Experts Call For Release of Kennedy
Assassination Records This Year;
Legal Compliance Urged
The former government officials and
other experts below are among those who have called for full release by the
National Archives of still-classified records regarding the 1963 assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.
NARA’s release of an estimated 3,600
still-classified documents scheduled for Oct. 26, 2017 is anticipated
as the final step of a process that Congress unanimously enacted by the JFK
Records Act of 1992, and implemented by the Assassinations Record Review Board
(AARB) , a five-person commission chaired by John Tunheim. On Sept. 30, 1998,
it made its final report, passed unanimously and with recommendations excerpted
below.
Assassinations Record Review Board
(AARB) Recommendations (1998) Excerpted
The Final Report of the
Assassination Records Review Board provides not only an opportunity to detail
the extraordinary breadth and depth of the Board's work to identify and release
the records of the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy, but also to
reflect on the Board's shared experience in carrying out this mission and the
meaning of its efforts for the much larger challenge of secrecy and
accountability in the federal government. Note: Include or Delete material
in red? It is true that the Board's role was to a large extent disciplined
and tightly focused on the assassination, its aftermath and the broader Cold
War context in which the events occurred.
Any evaluation, however, of the
unique experience of the Review Board -- five private citizens granted
unprecedented powers to require public release of long-secret federal records
-- inevitably presents the larger question of how the Board's work can be applied
to federal records policy. There is no doubt that for decades the pendulum had
swung sharply toward secrecy and away from openness. Changes wrought by the end
of the Cold War and the public's desire to know have begun to shift the
balance. The Review Board's mandate represented a new frontier in this changing
balance--an entirely new declassification process applied to the most-sought
after government secrets. In this chapter, the Board steps back and reflects on
its experiences, raises issues that will help frame the declassification
debate, and makes recommendations on the lessons to be learned from the path
taken to release of the Kennedy assassination collection. The dialogue about
how best to balance national security and privacy with openness and
accountability will continue both within government and beyond. The Review
Board will necessarily be part of that important debate.
The Review Board was created out of
the broad public frustration that the federal government was hiding important
information about the Kennedy assassination by placing its records beyond the
reach of its citizens. Broad disagreement with the Warren Commission findings,
explosive claims in the popular movie JFK, and continued deterioration of
public confidence in government led to consensus that it was time to open the
files.
— The
Hon. John R. Tunheim, AARB chairman (currently Chief U.S. District Judge,
Minnesota) and the other AARB members: Henry F. Graff, Kermit L. Hall, William
L. Joyce, and Anna K. Nelson.
‡‡‡‡‡
Letter to the White House:
October 26, 2017 will mark the
25th anniversary of the JFK Records Act, one of the most successful full
disclosure measures in the annals of open government law. We write to ask your
support for effective enforcement of the Act now and under the next administration.
The JFK Assassination Records Act was approved unanimously by Congress and
signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on October 26, 1992. The Act
resulted in the declassification of some 4 million pages of records related to
the assassination of President Kennedy. The Act also serves as a model for
other open government measures that have made public key chapters in the
nation’s history without compromising legitimate secrets. As President Obama
said in August, “we have a responsibility to confront the past with honesty and
transparency.”
The JFK Records Collection is now
the single most-requested body of records at National Archives II in College
Park, Maryland. Scholars, journalists, historians, and students have found
these records invaluable for writing the history of the Cold War, Kennedy’s
presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Warren Commission, Vietnam, the
counterculture, and Watergate. The final test of the law will come on October
26, 2017. That’s when all of the redacted documents in the collection, as well
as nearly 3,600 JFK records still withheld in full, are scheduled to be
declassified in their entirety. The staff of the National Archives is now
preparing for the online release of all material before the statutory deadline,
an ambitious goal that we hope will be fulfilled.
