National Archives Decides to Withhold JFK Assassination Records Instead of Declassifying Them

[Peter Lemkin]

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The Public Interest Declassification Board should Establish Credibility by Re-Reviewing the Kennedy Assassination Records, then Prioritize Declassification by "Following the Footnotes."

December 9, 2013

tags: FOIA, Kennedy Assassination, MDR, National Declassification Center, NDC, pidb, public interest declassification board
by Nate Jones

The public has spoken?

The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), an advisory committee established by Congress in 2000 "to promote the fullest possible public access to a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities," is asking the public for advice on what to declassify.
My advice to the Board is that its first step should be to establish its credibility and the credibility of the National Declassification Center (NDC) by reviewing the more than 1,171 distinct documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination held by the National Archives whose release to the public was postponed until 2017 by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), "unless certified as justifiably closed by the President of the United States."
Recent blog posts by the PIDB asked for suggestions for which documents 25 years and younger and 25 years and older should be declassified. While these lists include such interesting and worthy topics as "the Cuban Missile Crisis,"[1] "Vietnam P.O.W. and M.I.A.s," "9/11 and Terrorism," "Iraq 2001-2004," and "Guantanamo/Detainee Issues" (but not Archer 83 :/ !), they make no mention of the Kennedy assassination documents which remain unavailable to the public. This omission is bizarre, considering these Kennedy assassination documents are likely the most frequently and prominently requested classified documents in NARA's possession. At each of the Public Interest Declassification Board meetings I have attended, there have been continued and prominent calls and suggestions from researchers that the PIDB and NDC review these records. This includes a meeting in 2010 when Assistant Archivist Michael Kurtz "misspoke" and stated the records would be reviewed by the National Declassification Center by 2013. The PIDB knew of the intense public interest in these assassination documents as of today, twelve of the thirteen comments on the PIDB's call for prioritization categories are for the Kennedy assassination docs but, has of now, omitted them from their Prioritization List.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (which includes both the PIDB and NDC) has made some compelling arguments as to why it does not view a declassification review of these JFK assassination documents as a priority. On its website, NARA states that "it is a common misconception that the records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy are in some way sealed. In fact, the records are largely open and available to the research community here at the National Archives at College Park in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Record Collection." In a 2012 letter, NARA's General Counsel explained that "less than one percent of the documents in the collection are postponed in full' until 2017 [he makes no mention of records 'postponed in part']" and that "because the postponed JFK assassination records have already been subject to a full and complete government-wide declassification review," it would not be an efficient use of resources for the NDC to re-review them.[2]
While study of the Kennedy Assassination is not a research interest of the National Security Archive (we largely study post-WWII US foreign policy, national security, and nuclear history), and while NARA's finite resource argument is compelling (resources used to declassify Kennedy Assassination Documents will indeed slow the declassification of documents about subjects we research like Able Archer 83), I never-the-less recommend that the PIDB and NDC acquiesce to what appears to be overwhelming researcher demand and review the more than 1,171 distinct Kennedy assassination documents "postponed for release." Reviewing these documents will have several benefits to the PIDB and NDC (of course, just because a document is reviewed does not mean it will be released). First, it will confirm that the Board really is attempting to declassify documents that the public is interested in; in my experience, these JFK assassination documents have been the most requested in documents in public forums and on the web, by far.

Second, and I think most importunately, successful review and release of these (mostly) CIA documents in NARA's possession will establish that the US National Archives really is the people's archive, rather than, in the words of one PIDB commenter, "The CIA Archives." The reassurance is strongly needed upon the recent news that National Declassification Center is declassifying only 61 percent of the historic documents it reviews. (The NDC should be lauded for contrary to earlier reports coming close to meeting President Obama's December 2009 instruction that it "permit public access to all declassified records from the [357 million page] backlog no later than December 31, 2013," but this low release rate is extremely troubling. The National Security Archive expected a 90 percent release rate for these documents (some much) older than 25 years; indeed, Mandatory Declassification Review requests including for current documents are released in whole or in part 81.7 percent of the time!!)
What can the Public Interest Declassification Board learn from the Assassination Records Review Board?

