper echelons of the U.S. national security agencies, as well. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, chief of Pentagon special operations in 1963 (and later an adviser to Stone), believed that there had been a plot.

Winston Scott, chief of the CIA's station in Mexico City at the time of Kennedy's murder and an ultra-conservative Agency loyalist, rejected the Warren Commission's findings about a trip that Oswald had taken to Mexico six weeks before the assassination. Scott concluded in an unpublished memoir that Oswald had, indeed, been just a patsy.

None of these figures was a paranoid fantasist. To the contrary, they constituted a cross section of the American power elite in 1963. Neither did they talk about a JFK conspiracy for public consumption; they talked about it only reservedly, in confined circles.

4. Former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi refuted all JFK conspiracy theories in Reclaiming History.

In the course of 1,600 pages Bugliosi effectively refuted many unfounded conspiracy scenarios and reasserted the lone gunman conclusions of the Warren Commission. But he has never engaged the extensive scholarship of Commission skeptics such as journalist David Talbot, historian Kaiser, historian John Newman, or biographer Anthony Summers, or analyzed the innovative research of attorney William Simpich.

Kaiser, author of seven books on U.S. history, notes that Bugliosi's prosecutorial approach limits the scope of his historical analysis: "He falls back on the old argument 'no one could have ever used Ruby and Oswald in a conspiracy' which relieves him of the necessity of addressing any of the conspiracy evidence seriously."

5. All the CIA's records related to the Kennedy assassination have been made public.

The agency acknowledges that it currently holds thousands of pages on Kennedy's murder that the public has never seen. The CIA disclosed the existence of the still-secret JFK files while responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed as it happens by me, seeking the release of other records related to the assassination.

In a sworn affidavit, Delores Nelson, the CIA's chief information officer, stated that the Agency has approximately 1,100 assassination-related documents that it plans to keep under wraps until 2017, if not longer. These files -- containing more than 2,000 pages of material -- cannot be made public for reasons, Nelson says, of national security.

In other words, somewhere in the Washington metropolitan area there is a collection of CIA documents related to JFK's murder that, if collated, would stand about ten inches tall. None of those documents has ever been seen by the U.S. Congress or the National Archives, let alone by journalists, historians, bloggers, Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, or the general public.

That's not a conspiracy theory or a myth. It's a fact.

_____________________________________________________________________________

* This sentence originally stated that Califano was Secretary of the Army. We regret the error.

Morley v. CIA Dec 7, 2007 Ruling



MORLEY v. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Jefferson MORLEY, Appellant v. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, Appellee.
06-5382.No.
Argued Oct. 22, 2007. -- December 07, 2007
Before: HENDERSON, ROGERS and TATEL, Circuit Judges. 

