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The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, or the JFK Records Act, is a public law passed by the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...
, effective October 26, 1992. It directed the
National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...
(NARA) to establish a collection of records to be known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. It stated that the collection shall consist of copies of all U.S. government records relating to the 1963
assassination of President John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with ...
, and that they are to be housed in the NARA Archives II building in
College Park, Maryland College Park is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and is approximately four miles (6.4 km) from the northeast border of Washington, D.C. The population was 34,740 at the 2020 United States Census. It is best known ...
. The collection also included any materials created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of any state or local law enforcement office that provided support or assistance or performed work in connection with a federal inquiry into the assassination.


Background

The final report of the act's
Assassination Records Review Board The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, or the JFK Records Act, is a public law passed by the United States Congress, effective October 26, 1992. It directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NAR ...
(ARRB) partially credited the conclusions in
Oliver Stone William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...
's 1991 film '' JFK'' with the passage of the act. The ARRB stated that the film "popularized a version of President Kennedy's assassination that featured U.S. government agents from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...
(FBI), the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA), and the military as conspirators."


Requirements and process

The act requires that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full and be made available in the collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the October 26, 1992 date of enactment (which was October 26, 2017), unless the
President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal gove ...
certifies that: (1) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and (2) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. The definition of "assassination record" was left broad by the act and determined in practice by the ARRB; a final definition was published in the ''
Federal Register The ''Federal Register'' (FR or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains government agency rules, proposed rules, and public notices. It is published every weekday, except on fede ...
'' on June 28, 1995. The basic definition was:
An assassination record includes, but is not limited to, all records, public and private, regardless of how labeled or identified, that document, describe, report on, analyze, or interpret activities, persons, or events reasonably related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and investigations of or inquiries into the assassination.
This was supplemented with coverage of all government records relating to investigations of the assassination (including those specified in Section 3(2) of the act), as well as supplementary records required to clarify meanings of other documents (such as code names used). The ARRB determined that agencies could not object to disclosure "solely on grounds of non-relevance," stating that the ARRB is responsible for making decisions that determine relevance.


Assassination Records Review Board

The act established, as an independent agency, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), to consider and render decisions when a U.S. government office sought to postpone the disclosure of assassination records. The board met for four years, from October 1, 1994 to September 30, 1998. When the act was passed in 1992, 98 percent of all
Warren Commission The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States P ...
documents had been released to the public. By the time the board disbanded, all Warren Commission documents, except income tax returns, had been released to the public, with only minor
redaction Redaction is a form of editing in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent wo ...
s. The ARRB collected evidence starting in 1992, then produced its final report in 1998. The ARRB was not enacted to determine why or by whom the murder was committed but to collect and preserve the evidence for public scrutiny. After the enactment of the federal law that created the ARRB, the board collected a large number of documents and took testimony of those who had relevant information of the events. The Committee finished its work in 1998 and in its final report, the ARRB outlined the problems that government secrecy created regarding the murder of President Kennedy. Some of the information was gathered by way of testimony from witnesses that had eyewitness knowledge of the events. For example, the board interviewed the physicians who treated the president's massive head wound at
Parkland Hospital Parkland often refers to a park. Parkland or Parklands may also refer to: Geography * Aspen parkland, a biome transitional between prairie and boreal forest (taiga) * Landscaped parkland, a managed rural area associated with European country ho ...
in Dallas. This was a highly trained team of emergency care physicians, some of whom testified in secret before the Warren Commission. These transcripts have now also been made public. Other information consists of a large number of documents from the FBI and
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
that were required to cooperate with the turnover of relevant records held secret by these agencies. A staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy's brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained. J. Thornton Boswell, who, along with James Humes did a secondary examination of Kennedy's brain, refuted these allegations. The board also found that, conflicting with the photographic images showing no such defect, a number of witnesses, including at both the Autopsy and Parkland hospital, saw a large wound in the back of the president's head. The board and board member Jeremy Gunn have also stressed the problems with witness testimony, asking people to weigh all of the evidence, with due concern for human error, rather than take single statements as "proof" for one theory or another.


Status

By ARRB law (of 1998), all existing assassination-related documents were to be made public by October 2017. Prior to October 2017, over 35,000 documents were still not fully available (partially redacted) to the public, and among them, 3,603 were at that time unseen by the public. In 2013, the ARRB's former chairman
John R. Tunheim John R. Tunheim (born September 1, 1953) is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Education and career Tunheim was born in Thief River Falls, Minnesot ...
and former deputy director Thomas Samoluk wrote in the ''
Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Gl ...
'' that after the ARRB had declassified 5 million documents, "There is a body of documents that the CIA is still protecting, which should be released. Relying on inaccurate representations made by the CIA in the mid-1990s, the Review Board decided that records related to a deceased CIA agent named
George Joannides George Efythron Joannides (July 5, 1922 – March 9, 1990) was a Central Intelligence Agency officer who in 1963 was the chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the agency's JMWAVE station in Miami, and in 1978 was the agency's liaison to ...
were not relevant to the assassination. Subsequent work by researchers, using other records that were released by the board, demonstrates that these records should be made public." Tunheim and Samoluk pointed out that the CIA had not told the
Warren Commission The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States P ...
that George Joannides was the CIA lead for the Agency's links with the
anti-Castro The Cuban dissident movement is a political movement in Cuba whose aim is to replace the current government with a liberal democracy. According to Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government represses nearly all forms of political dissent. Backgro ...
group
Oswald Oswald may refer to: People *Oswald (given name), including a list of people with the name *Oswald (surname), including a list of people with the name Fictional characters *Oswald the Reeve, who tells a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbur ...
had a public fight with in mid-1963; nor had they told the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), of which Joannides was the CIA's liaison. Tunheim said in a separate interview that "It really was an example of treachery ... If
he CIA He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
fooled us on that, they may have fooled us on other things."