Tangentially, while I was reviewing the Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board as I was writing this article, I was struck by how accurate and well written its criticisms of the classification system were. Sadly the no action was taken to enact any of the recommendations, and system remains as broken as it was in 1998. I hope the same fate does not meet the Public Interest Declassification Boards's recommendations. The National Declassification Center would be wise to follow the Assassination Records Review Board's recommendation that "the cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive problem of referrals for third party equities' (classified information of one agency appearing in a document of another) be streamlined by (A) requiring representatives of all agencies with interests in selected groups of records to meet for joint declassification sessions, or (B) devising uniform substitute language to deal with certain categories of recurring sensitive equities… [if an "agency did not process and return the [referred] record by a specified deadline, the Review Board would automatically vote to release the record." The National Declassification Center had an opportunity to reform the flawed referral process; President Obama instructed the National Declassification Center that "further referrals of these records are not required except for those containing information that would clearly and demonstrably reveal [confidential human sources or key WMD design concepts];" but the NDC chose not to go this route and employed multiple equity review. The extremely high (39 percent) denial rate is the result of the NDC's refusal to embrace this privilege.
Finally, and not trivially, a fresh review and release of these JFK assassination documents will bring the Public Interest Declassification Board much positive publicity and support. This momentum would ensure that the President's Classification Reform Steering Committee does indeed have enough positive public support (including from the the JFK researchers, other historians, archivists, librarians, and let's not forget the Oliver Stone effect media) to counter the anti-classification reform inertia of the federal government.
After the Board establishes its credibility as a declassifier of the public (not intelligence agency) interest and allays the persistent and formidable calls for declassification review of the Kennedy assassination records I suggest the PIDB and NDC take a "Follow the Footnotes" approach rather than a topical approach to prioritizing further declassification.
Before I give some examples of "Follow the Footnotes" declassification, I'd like to weigh in on the healthy and lively debate of the merits of prioritization verses non prioritization of documents by supporting prioritization. The very fact that these documents have made it to NARA, rather than the shredder, means that they already have been prioritized. It is estimated that less than one percent of all documents created by the federal government are identified as having "permanent value" and preserved. Eventually the hope is all classified documents identified by agencies as having permanent value will be declassified. But because the declassification process is such a slow, frustrating slog, it is much better to use resources to first declassify the documents that most researchers, historians, writers, and readers are interested in. Of course the other, non-prioritzed documents are subject to Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests, should a researcher wish to independently prioritize them. Archivists, I think, are loath to label certain documents as special. I'm a historian, so I'm not. Special documents, I believe, are the ones that are at the most enlightening, will be the most cited, and will impact the understanding of the most people.
I believe a "Follow the Footnotes" prioritization method may be the best way to get these "special documents declassified." Really this method is quite simple: Prioritize declassifying, classified internal agency histories, reports, SF -135 record transfer forms, record retention schedules, and other documents already created that act, to an extent, as a map of the records they are created from.
This means that the PIDB and NDC should focus their priority on declassifying documents such as:

• Joint Chiefs of Staff Histories, Command Histories, Unit Histories, Wing Histories, Fleet Histories, etc. Most of these are produced annually (by fiscal year) and their quality does vary. Still the ones that I have seen offer comprehensive chronologies, that are often densely footnoted. Sometimes the documents they footnote are included as an appendix. As with all of the documents I am about to list, many of these (older than 25 years) histories have not been accessioned to the National Archives or Washington Records Center. If this is the case the PIDB should compel them to be transferred.
  
• Other documents from the Agency Historian Offices. I have heard murmurs that the Joint History Office, and the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense are a mess, with histories unindexed and haphazardly stored on hard drivesperhaps so the public could not easily FOIA them. The Navy's Inspector General determined portions of its history program were "at risk." If this is the case, the PIDB and NARA should intervene, catalog the histories and declassify the ones 25 years or older. In addition to the documents listed above these offices contain histories such as POINTER papers which record and diagram tactical maneuvers. Their declassification would also serve as a road map for further research.
  
