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

handle is hein.jfk/jfkarch48190 and id is 1 raw text is: 

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                                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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