 With him on the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.James H. Lesar argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.John C. Truong, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for appellee.
Journalist Jefferson Morley appeals the grant of summary judgment to the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) on his request 2107 note, does not relieve the CIA of its obligations under the FOIA. On remand, the CIA must also expand its description of the search by its component units and supplement its justification for withholding documents under FOIA Exemptions 2, 5 and 6. Additionally, its release of records pursuant to the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (“JFK Act”), 44 U.S.C. §431(c)(3), and we remand the case so that the CIA may search its operational files in response to Morley's FOIA request. We hold that Morley met his burden to show that his request falls within an exception to the Central Intelligence Agency Information Act of 1984 (“CIA Act”), 50 U.S.C. § Upon de novo review, we reverse the grant of summary judgment. On appeal, Morley contends that the CIA did not conduct an adequate search or provide an adequate Vaughn index and that it failed to meet its burden to justify withholding documents under FOIA exemptions. Although the CIA disclosed some records, it withheld others pursuant to various FOIA exemptions. under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) for documents pertaining to George Joannides, a deceased CIA officer.
I.
 Appellant's Br. at 3. Disclosure of CIA records pursuant to his FOIA request will, Morley contends, help to “complete the historical record of Kennedy's assassination, specifically CIA operations that might have collected intelligence on Oswald.” As Morley's writing discusses, the DRE had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before President Kennedy's assassination. In his view, information on Joannides could shed new light on the assassination because of Joannides' position as the CIA case officer for the anti-Castro organization known as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (“DRE”) in 1963. Letter from Jefferson Morley to Katherine Dyer, Information and Privacy Coordinator, CIA (July 4, 2003) (“2003 Letter”), at 1. Morley is a journalist and news editor who has written about the assassination of President Kennedy. On July 4, 2003, Morley submitted a FOIA request to the CIA for “all records pertaining to CIA operations officer George Efythron Joannides (also known as ‘Howard,’ ‘Mr. Howard’ or ‘Walter Newby’).”
 The CIA directThe CIA sent Morley a preliminary response on November 5, 2003, informing him that “CIA records on the assassination of President Kennedy have been re-reviewed under the classification guidelines for assassination-related records of the [JFK Act]” and that such records “have been transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) in compliance with this Act.” Letter from Robert T. Herman, Information and Privacy Coordinator, CIA, to Jefferson Morley, at 1 (Nov. 5, 2003). ed Morley to submit Id. at 2.his request to NARA, supplied him with NARA's address, and advised him that records can be electronically searched through NARA's website.
 Letter from Scott Koch, Information and Privacy Coordinator, CIA, to Jefferson Morley (May 9, 2005). Three months later, on May 9, 2005, the CIA sent Morley a partially redacted document that it had “inadvertently failed to include” in its earlier response and identified additional material that was withheld in its entirety under Exemptions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7(C), 7(D), and 7(E). The CIA later released the two documents requiring consultation with another agency in segregable form. Letter from Scott Koch, Information and Privacy Coordinator, CIA, to Jefferson Morley, at 2 (Dec. 22, 2004) (“2004 Letter”). The CIA noted that it had located additional responsive material that it was withholding in its entirety under FOIA Exemptions 1, 3, and 6. It also explained that two documents required consultation with another agency and that 78 documents previously released under the JFK Act were on file with NARA. The CIA asserted that it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive” to Morley's request pertaining to Joannides' participation in any covert operation. By letter of December 22, 2004, the CIA responded to Morley's FOIA request, enclosing three documents in their entirety and 112 documents with redactions pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7(C), and 7(E). The CIA filed a motion to stay the proceedings pending its further processing of Morley's FOIA request, which the district court granted on September 2, 2004. On December 16, 2003, Morley filed a complaint for injunctive relief, requesting the district court to order the CIA to make available all documents responsive to his FOIA request.
 See Iturralde v. Comptroller of Currency, 315 F.3d 311, 313 (D.C.Cir.2003). Morley appeals, and we review the grant of summary judgment de novo. It found that the CIA had conducted an adequate search, giving deference to the agency's decisions as explained in the October 26, 2005 Declaration of Marilyn A. Dorn, the Information Review Officer for the Directorate of Operations of the CIA (“Dorn Declaration”), and that the Dorn Declaration and the CIA's Vaughn index had adequately justified invocation of the claimed FOIA exemptions. On September 29, 2006, the district court granted the CIA's motion for summary judgment and denied Morley's cross-motion. On February 6, 2006, the magistrate judge granted the CIA's motion for a protective order and directed Morley to file his opposition to the CIA's summary judgment motion, which Morley did on March 14, 2006 along with a cross-motion for summary judgment. After the CIA filed a motion for a protective order on March 24, 2005, the district court referred all discovery disputes to a magistrate judge. The CIA filed a motion for summary judgment on November 15, 2005. Morley sought discovery from the CIA on February 27, 2005.
II.
 As such, exemptions from disclosure must be narrowly construed, id. at 823, and “‘conclusory and generalized allegations of exemptions' are unacceptable,” Founding Church of Scientology of Wash., D. C., Inc. v. Nat'l Sec. Agency, 610 F.2d 824, 830 (D.C.Cir.1979) (quoting Vaughn, 484 F.2d at 826).“The court applies a ‘reasonableness' test to determine the ‘adequacy’ of a search methodology, consistent with congressional intent tilting the scale in favor of disclosure,” Campbell v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 164 F.3d 20, 27 (D.C.Cir.1998) (quoting Weisberg, 705 F.2d at 1351), and “impose[s] a substantial burden on an agency seeking to avoid disclosure” through the FOIA exemptions, Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 828 (D.C.Cir.1973). Weisberg v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C.Cir.1983). To prevail on summary judgment, then, the defending “agency must show beyond material doubt [] that it has conducted a search reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents.” Dep't of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976) (quoting Rose v. Dep't of Air Force, 495 F.2d 261, 263 (2d Cir.1974)). Congress enacted the FOIA in order to “‘pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.’
StandardA.
As a threshold matter, we conclude that the CIA properly processed Morley's request under the traditional standards of the FOIA, rather than the less restrictive standards of the JFK Act. In enacting the JFK Act, Congress declared that “all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure,” in part because the FOIA, “as implemented by the executive branch, has prevented the timely public disclosure” of these records.  Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Continuing Obligations of the CIA Under the JFK Act, at 3 (Sept. 30, 1998). Upon expiration of the Review Board's operations on September 30, 1998, the CIA, NARA, and the Review Board signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) providing that the CIA will transmit to the JFK Collection at NARA a number of specifically identified documents, along with “[a]ny other non-duplicate assassination-related records created or discovered by the CIA after September 30, 1998.” 7(i). Id. §4. The JFK Act also established the Assassination Records Review Board (“Review Board”) to determine whether agency documents constitute assassination records and to render decisions on whether a particular record qualifies for postponement of disclosure. Id. § The JFK Act required that all assassination records be transmitted to NARA to comprise its JFK Assassination Records Collection. 2(a)(2), (a)(5). JFK Act §