• Other classified internal histories including those in the Classified editions of the CIA's Studies in Intelligence and Clandestine Service Histories Project.
  
• The National Archive should following the lead of the Department of Defense and post all created SF-135 forms online. These forms include titles and descriptions documents as they are transferred from agencies to NARA, and are an invaluable resource to researchers requesting declassification review. Currently researchers must travel to the Washington Records Center in Suitland, MD to view the majority of these forms.
  
• Other Records schedule and ascension documents which will help researchers target documents by title or description
  
• Inspectors General reports which are often thoroughly footnoted.
  
• Indexes of reports produced by agencies, such as the CIA's Monthly Index of Photographic Exploitation Products.
  
• Hundred of of other types of documents which I am missing (list em in the comments!) that can serve as "Poor Person's Finding Aids" in this era of austerity.
  
• Beyond these "Footnoted dox" I generally recommend prioritization based upon the seniority of the documents' creators and receivers. That is: all documents accessioned by secretaries and generals first, then documents accessioned by assistant secretary and colonels, and so on.
  

I suspect that the PIDB may have preferred that I submit the above list without mention of the delayed JFK Assassination documents. But the silence was deafening. If those are the most requested documents which I believe they are then resources should be used to review them; the benefits will be worth the endeavor. After establishing credibility, I recommend "Following the Footnotes" to multiply the impact of the PIDB's and NDC's declassifications.

---

[1] The National Archives otherwise stunning 2012 exhibit on the Cuban Missile Crisis failed to mention that the Soviet Union possessed armed Luna Tactical Nuclear weapons on the island that would have likely been launched at Guantanamo bay had the US invaded. Was this crucial historic omission because the existence of the Luna's was not officially declassified?
[2] John R. Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board, disagrees that it would be inefficient for the NDC to review them. In November 2013, he told the Boston Globe that the CIA obfuscation about documents related to one of its officers, George Joannides, who monitored Oswald when he was living in New Orleans and was also tied to Cuban exile groups as well as groups sympathetic to Fidel Castro, "really was an example of treachery…If the CIA fooled us on that, they may have fooled us on other things." He called on the CIA to release all material it has on Joannides.

[Peter Lemkin]

Lawsuit seeks to unlock CIA's secret history of Bay of Pigs invasion

By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Washington BureauDecember 12, 2013 Updated 17 hours ago






WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Thursday fought to keep secret a CIA account of the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle.:
Half a century after the failed invasion of Cuba, and three decades after a CIA historian completed his draft study, an administration lawyer told a top appellate court that the time still isn't right to make the document public.
"The passage of time has not made it releasable," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell P. Zeff told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
But in this latest battle over government secrecy and the lessons of history, judges Thursday sounded a tad skeptical about the Obama administration's sweeping claims. At the least, judges on what is sometimes called the nation's second most-powerful court suggested there could be a limit to how long government documents remain locked away.
Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the private National Security Archive is seeking the final volume of a five-volume CIA history of the Bay of Pigs. The opus was prepared by a CIA staff historian between 1973 and 1984. Four volumes have been released, under FOIA pressure, but the fifth volume, which examines the CIA's own internal investigation of the invasion, remains secret.
"Here we are, 30 years later," Judge Judith W. Rogers noted Thursday. "The author is deceased. The events occurred long ago."
Rogers added that an agency's ability to exempt certain documents from FOIA is "not endless," while another member of the three-judge panel, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, noted that the records of the 1787 Constitutional Convention were sealed for 30 years. The law governing presidential records specifies that they become public 12 years after the president leaves office.
"If the (CIA) wins, it would throw a burqa over any draft document an agency produces," Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said after the 45-minute oral argument.
At the same time, underscoring the substantial challenges facing the National Security Archive, Kavanaugh cautioned that forcing a government agency to turn over even old documents could suppress candid debate. The administration, likewise, argues that the draft document is exempt from FOIA because it is part of the intelligence agency's deliberative process.
"The chilling effect is that historians working on internal agency histories would be discouraged from taking unpopular positions," Zeff argued.
A research organization located at The George Washington University, the National Security Archive files upward of a thousand FOIA requests annually to obtain federal documents. When rejected, it sometimes sues. Allon Kedem, a former Supreme Court clerk now with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was representing the organization pro bono Thursday.
In 2011, researcher Peter Kornbluh obtained the first four volumes of what was called "The Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation." Originally classified top secret, and prepared by CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer, the 1,200 pages revealed new details about the ill-fated April 1961 invasion launched by CIA-trained fighters. Planning for the invasion began during the Eisenhower administration in response to the rise of Cuban President Fidel Castro. President John F. Kennedy inherited the scheme when he took office in January 1961.
The already released volumes, for instance, recount the CIA maneuverings to covertly gain use of an inactive Marine Corps air station in Opa-locka, Fla. Anti-Castro Cuban exiles recruited in the Miami area formed the backbone of the roughly 1,500-man invasion force, which was defeated within about four days.
A 400-plus page report by the CIA's inspector general critiqued the invasion. Pfeiffer, the CIA historian, in turn critiqued the inspector general's report in the still-secret fifth volume of his history. Pfeiffer's supervisor, though, called the volume a "polemic" troubled by "serious deficiencies," and said that it would not be published.
"Dr. Pfeiffer's account (was) an uncritical defense of the CIA officers who planned and executed the Bay of Pigs operation," the supervisor, J. Kenneth McDonald, later stated.
The CIA inspector general's report the subject of Pfeiffer's critique has itself already been made public under a FOIA request.



Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/12/21...rylink=cpy

[Albert Doyle]

The whole government has been "polemic" ever since they installed a secret military shadow government in 1947. They're probably worried which government will fall first.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

JFKcountercoup
Wednesday, May 7, 2014

The Tortured Trail of the ONI Defector File



The Tortured Trail of the ONI Defector File


Today what is known as the "ONI Defector File" .08 cubic feet of paper textural documents, are stored in two boxes that sit in on a shelf a highly secure, dark, windowless, temperature controlled vault at the Archives II in College Park, Maryland.


It will ostensibly remain there until October 24, 2017 when the law requires that it be open and made available to the public as part of the JFK Records Collection, that is unless the Office of Naval Intelligence ONI officially requests the President to continue to withhold it indefinitely for reasons of national security, and the President, whoever wins the next election agrees to the request, which some expect to happen.
While the JFK Act of 1992 has so far been successful in releasing many millions of records, the law has also been intentionally thwarted by a number of government agencies, including the Secret Service, the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence; some would say especially the Office of Naval Intelligence.


As Peter Dale Scott suggests, our attention should not be totally focused on the millions of pages of documents that have been released, but on the ones still being withheld.


They tell us that the number of records still being withheld is less than 1 % of all the records released, but they can't tell us what that number is how many records are still being withheld for reasons of national security?


They should be able to tell us exactly how many records have been released so far because they have given each one of those records a number a Record Identification File (RIF) number and form the form detailing the RIF, the title of the record, who created it, who it is from and to, names of those mentioned and the number of pages.


It is difficult, if not impossible to request a record from the JFK Collection at Archives II without a RIF number, and I think it may be a requirement to provide a RIF number to obtain a document.


Since you can't ask for a document from the JFK Collection without a RIF number, I requested, via email, the RIF number assigned to the ONI Defector File, which I thought was a straightforward enough question, but it has proved as elusive as the number of records still being withheld.


Both have finite answers the number of government assassination records still being withheld less than 1% of four million, or somewhere between 50,000 and 500,000 records, quite big numbers, but the number of documents already released should be very specific as each has been assigned a RIF number unique and specific to the document, so we should know how many there are.


Each RIF number begins with an agency code so we know the ONI code is # - so it must begin with those numbers, but I still can't request the record without knowing the RIF, and they won't tell me what the RIF number is, so it's a Catch 22 quandary.