One provision of the Act gives
federal agencies the right to request continued postponement of JFK records
after 2017, if release would result in “identifiable harm” that outweighs the
public interest. As authors, historians and investigators, we believe,
withholding any portion of any JFK records would result in identifiable harm to
the public interest. After 53 years, continuing JFK secrecy would provoke
unnecessary suspicion and flout Congress’s clear preference for full disclosure
within 25 years of 1992. And it would deny the American people access to
portions of our history. We ask you, as White House Counsel, to affirm and
uphold the spirit and language of the JFK Records Act, and to instruct all U.S.
government agencies to fully release all assassination-related records on or
before October 26, 2017.
Signed:
Russ Baker, author, lecturer and
WhoWhatWhy founder and editor
G. Robert Blakey, attorney,
professor, author, and former general counsel, House Select Committee on
Assassinations (HSCA)
— Rex
Bradford, Mary Ferrell Foundation president and History Matters founder
Debra Conway, Publisher, JFK Lancer
Events and Productions
Dan Hardway, attorney and former
HSCA investigator
Daniel Ellsberg, author and former
RAND researcher
Douglas Horne, author and former
Assassination Records Review Board analyst
Brian Latell, professor, author, and
former CIA Cuba analyst
James H. Lesar, attorney and
president, Assassination Archives & Research Center
Ed Lopez, attorney, educator and
former HSCA investigator
Joan Mellen, author and professor
Jefferson Morley, author and
journalist
John M. Newman, author, professor
and former assistant to the NSA director
Gerald Posner, author and journalist
Dick Russell, author and former
reporter
Larry Sabato, author, professor and
historian
Peter Dale Scott, author and retired
professor and Canadian diplomat
Philip Shenon, author and former
reporter
Anthony Summers, author and former
reporter
Robbyn Swan, author and former
reporter
David Talbot, author and San
Francisco Chronicle columnist
Howard P. Willens, attorney and
former Warren Commission assistant counsel
‡‡‡‡‡
“I feel very strongly that the more
information we release the better. The public has the right to information so
long as there’s not a compelling reason to withhold it.”
—Edwin "Ed" Meese, III,
Heritage Foundation chairman and Constitution Project chairman, Federalist
Society board member, former Reagan administration Attorney General (1985-88),
and author
“In full compliance with the 1992
JFK Records Act, the government should release all the materials and documents
pertaining to the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination. Only
after such complete disclosure and opportunity for objective, unbiased analysis
of those materials will it be possible for U.S. citizens to believe that
justice has been served regarding this tragic event.”
— Cyril
H. Wecht, J.D., M.D., forensic pathologist, medical school professor, leader or
former leader of multiple professional societies, author or co-author of nearly
50 books, and former Allegheny County coroner for 20 years
“I totally support opening the
files.”
— The
Hon. Burt Griffin, J.D., retired judge and former Warren Commission
assistant counsel
“Personally, I have given up on the
hunt for the smoking gun, but I also am very much looking forward to this
release. We already have the RIF sheets (the metadata including titles,
subjects, number of pages, etc. for all 3,571 fully withheld documents). So we
have a sense of what to expect. This metadata, along with metadata for the full
collection, is now all available and searchable at maryferrell.org, in a
project called the ‘JFK Database Explorer.’”
— Rex
Bradford, Mary Ferrell Foundation president and History Matters founder
“The public deserves full
information on this historic event via release of the still-hidden files.”
— Robert
Ames Alden, former Washington Post night news editor in charge of the post-midnight editing
Nov. 22-23, 1963, and later Washington Post World News Editor in a career
spanning 1951 to 2000, and former president of the National Press Club, and
co-founder and former president of the National Press Foundation
“NARA should release the remaining
JFK assassination records and documents no later than October 2017, as the law
(JFK Act) requires. This will help answer the remaining questions that the
American people still have, and help restore their confidence in our government
and its promise of transparency.”
— Michael
Nurko, concerned citizen and Citizens Against Political Assassination (CAPA)
board member
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