In Assassination Archives &  See id. The court stated that FOIA requesters could not skirt the JFK Act's procedures in order to capitalize on its substance. There is no evidence that Congress intended that the JFK Act standards be applied to FOIA review of documents involving the Kennedy assassination.” Research Center v. Department of Justice, 43 F.3d 1542, 1544 (D.C.Cir.1995) (“AARC I”), the court determined that “[t]he JFK Act and the FOIA are separate statutory schemes with separate sets of standards and separate (and markedly different) enforcement mechanisms.
 Accordingly, the CIA properly conceived of Morley's FOIA request as requiring application of FOIA standards, and we turn to Morley's challenges to the adequacy of the CIA's search and Vaughn index and to the CIA's invocation of FOIA exemptions to withhold documents. Morley cannot invoke this Congressional purpose to “engraft[]” “the concerns of the JFK Act onto FOIA requests,” Minier v. CIA, 88 F.3d 796, 802 (9th Cir.1996). Notably, the MOU neither mentions the FOIA nor addresses the release of relevant documents to FOIA requesters; it merely provides that the appropriate records shall be released to NARA. If Morley has identified new assassination-related records, then NARA can seek their release pursuant to the MOU. To the extent that Congress sought to remedy the executive branch's overzealous shielding of assassination-related records under the FOIA, the JFK Act and the MOU supply the process by which to obtain these documents. But the MOU provides its own enforcement mechanism for procuring relevant documents from the CIA; Morley can no more sidestep these procedures than he could those of the JFK Act, see id. at 1545. Now that they have, Morley asserts that the MOU should govern his request for documents. Id. at 1543. Morley maintains that the termination of Review Board operations and the creation of the MOU distinguish his case from AARC I because there the court rejected efforts to “secure immediate judicial application of the substantive standards of the JFK Act without having to wait for the Act's procedures to run their course.”
Adequacy of the SearchB.
 We turn to these enumerated issues. The district court did not specifically address the individual contentions that Morley raises regarding the adequacy of the CIA's search. The district court found that Dorn's declaration “described in great detail” the CIA's actions in response to Morley's FOIA request, Mem. Op. Sept. 29, 2006 at 8, and concluded, “mindful of the deference due agency decisions in this context,” id. at 9, that the CIA's search was adequate. Founding Church of Scientology, 610 F.2d at 836. “Even if these conditions are met the requester may nonetheless produce countervailing evidence, and if the sufficiency of the agency's identification or retrieval procedure is genuinely in issue, summary judgment is not in order.” Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339, 352 (D.C.Cir.1978) (quoting Vaughn, 484 F.2d at 826). However, such reliance is only appropriate when the agency's supporting affidavits are “‘relatively detailed’ and nonconclusory and submitted in good faith.” Founding Church of Scientology, 610 F.2d at 836. “[I]n adjudicating the adequacy of the agency's identification and retrieval efforts, the trial court may be warranted in relying upon agency affidavits.”
 Morley, however, contends that because the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (“Church Committee”) and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (“HSCA”) investigated DRE activities in 1963, his FOIA request falls under an exception in the CIA Act.431(b)(1). 431(a), and generally include records “which document the conduct of foreign intelligence or counterintelligence operations,” id. § Operational files are exempt from FOIA disclosure under the CIA Act, 50 U.S.C. § See Dorn Declaration ¶97. The CIA admits that it did not search its operational files for records responsive to Morley's request. Search of Operational Files. 1.
of the CIA Act provides that:Section 431(c)
[E]xempted operational files shall continue to be subject to search and review for information concerning (3) the specific subject matter of an investigation by the congressional intelligence committees, the Intelligence Oversight Board, the Department of Justice, the Office of General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for any impropriety, or violation of law, Executive order, or Presidential directive, in the conduct of an intelligence activity. [emphasis added]
 First, does the Church Committee or the HSCA qualify as “congressional intelligence committees” under the CIA Act? The CIA does not challenge that the two committees qualify as intelligence committees, and treating the Church Committee as such appears to be consistent with congressional intent.For exception (3) to apply, the plain text directs that three questions must be answered in the affirmative. 1 401a(7); the permanent body was created on the recommendation of the Church Committee.The Church Committee was the predecessor to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is specifically named in the definition of “congressional intelligence committees,” 50 U.S.C. §2 431(c), for the Church Committee does and that is sufficient for the exception to apply. It matters not, however, that the HSCA does not necessarily fall within the definition of a congressional intelligence committee for purposes of § See Lt. Gerald F. Reimers II, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 4 J. Nat'l Security L. 55, 74 (2000). However, it was the House Select Committee on Intelligence (“Pike Committee”), not the HSCA, that gave rise to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives. (June 27, 2006). Decl. of G. Robert Blakey, ¶¶9, 10. Moreover, according to evidence proffered by Morley, Congress created the HSCA to follow up on the Church Committee recommendation that Congress investigate further “why Oswald's contacts with the DRE had been examined so superficially.”
Id. at 6. Morley proffers evidence that Joannides had access to relevant information concerning the assassination through his connections with the DRE. As the DRE's CIA case officer between 1962 and 1964 (a fact that the CIA neither denies nor confirms), Morley maintains that Joannides would have been central to the CIA's inquiry into Oswald's contacts with that particular anti-Castro group. Significantly, the Church Committee found that “the CIA inquiry [] was deficient on the specific question of the significance of Oswald's contacts with pro- and anti-Castro groups for the many months before the assassination.” See Church Committee, The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, S.Rep. No. 94-755, Book V, at 1 (1976). In fact, the scope of the Church Committee investigation specifically encompassed operations of the CIA and other federal agencies in investigating the assassination. H.R.Rep. No. 98-726, at 31 (1984), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3741, 3769. The legislative history of the CIA Act indicates that “[t]he specificity requirement in the phrase ‘specific subject matter of the investigation’ tailors the scope of information remaining subject to the FOIA process to the scope of the specific subject matter of the investigation.” 50 U.S.C. 431(c)(3). Second, does Morley's request concern “the specific subject matter of an investigation by the congressional intelligence committees”?
 See Gen. Dynamics Land Sys., Inc., v. Cline, 540 U.S. 581, 600, 124 S.Ct. 1236, 157 L.Ed.2d 1094 (2004); Skidmore v. Swift This restrictive reading of the statute is foreclosed by its literal meaning. See Appellee's Br. at 16; Oral Arg. Tape at 21:37, 22:13 (Oct. 22, 2007). 431(c)(3) because it was not specifically about Joannides. The CIA contends that this congressional investigation does not trigger § & 431(c), “a broadly inclusive term,” ACLU v. Dep't of Defense, 351 F.Supp.2d 265, 272 (S.D.N.Y.2005), that precludes the interpretation offered by the CIA. Congress chose to use the word “concerning” in §Co., 323 U.S. 134, 65 S.Ct. 161, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944).