2017 releases

On July 24, 2017, the National Archives began to release the remaining documents previously withheld. The first release included 441 FBI and CIA records which had previously been withheld in full. These records had never previously been made available to the public. Another 3,369 records were also released which had previously been withheld in part, meaning that they had previously been made public, but parts of the records had been kept back for reasons of security or privacy. Records in the first release included 17 audio files of interviews of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who claimed to have been the officer in charge of the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald during Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union. Nosenko defected to the U.S. in January 1964 and was extensively debriefed over a period of several years.(24 July 2017
National Archives Begins Online Release of JFK Assassination Records
'' National Archives''
On October 21, 2017, US President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
stated on his
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
account that he would allow release of the remaining documents. He tweeted: "Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened." His statement left open the possibility that some documents could still be withheld under the JFK Records Act if their release would harm military operations, law enforcement or foreign relations. On October 26, Trump signed a memo ordering release of all records collected under section 5 of the JFK Records Act. He gave agencies wishing to appeal release of all information in these records until April 26, 2018, to do so. On the same day, the NARA released another 2,891 records. Most of the records in this second release were previously withheld in part. On November 3, the NARA released another 676 documents. Most of these were previously withheld in full. According to the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which holds a large database of records on the assassination, the majority of the records in this third release were from the CIA. These files still contain a number of redactions, which remain subject to further review under President Trump's order. On November 9, the NARA released another 13,213 records. Most of these were previously withheld in part. According to the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the records in this fourth release were from the CIA and
NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...
. Some of these records were redacted in part. These redactions remain subject to further review under President Trump's order. On November 17, the NARA released another 10,744 records, including 144 previously withheld in full and 10,600 previously withheld in part. All of the records in this fifth release were from the FBI. Some of these records were redacted in part. These redactions remain subject to further review under President Trump's order. On December 15, the NARA released another 3,539 previously withheld documents, leaving a total of 86 still classified in full.


Later releases

On April 26, 2018, the NARA released another 19,045 documents in accordance with President Trump's order. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents (both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full) identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. While no more documents required to be released under section 5 remain withheld in full, some still remain withheld in part. In 2021, President Joe Biden postponed the release of remaining records, citing the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
as the reason. Future releases of documents were scheduled for December 15, 2021, and December 15, 2022. Agencies that object to releasing records before then will have to provide unclassified information detailing why the information is withheld, and a date when the information might be declassified. The initial response to the 2021 release was that it provided little new information. On December 15, 2022 NARA released an additional 13,173 documents as ordered by President Biden.


See also

* Henry Graff, Member of the ARRB * Kermit L. Hall, Member of the ARRB *
John R. Tunheim John R. Tunheim (born September 1, 1953) is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Education and career Tunheim was born in Thief River Falls, Minnesot ...
, Chairman of the ARRB *
David Marwell David G. Marwell (born 1951) is an American historian and the former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Marwell received a BA from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in modern European history from Binghamton University. ...
, Executive Director of the ARRB *
QKENCHANT QKENCHANT was a Central Intelligence Agency project used to provide security approvals on non-Agency personnel and facilities. The project In a memorandum to Assassination Records Review Board, dated 18 September 1998, Central Intelligence Agenc ...
, a CIA project, first disclosed because of JFK Records Act


References


External links

* Congress.gov at the Library of Congress
JFK Records Act ~ Senate Bill 3006
* * * *
Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board
September 1998

* ttp://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/medical_interviews/contents.htm Additional Medical Interviews Before the Assassination Records Review Board
Master Set of Medical Exhibits Before the Assassination Records Review Board


* ttp://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index41.htm Washington D. C. 10-11-94 Persons Testimony Before the Assassination Records Review Board
Dallas, Texas 11-18-94 Persons Testimony Before the Assassination Records Review Board


* ttp://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index21.htm New Orleans, Louisiana 6-28-95 Persons Testimony Before the Assassination Records Review Board
Los Angeles, California 9-17-96 Persons Testimony Before the Assassination Records Review Board


* ttp://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/staff_memos/contents.htm Staff Memos of the Assassination Records Review Board {{authority control 102nd United States Congress 1992 in law Assassination of John F. Kennedy