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104-10337-10014 JFK Assassination Records Archives 1 (11/24/1998)

handle is hein.jfk/jfkarch19358 and id is 1 raw text is: kuLJ.>li I~FULL 2000 24 November, 1998 Memo for the Record Subject: JFK Records Review - Lessons Learned The CIA's JFK Collection is made up primarily of records pulled together for the Warren Commission, House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB). It contains a significant amount of duplication and non-JFK related material. The current index is flawed and contains gaps. Release standards were liberal; basically only source identities and information, names of agents, employees under cover, Agency locations and foreign liaison activities were redacted. There is no evidence in the Collection to indicate that the Warren Commission conclusions were wrong. I. The JFK Act Mandated review and declassification projects can be two-edged swords. The JFK Act forced the Agency to review records that should have been opened years ago. The legal requirement to presume release, backed up by an independent review, resulted in the opening of documents that clearly would not have been released under .other programs. However, the Act and the Review Board created by the Act imposed un- realistic deadlines, inflexible standards and procedures which created a major drain on all Agency review resources and had an over-all negative effect on the Agency's release program. Unrealistic Deadlines: The release dates set by the Act did not take into account the start-up tim4 and costs (searches, inventorying and indexing) of a project of this magnitude, nor the time it would then take for a page-by- page review and-sanitization of classified documents. For example, initial indexing of the collection was done oni a crash basis using overtime employees and resulted in a flawed database. The revising, re-indexing and updating of that database took several thousand man-hours and continues today. Mandated Procedures: NARA's and ARRB's interpretation of the law created a time-consuming, labor-intensive review process that meant an inordinate amount of time was spent by both the Agency and Board staff on issues which were marginal to the story and to processing decisions by the Board. For example: a. Under the JFK Act every piece of paper in the collection was considered a unique assassination record. The result is a staggerng amount of chaff and duplication.

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