 Joannides has more than a “remote” relationship to the purpose of the investigation, according to Morley's evidence, as he was the case officer for an anti-Castro group that had documented contacts with Oswald. Sullivan addressed a situation substantially different from Morley's case. In that case, the court addressed a FOIA request pertaining to the disappearance of the requester's father while allegedly on an airborne CIA-sponsored mission to drop propaganda over Cuba. The court construed the exception to require more than “a congressional investigation that touches on CIA conduct in a particular incident or region,” id. at 1254. In Sullivan v. CIA, 992 F.2d 1249, 1255 (1st Cir.1993), the First Circuit held that the exception was inapplicable because “[i]t is simply not enough that information which bore in some remote way on the request surfaced in the course of an official investigation.” 431(c)(3). In support of its proposition, the CIA relies on the only opinion by a circuit court of appeals to address §
 The evidence proffered by Morley indicates that Joannides was in a position of central importance to such an investigation and was thus covered by its “specific subject matter.” See Appellee's Br. at 16. Even the CIA recognizes that the focus of the committee's investigation was the relationship between organizations like the DRE and the Kennedy assassination. The role of individual CIA officers during this event was key to such an inquiry, information that the committee would have sought out rather than merely happened upon. The Church Committee posed a targeted inquiry investigating the performance of the intelligence agencies surrounding a particular event. Sullivan, 992 F.2d at 1255. Morley does not seek information that bears only a “remote” relationship to the investigation by the Church Committee, but rather information central to the committee's “direct investigation.” H.R. Rep. No. 98-726, at 31, 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 3769. 431(c)(3) exception. This interpretation is supported by the legislative history of the CIA Act, which indicates that information that merely “surfaced in the course of the investigation” should not trigger the §431(c)(3) that a FOIA request concern “the specific subject matter of an investigation” is satisfied where the investigating committee would have deemed the records at issue to be central to its inquiry. We hold that the requirement of §
 Such an investigation implicates Joannides, who, according to Morley's proffers, was a figure central to the CIA's investigation both before and after the assassination, and someone who may have been directly implicated in the CIA's alleged deficiencies. The Church Committee investigation meets this criteria because it sought to assess the performance of the intelligence agencies in conducting their own investigations of the assassination; in fact, the Church Committee found that the CIA was “deficient” in its performance, further indicating that it was specifically investigating the possibility of CIA “impropriety.” This requirement is satisfied when a congressional investigation is spawned by alleged improprieties and seeks to uncover them. The inclusion of the word “impropriety” alongside “violation of law” suggests that Congress intended the terms to apply broadly; the misconduct need not amount to illegality. 431(c)(3). 50 U.S.C. §Third, was the investigation “for any impropriety, or violation of law, Executive order, or Presidential directive, in the conduct of an intelligence activity”?
431(c)(3), and thus our holding that the Church Committee investigated agency “impropriety, or violation of law” is not in tension with Sullivan.Id. An investigation of an illegal agency operation satisfies the dictates of § Further, Sullivan acknowledges that the Church Committee “considered American operations against Castro and, inevitably, their legality.” However, once the First Circuit concluded that information about the requester's father had only a tenuous relationship to the Church Committee's investigation, and thus did not concern “the specific subject matter of an investigation,” it had no need to reach the issue of whether the Church Committee investigated CIA impropriety. 992 F.2d at 1255. The First Circuit stated that the Church Committee's inquiry fell outside of the exception because it “was not a direct investigation into CIA wrongdoing,” despite the fact that “there were instances in which the Committee searched for agency misconduct.” Language in Sullivan that suggests that the Church Committee did not investigate CIA “impropriety, or violation of law” was unnecessary to its holding and limited by its context.
431(c)(3) criteria for mandating the search of the CIA's operational files under the FOIA. Because the CIA did not search these files, we remand the case to the district court so that the CIA may do so.For these reasons, we hold that Morley's FOIA request meets the §
U.S. Dep't of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 150, 109 S.Ct. 2841, 106 L.Ed.2d 112 (1989).Search of Records Released to NARA. Morley also correctly contends that the search was inadequate because the CIA did not search records that had been transferred to NARA pursuant to the JFK Act. The Supreme Court has held that “an agency has [] ‘withheld’ a document under its control when, in denying an otherwise valid request, it directs the requester to a place outside of the agency where the document may be publicly available.” 2.
 Because the CIA does not deny that it has retained copies of the records transferred to NARA and concedes that some transferred records are likely to be responsive, it was obligated to search those records in resMcGehee v. CIA, 697 F.2d 1095, 1110 (D.C.Cir.1983) (quoting Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 150-51, 100 S.Ct. 960, 63 L.Ed.2d 267 (1980)). “[A] categorical refusal to release documents that are in the agency's ‘custody’ or ‘control’ for any reason other than those set forth in the Act's enumerated exceptions would constitute ‘withholding.’ Congress has authorized only nine categories of exemption from this policy, and practical considerations that documents exist in another forum outside of the agency is not amongst them. Tax Analysts v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 845 F.2d 1060, 1064 (D.C.Cir.1988) (quoting S.Rep. No. 89-813, at 3 (1965)), aff'd, 492 U.S. 136, 109 S.Ct. 2841, 106 L.Ed.2d 112. The FOIA has a “settled policy” of “‘full agency disclosure.’ponse to Morley's FOIA request.
11(b). Indeed, the JFK Act itself indicates that release of records to NARA does not absolve agencies of their duties under the FOIA: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to eliminate or limit any right to file requests with any executive agency or seek judicial review of the decisions pursuant to [the FOIA].” JFK Act § Moreover, even if the protected records could be withheld under one of the FOIA exemptions, that does not absolve the CIA of its duty to identify responsive documents, claim the relevant exemptions in the Vaughn index, and explain its reasoning for withholding the documents in its affidavit. The CIA did not distinguish between the protected and unprotected records when it directed Morley to the NARA collection, instead indicating that the JFK Collection as a whole is likely to contain responsive documents. See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins., 463 U.S. 29, 50, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983). The CIA confirms that “1,100 documents are located in NARA's protected collection, and will be released in 2017.” Dorn Decl. ¶29 n. 5. Although the CIA asserts on appeal that it “is not required to search these documents because the ‘ postponed collection’ under the JFK Act is not reasonably likely to contain information responsive to [Morley]'s request,” Appellee's Br. at 19, this post hoc explanation cannot make up for the Dorn Declaration's silence. 2(a)(7). 6; see also id. § JFK Act §The same holds true for the 1,100 CIA documents contained in the protected collection at NARA. The JFK Act provides for the postponement of disclosure given “clear and convincing evidence” of enumerated circumstances requiring secrecy.
 On remand the district court shall direct the CIA to search these documents.In sum, the blanket statement in the Dorn Declaration that the CIA did not search records made available through NARA does not warrant summary judgment on this aspect of Morley's FOIA request.
 Paragraph 44 of the Dorn Declaration states that the CIA directed the Office of General Counsel to search its relevant database and that responsive documents were released to Morley.Iturralde, 315 F.3d at 315. But even if citations to Morley's own affidavit were sufficient to show that files pertaining to Joannides' selection as liaison once did exist, “failure of an agency to turn up one specific document in its search does not alone render a search inadequate.” See Weisberg v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 745 F.2d 1476, 1487 (D.C.Cir.1984). This is hardly proof that such documents exist. Decl. of Jefferson Morley ¶13 (Apr. 25, 2005). 2003 Letter at 2. Morley relies on a passage in a book written by Scott Breckinridge, the former General Counsel of the CIA, that refers to “George J.” who was chosen as the agency's liaison to the HSCA. Morley also states in his sworn declaration that the CIA's meetings with Joannides “were undoubtedly memorialized by one or more of the participants.” First, Morley's FOIA request sought “[a]ll records in the Office of General Counsel pertaining to the selection of George Joannides as liaison to the [HSCA] in May 1978.” Morley is less persuasive in contending that the search was inadequate because there are certain documents that he suspects the CIA has in its possession but withheld. Search for “Missing” Documents. 3.
 Wilbur v. CIA, 355 F.3d 675, 678 (D.C.Cir.2004). This assertion amounts to nothing more than “mere speculation that as yet uncovered documents might exist,” which is not enough to “undermine the determination that the agency conducted an adequate search for the requested records.” Appellant's Br. at 28. Second, Morley contends that the CIA has failed to produce the “daily diary” of its activity concerning the HSCA. Again Morley relies on his declaration and asserts in his brief that it “strains credulity” to think that the documents that he seeks do not exist.
 Appellee's Br. at 23 n. 6 (internal citations omitted).Third, Morley notes that the CIA did not disclose any of the monthly progress reports filed by Joannides while he was the case officer for the DRE. Morley relies on the fact that the monthly reports of the DRE case officers' both before and after Joannides' assignment are available at NARA. The CIA's brief explains in a footnote that it addressed these “missing” monthly reports in a memorandum to the Review Board's Executive Director: “The memorandum states that notwithstanding rather extensive efforts, searches conducted by the Agency failed to locate any of the reports that appear to be missing [between] December 1962[and] April 1964 and provided background which may explain the lack of such reports for this time period.”
 In Weisberg v. U.S. Department of Justice, 627 F.2d 365, 369 (D.C.Cir.1980), the court stated that the FBI agent's affidavit It does not suffice for purposes of summary judgment that the CIA has written a memorandum to NARA that “may explain” the lack of responsive documents; rather, the court must be able to ascertain if it has explained the records' absence. However, the CIA's failure to provide a similar explanation in its affidavit or provide the memorandum itself to Morley makes it impracticable for the court to review the adequacy of its search.
 A factual question thus persists, and it was inappropriate for the District Court to undertake to resolve it at the stage of summary judgment.assert[ed] no personal knowledge that the [record] really was discarded, so [one] permissible inference is that [the agent] is incorrect in his belief and that the [record] remains somewhere in the FBI's domain.
 On remand the CIA must supplement its explanation. Cf. Maynard v. CIA, 986 F.2d 547, 565 (1st Cir.1993). Although the CIA indicates these documents are responsive, it has provided neither Morley nor the court with an explanation regarding the reports' whereabouts. The evidence here similarly indicates that there is a factual question as to whether or not the “missing” monthly reports still exist.
 However, to the extent Morley also contends that the search was inadequate because the CIA failed to search records referenced in the responsive documents that were released, Steinberg v. U.S. Department of Justice, 23 F.3d 548, 552 (D.C.Cir.1994), is dispositive: Although the CIA states in its brief that “soft” files were included in its search, see Appellee's Br. at 14, this post hoc explanation cannot make up for the fact that the CIA provided an inadequate description of its search in its response to Morley and in the Dorn Declaration. The Dorn Declaration never addresses Morley's request that the CIA search its “soft files.” Search of Other Files. 4.
[] FOIA clearly does not impose this burden upon federal agencies If that were the case, an agency responding to FOIA requests might be forced to examine virtually every document in its files, following an interminable trail of cross-referenced documents like a chain letter winding its way through the mail. [M]ere reference to other files does not establish the existence of documents that are relevant to appellant's FOIA request.
 But Dorn provides little more than conclusory adjectives and does not provide sufficient detail for the court itself to determine the search's adequacy. Dorn Decl. ¶43. Dorn states that the “CIA produced records that were a product of a reasonable, diligent and thorough search.” The Dorn Declaration does not “explain in reasonable detail the scope and method of the search conducted by the agency [sufficient] to demonstrate compliance with the obligations imposed by the FOIA.” Perry v. Block, 684 F.2d 121, 127 (D.C.Cir.1982). Morley is correct that the CIA failed to describe its search adequately. Adequacy of CIA's Description. 5.
Oglesby, 920 F.2d at 68. Consequently, the Declaration's terse treatment of the CIA's efforts to locate documents that were responsive to Morley's FOIA request lacks the detail “necessary to afford a FOIA requester an opportunity to challenge the adequacy of the search and to allow the district court to determine if the search was adequate in order to grant summary judgment.” The remainder of the Declaration describes only basic CIA policy regarding FOIA responses and a description of the CIA's correspondence with Morley. See, e.g., Nation Magazine v. U.S. Customs Serv., 71 F.3d 885, 891 (D.C.Cir.1995). Neither does Dorn provide any indication of what each directorate's search specifically yielded. Oglesby v. U.S. Dep't of Army, 920 F.2d 57, 68 (D.C.Cir.1990). Dorn merely identifies the three directorates that were responsible for finding responsive documents without “identify[ing] the terms searched or explain[ing] how the search was conducted” in each component. But the two brief paragraphs in the Declaration explaining the search itself, Dorn Decl. ¶43-44, provide no information about the search strategies of the components charged with responding to Morley's FOIA request. Id.13. The Declaration incorporates a general explanation of how the agency responds to all FOIA requests, and after describing how a single FOIA request must be divvied up between multiple component units within the CIA, Dorn states that “each component must then devise its own search strategy, which includes identifying which of its records systems to search as well as what search tools, indices, and terms to employ.”
 Because the CIA inadequately explained its search, we need not address Morley's objection that t On remand, the CIA must expand its description of the search it conducted. Nat'l Cable Television Assoc. v. FCC, 479 F.2d 183, 186 (D.C.Cir.1973). In view of Morley's various concerns about the adequacy of the CIA's search, and the CIA's response with a “single, conclusory affidavit,” Perry, 684 F.2d at 128, that generally asserts adherence to the reasonableness standard, the Dorn Declaration is insufficient to carry the CIA's burden on summary judgment to “prove[] that no substantial and material facts are in dispute and that [it] is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” he court should not defer to the Dorn Declaration in view of the CIA's alleged bad faith.
Adequacy of Vaughn indexC.
 At the same time, in Judicial Watch, Inc. v. FoodId. at 224. The court held that a “[c]ategorical description of redacted material coupled with categorical indication of anticipated consequences of disclosure is clearly inadequate.” In King v. U.S. Department of Justice, 830 F.2d 210 (D.C.Cir.1987), the court stated that “when an agency seeks to withhold information, it must provide ‘a relatively detailed justification, specifically identifying the reasons why a particular exemption is relevant and correlating those claims with the particular part of a withheld document to which they apply,’” id. at 219 (quoting Mead Data Cent., Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 251 (D.C.Cir.1977)). The court has provided repeated instruction on the specificity required of a Vaughn index. Morley further challenges the sufficiency of the Vaughn index because it does not identify the specific exemption invoked to justify each redaction in the released documents. & Id. at 146-47.Id. In holding that the Vaughn index was adequate, the court noted the index included eleven categories of information describing the nature of each record. The court observed that “[e]specially where the agency has disclosed and withheld a large number of documents, particularity may actually impede court review and undermine the functions served by a Vaughn index.” Drug Administration, 449 F.3d 141, 147 (D.C.Cir.2006), the court stated that “[w]e have never required repetitive, detailed explanations for each piece of withheld information-that is, codes and categories may be sufficiently particularized to carry the agency's burden of proof.”
 Summary judgment was therefore appropriate on the adequacy of the CIA's Vaughn index. Still, the descriptions of the documents in the Vaughn index, while categorical and with little variation from page to page, convey enough information for Morley and the court to identify the records referenced and understand the basic reasoning behind the claimed exemptions. As described below in discussing several of the claimed FOIA exemptions, the Dorn Declaration is less fulsome in tying together the exempted documents and justifying their withholding. Id. at 145. The released portion of the document supplements the Vaughn index, so that “[t]he released content of the documents served to illuminate the nature of the redacted material.” Id. at 147. In Judicial Watch the index and the agency affidavit worked in tandem, the court validating the index because it “tied each individual document to one or more exemptions, and the [agency's] declaration linked the substance of each exemption to the documents' common elements.” Although the CIA has not matched each redaction with a specific exemption, its Vaughn index does identify the exemptions claimed for each individual document. The Morley Vaughn index contains many of the same categories as in Judicial Watch, including an identification number, the document's subject, and the date.
SegregabilityD.
 The district court's failure to fulfill this responsibility requires a remand.PHE, Inc. v. Dep't of Justice, 983 F.2d 248, 252 (D.C.Cir.1993). Thus, “a district court clearly errs when it approves the government's withholding of information under the FOIA without making an express finding on segregability.” “[T]he District Court had an affirmative duty to consider the segregability issue sua sponte.” Trans-Pac. Policing Agreement v. U.S. Customs Serv., 177 F.3d 1022, 1028 (D.C.Cir.1999). 552(b). 5 U.S.C. § The FOIA requires that “[a]ny reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be provided to any person requesting such record after deletion of the portions which are exempt.” Morley notes that the district court failed to address the segregability of the withheld documents.
ExemptionsE.
 Morley makes three points: (1) The Dorn Declaration makes only conclusory statements about national security threats under Exemption 1; (2) The passage of time since the Cold War no longer warrants protection of documents concerning the CIA's operations in Cuba; and (3) The CIA has already released to NARA the same kind of information he seeks under the JFK Act, undercuttin The CIA relies on Executive Order 12,958, “Classified National Security Information,” 60 Fed.Reg. 19,825 (Apr. 17, 1995), in exempting certain material. 552(b)(1). 5 U.S.C. §Exemption 1 provides that the disclosure provisions of the FOIA do not apply to matters that are “(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order.” g any potential damage to national security that the CIA currently claims.
Id. She then restates the Executive Order's standard for classifying certain information “which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security.” Dorn Decl. ¶48. She briefly identifies the two categories of the Executive Order under which information was classified-“intelligence activities , intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.” Dorn's justification for the invocation of Exemption 1 is terse.
 Upon considering the CIA's more thorough discussion of the national security implications in Exemption 3, we conclude that, taken together, the Dorn declaration made a proper showing under Exemption 1. Furthermore, where courts have called for more detailed explanations of the potential dangers to national security that justify the use of Exemption 1, see, e.g., Oglesby v. U.S. Dep't of Army, 79 F.3d 1172, 1184 (D.C.Cir.1996); Church of Scientology, 662 F.2d at 787, they have conflated Exemption 1 and Exemption 3, which also deals with national security concerns. Military Audit Project v. Casey, 656 F.2d 724, 738 (D.C.Cir.1981) (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). Morley's argument for declassification does not overcome the “substantial weight” the court must accord “to an agency's affidavit concerning the details of the classified status of the disputed record.” Although the court has “consistently maintained that vague, conclusory affidavits, or those that merely paraphrase the words of a statute, do not allow a reviewing judge to safeguard the public's right of access to government records,” Church of Scientology of Cal., Inc. v. Turner, 662 F.2d 784, 787 (D.C.Cir.1980) (per curiam), the text of Exemption 1 itself suggests that little proof or explanation is required beyond a plausible assertion that information is properly classified.
 Notably, in Assassination ArchivesAs for Morley's assertion that this kind of information has already been released under the JFK Act, the only evidence he proffers is a declaration by John M. Newman, Professor of History at the University of Maryland. &  Unable to point to specific information that was previously released and is now withheld, Morley's challenge to the CIA's reliance on Exemption 1 fails. Newman's declaration at most proves that “[a]ll of this kind of information has been revealed” under the JFK Act. Decl. of John M. Newman ¶9 (Mar. 5, 2006). Wolf v. CIA, 473 F.3d 370, 378 (D.C.Cir.2007) (emphasis in original) (citation omitted). The insistence on exactitude recognizes ‘the Government's vital interest in information relating to national security and foreign affairs.’“Prior disclosure of similar information does not suffice; instead, the specific information sought by the plaintiff must already be in the public domain by official disclosure. Id. at 60. In that case, the court noted that the previously disclosed material must be “as specific as” the sought material. Research Center v. CIA (“AARC II”), 334 F.3d 55, 59 (D.C.Cir.2003), the court rejected a nearly identical declaration by Newman.
Fitzgibbon v. U.S. Secret Serv., 747 F.Supp. 51, 56 (D.D.C.1990) (citing Schwaner, 898 F.2d at 794, 796). Notably, “[t]his exemption does not shield information on the sole basis that it is designed for internal agency use.” Second, “[i]f so, the agency may defeat disclosure by proving that either ‘disclosure may risk circumvention of agency regulation,’” id. (quoting Rose, 425 U.S. at 369, 96 S.Ct. 1592), “or ‘the material relates to trivial administrative matters of no genuine public interest,’” id. at 794 (quoting Founding Church of Scientology, 721 F.2d at 830 n. 4). Id. at 794 (quoting Founding Church of Scientology of Wash., D. C., Inc. v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 830 n. 4 (D.C.Cir.1983)). In Schwaner v. Department of Air Force, 898 F.2d 793 (D.C.Cir.1990), the court identified a two-step process for determining if records fall within Exemption 2: ‘First, the material withheld should fall within the terms of the statutory language.’552(b)(2). 5 U.S.C. §Exemption 2 protects from disclosure records that are “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.”
 The CIA “has failed even See 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(B); Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. at 142 n. 3, 109 S.Ct. 2841. The Vaughn index for the nine documents withheld under this exemption adds little insight into whether the type of information deemed exempt is trivial, vaguely referring only to “CIA internal organizational data” and “internal Agency regulations and practices.” However, it is the agency's burden to establish that the information withheld is too trivial to warrant disclosure. Mem. Op. Sept. 29, 2006 at 14. Indeed, the district court, after determining that the withheld information is “sufficiently related to the internal concerns of [the] agency,” concluded that Morley's arguments were “unavailing” because he “failed to provide a scintilla of evidence to show how release of information pertaining to purely personnel rules and practices of the CIA would shed light on the alleged activities of Mr. Oswald or the CIA's knowledge thereof.” This statement seems to place the burden on Morley to assert a public interest before such information will be released. The Dorn Declaration provides only a single sentence of explanation regarding the agency's reason for withholding documents under this exemption: “There is no public interest in the disclosure of such internal procedures and clerical information that would justify the administrative burden that would be placed upon CIA.” Dorn Decl. ¶51.   On remand the district court shall direct the CIA to supply the explanation necessary to meet its burden. Morley need not produce dispositive evidence that there is a public interest in this information; he need only provide evidence of a genuine issue of material fact, and in the face of the agency's complete lack of evidence regarding this exemption, he has done so. Fitzgibbon, 747 F.Supp. at 57. to suggest any reason or need to keep secret” the administrative routing information and internal data.
Church of Scientology, 662 F.2d at 785. Indeed, Dorn draws causal connections between the release of certain kinds of information and the danger to national security that would result, satisfying the CIA's obligation to identify the “particularized harm that could be expected to occur from production of the requested information.” Certainly, the Dorn Declaration gives a much more elaborate description on Exemption 3 than it does in relation to any other issue in the case, providing the court substantial insight into the CIA's reasons for protecting intelligence sources and methods along with other internal information. 403g, 403-1(i). The CIA explains that some records are properly withheld under the National Security Act and the CIA Act. See 50 U.S.C. §§552(b)(3). 5 U.S.C. §Exemption 3 covers records that are “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld.” 3 This information “provide[s] the kind of detailed, scrupulous description that enables a District Court judge to perform a searching de novo review,” id. at 786.
 Given the special deference owed to agency affidavits on national security matters, Morley's specific challenges to various documents are insufficient to show that summary judgment on Exemption 3 was inappropriate. See CIA v. Sims, 471 U.S. 159, 167-69, 105 S.Ct. 1881, 85 L.Ed.2d 173 (1985). It is particularly important to protect intelligence sources and methods from public disclosure. In Ass'n of Retired Rail Road Workers v. U.S. Rail Road Retirement Board, 830 F.2d 331, 336 (D.C.Cir.1987), the court explained that “Exemption 3 differs from other FOIA exemptions in that its applicability depends less on the detailed factual contents of specific documents; the sole issue for decision is the existence of a relevant statute and the inclusion of withheld material within the statute's coverage.” Morley's assertions regarding specific documents that should have been released are to no avail.
 On remand, the CIA must substantiate its Glomar response with “reasonably specific detail.” But this is the only allusion to the need for a Glomar response in the CIA's affidavit and it is not linked to the Glomar response. Dorn Decl. ¶57. Within its explanation of its withholding of intelligence sources under Exemption 3, the CIA asserts that “[a]n official acknowledgment of [clandestine activity] could jeopardize the source's career, family or even his life.” 2004 Letter at 2. The only question before the court is whether the Dorn Declaration “explained in reasonably specific detail the danger to intelligence sources and methods if the existence of responsive records were disclosed,” Wolf, 473 F.3d at 373. In response to Morley's FOIA request, the CIA stated: “With respect to that portion of your request seeking records regarding Mr. Joannides [sic] participation in any covert project, operation, or assignment, unless of course previously acknowledged, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request.” However, the CIA's unsubstantiated Glomar response, see Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1011 (D.C.Cir.1976), is not similarly sufficient.
 The CIA withheld only two documents under this exemption.552(b)(5). Exemption 5 excludes from mandatory release “interagency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.” 5 U.S.C. §
Senate of P.R. v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 823 F.2d 574, 585 (D.C.Cir.1987) (emphasis in original).“[I]t is enough to observe that where no factual support is provided for an essential element of the claimed privilege or shield, the label ‘conclusory’ is surely apt.” But the opacity of the CIA's explanation does not permit the court to apply the test. In Coastal States Gas Corp. v. Department of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, 866 (D.C.Cir.1980), the court established the standard for review of agency claims under Exemption 5: “To test whether disclosure of a document is likely to adversely affect the purposes of the privilege, courts ask themselves whether the document is so candid or personal in nature that public disclosure is likely in the future to stifle honest and frank communication within the agency.”
The Declaration's only stateme The second document was partially released, and the list of reasons for the various exemptions in the Vaughn index includes “material that is predecisional and deliberative in nature.” The first document exempted under this privilege is denied in full, and the Vaughn index explains, “the document contains recommendations-concerning the waiver of certain reinvestigation methods-that are protected by the deliberative process privilege.” Dorn Decl. ¶85. nt of relevance is that “[a]s shown in the attached Vaughn index, CIA has properly invoked Exemption (b)(5) to withhold information protected by the deliberative-process privilege from only two documents.”
Coastal States Gas, 617 F.2d at 868.“The identity of the parties to the memorandum is important; a document from a subordinate to a superior official is more likely to be predecisional, while a document moving in the opposite direction is more likely to contain instructions to staff explaining the reasons for a decision already made.” See Appellant's Br. at 50. According to Morley, the CIA has deleted the identities of the author and recipient in the document that was partially released, giving the court little indication about the nature of the records withheld. The CIA has provided no hint of a final agency policy its “predecisional” material preceded. Id. at 698. Moreover, “[t]o ascertain whether the documents at issue are pre-decisional, the court must first be able to pinpoint an agency decision or policy to which these documents contributed.” The minimal information given in the affidavit and Vaughn index provide the court with no way of knowing if the CIA has properly applied this standard in exempting material from the two records identified. Paisley v. CIA, 712 F.2d 686, 698 (D.C.Cir.1983) (citing EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 89-91, 93 S.Ct. 827, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973)), vacated in part on other grounds, 724 F.2d 201 (D.C.Cir.1984). “Factual material that does not reveal the deliberative process is not protected by this exemption.” Coastal States Gas, 617 F.2d at 866. In order for the court to determine if information is “deliberative” it must “reflect the personal opinions of the writer rather than the policy of the agency.”
Because the Dorn declaration and Vaughn index fail to provide “specific and detailed proof that disclosure would defeat, rather than further, the purposes of FOIA,” Mead Data Cent., 566 F.2d at 258, on remand the CIA must supply at least “the minimal information necessary to make a determination,” Coastal States Gas, 617 F.2d at 862.
Wash. Post Co. v. U.S. Dep't of Health “Exemption 6's requirement that disclosure be ‘clearly unwarranted’ instructs us to ‘tilt the balance (of disclosure interests against privacy interests) in favor of disclosure.’552(b)(6). 5 U.S.C. §Exemption 6 provides that agencies need not disclose “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” &  This exemption creates a “heavy burden”; indeed, “under Exemption 6, the presumption in favor of disclosure is as strong as can be found anywhere in the Act.” Id.Human Servs., 690 F.2d 252, 261 (D.C.Cir.1982) (quoting Ditlow v. Shultz, 517 F.2d 166, 169 (D.C.Cir.1975)).
 Id.89. Because the privacy interests involved will clearly outweigh the negligible public interest in disclosure, I have determined that the information should not be disclosed.” Dorn's circular reasoning only further highlights her failure to substantiate the asserted privacy interest: “Disclosure of this personal information would certainly violate the personal privacy of these third parties. Id.88. Significantly, she applies the wrong standard: “Even if some minuscule public interest could be found in disclosing the third-party information at issue, the balance would still tilt dramatically against disclosure.” Id.88. Dorn then asserts that there is “no overriding public interest” in these records. Dorn states that “because its disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of third parties, it is subject to (b)(6) protection,” Dorn Decl. ¶87, neglecting any analysis of the “clearly unwarranted invasion” criterion. After finding that the records qualify as personnel or similar files, Dorn merely assumes the exempt status of the records. The Dorn Declaration does not sufficiently respond to this claim. Rather, he objects to the district court's determination that the information withheld constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Morley does not contest that the biographical information withheld qualifies as personnel, medical, or similar files.
 In National Ass'n of Retired Federal Employees v. Horner, 879 F.2d 873, 877 (D.C.Cir.1989), the court stated, To the extent the CIA suggests that the privacy interest in biographical information is self-evident, it is mistaken. Despite its burden to show that withholding is necessary, the CIA has failed even to articulate the privacy interest in the records, let alone demonstrate that such privacy interests meet the standard for an agency's withholding under Exemption 6. This falls well below the information provided to the court in Judicial Watch, which upheld withholding documents under Exemption 6. There, the court noted that the agency's declaration “fairly asserted abortion-related violence as a privacy interest for both the names and addresses of persons and businesses associated with [the abortion pill],” id. at 153, and balanced that privacy interest against the public interest in disclosure.
We are thus left with circuit precedent establishing only that the disclosure of names and addresses is not inherently and always a significant threat to the privacy of those listed; whether it is a significant or a de minimis threat depends upon the characteristic(s) revealed by virtue of being on the particular list, and the consequences likely to ensue.
 See Wash. Post, 690 F.2d at 261 (quoting Rose, 425 U.S. at 378 n. 16, 96 S.Ct. 1592). On remand, the CIA must show that disclosure would constitute a “clearly unwarranted” invasion of personal privacy. As the CIA has failed to explain the extent of the privacy interest or the consequences that may ensue from disclosure, summary judgment was inappropriate.
Exemption 7(E) protects from disclosure
records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information (E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.
 See Mittleman v. Office of Pers. Mgmt., 76 F.3d 1240, 1243 (D.C.Cir.1996) (per curiam). Background investigations conducted to assess an applicant's qualification, such as the CIA's “clearance and investigatory processes,” inherently relate to law enforcement. In its discussion of Exemption 7(E), the Dorn Declaration asserts: “The information that has been withheld could reasonably be expected to provide insight into CIA Security Center's clearance and investigatory processes, as well as certain techniques and procedures used by law enforcement agencies in coordination with CIA during those processes.” 552(b)(7). 5 U.S.C. §
 Morley thus fails to show summary judgment in favor of the CIA was inappropriate on Exemption 7(E). Agencies must apply the correct standards when claiming FOIA exemptions, but they need not parrot the statutory language in doing so. It is self-evident that information revealing security clearance procedures could render those procedures vulnerable and weaken their effectiveness at uncovering background information on potential candidates. Furthermore, although the CIA only mentions that release of this information could “provide insight” into the security clearance procedure, not that it “could be expected to risk circumvention” of that procedure, we refrain from adopting an overly formalistic approach that would require the agency's response to mirror the statutory text. Tax Analysts v. IRS, 294 F.3d 71, 79 (D.C.Cir.2002). “[A]n agency may seek to block the disclosure of internal agency materials relating to guidelines, techniques, sources, and procedures for law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, even when the materials have not been compiled in the course of a specific investigation.” The CIA's security clearance techniques involve a general process applied to all background investigations of its officers.
 The district court also shall make the requisite segregability determination. On remand, the district court shall direct the CIA to search its operational files and the records released to NARA and to supplement the description of its search and the explanation for withholding material pursuant to Exemptions 2, 5, and 6. See Campbell, 164 F.3d at 31. Accordingly, although the CIA properly used the FOIA as the governing standard in responding to Morley's request for documents, presented an adequate Vaughn index, and supported its withholding of material pursuant to FOIA Exemptions 1, 3 and 7(E), we reverse the grant of summary judgment to the CIA and remand the case to the district court.
FOOTNOTES
1Originally, the exception in the CIA Act provided that operationa.  401a(7).353(b)(10), 116 Stat. 2383, 2402, struck the term “intelligence committees of the Congress” and substituted “congressional intelligence committees,” defining this phrase as “(A) the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate; and (B) the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives,” 50 U.S.C. § However, the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2003, Pub.L. No. 107-306, § See H.R. Rep. NO. 98-726, at 29 (1984), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3741, 3767. 431(c)(3). The legislative history of the CIA Act indicates that the Church Committee qualifies as “intelligence committees of the congress” within the meaning of §701(c)(3), 98 Stat. 2209 (1984). Pub.L. No. 98-477, §l files should be searched when a FOIA request concerned “the specific subject matter of an investigation by the intelligence committees of the Congress.”
2 The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 122 Cong. Rec. 4754 (1976). Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (“Church Committee”), Foreign and Military Intelligence, S.Rep. No. 94-755, Book I, at 424 (1976). The Church Committee Final Report states: “This experience underscores the need for an effective legislative oversight committee which has sufficient power to resolve such fundamental conflicts between secrecy and democracy.” .  
3 The affidavits assert that release of a message's content could lead to the revelation of its source, since certain types of information are known to be in the possession of only a few.662 F.2d at 786. The release of any particular document, the CIA warned, could lead to one or more of the following harmful results: breaching agreements with foreign intelligence services, refusal of intelligence sources to share information in the future, revelation of intelligence-gathering methods, and disclosure of the identity of foreign or CIA intelligence operatives either directly or by inference from the content of the information. The Dorn Declaration includes most of the features noted in Church of Scientology, where[t]he affidavits include[d] a lengthy general discussion of the adverse consequences that could flow from releasing the information withheld. .  
ROGERS, Circuit Judge:
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.