Going back to Square One and recount what has occurred so far on November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States, was shot and killed by a sniper while riding thought the streets of Dallas, Texas. The assassination was investigated over the course of decades by a number of official agencies of government, most of which concluded that the President was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine Corps defector to the Soviet Union.


While most of the official records of these investigations were sealed, some for fifty, some for seventy-five years and others indefinitely, in response to a public outcry created by Oliver Stone's film "JFK," Congress passed the JFK Act of 1992 which states: "All Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure," and that all assassination-related materials be open to the public and housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administrations (NARA), where it is located at the Archives II in College Park, Maryland and known as the JFK Assassinations Records Collection.


The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 44 U.S.C. 2107 (S. Rep. 102-328, 102d Cong., 2d Sess. (as amended ARCA) defines five categories of information for which disclosure may be postponed, including national security, intelligence gathering, and privacy provided there is "clear and convincing evidence" of some harm which outweighs public disclosure.


"The law requires all federal agencies to make an initial assessment of whether they possess records related to the assassination. The agencies themselves will conduct an initial review to determine whether their records may be disclosed immediately or whether disclosure should be postponed. The agencies must then give all records that are not disclosed to the Review Board. The Review Board will then evaluate all agencies recommendations for postponement, all records, including those that have a postponed release date, will be transferred to NARA. The Act requires that all assassination records must be released by 2017, with the exception of records certified for continued postponement by the President."


My first article on ONI and the assassination [ ONI http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/...nnedy.html ] was just deep background for what I received in the mail from an anonymous source Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) correspondence with the ONI that led me to write about the Railroading of LCMR Terri Pike.


[Pike http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/...-over.html]


Pike was a courageous ONI records officer who was reprimanded for being so forthcoming with the ONI assassination records, especially the ONI Defector File.


At first the ONI response to the JFK Act and the Review Board request for all of its assassination records was to politely inform the Review Board that ONI had no records related to the assassination at all, period.
The ARRB then designated the Dallas ONI office records for 1963 as official JFK Assassination Records, but ONI said that the Dallas field office was a component of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which was no longer part of ONI. Indeed, the records of the Dallas field office of the NCIS were located and turned over to the ARRB and are now included in the JFK Collection that is open to the public.
But ONI also said it could find no assassination records from among the files of former ONI Director Admiral Rufus Taylor, though other agencies had no trouble finding such records, though wait, wait, they did eventually come up with two relevant and responsive documents one from Admiral Taylor telling the Warren Commission at no time did ONI use Lee Harvey Oswald as an informant, agent or operative, and then another document that indicated Admiral Taylor had been running undercover ONI informants in Dallas who worked for Jack Ruby and saw Oswald and Ruby together.


[See: Taylor http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013...r-oni.html ]
The Taylor Memo certainly indicates that ONI did at one time have an extensive file and many records related to the assassination, and began a back and forth battle between ONI and the ARRB and Review Board staff, who began to take their jobs seriously when rebuffed by a senior staff military officer.


In response to the ONI abstinence the ARRB designated ONI as a separate component from the Navy in general, and required an ONI officer to sign off on its request under penalty of perjury. Then ONI officials assigned a small team of records officers to the task over two years after they were notified of the requirements of the law.


The team was led by LCDR Florence T. "Terri" Pike (USNR-R) and assisted by LCDR Doolittle and LCDR Bateman.


Nov. 27 1995 Director, ONI responds to CNO (N09BL) by letter, stating that the Office of Naval Intelligence holds no records responsive to the tasking of 14 Nov 1995…..


Two years later, on Feb.28 1997: "1. Executive Summary: ....A total of one hundred twenty-three (123) cubic feet of material, approximately 307,500 classified pages, were reviewed at the Washington National Records Center located in Suitland, MD. Of that volume, less than [one cubic foot of files] was identified ... written on the side: 123 boxes - rather than 123 cubic feet and 1 box of relevant records rather than one cubic foot of files."

Mar. 11, 1997 Meeting Report. Christopher Barger/ARRB staff "met with the ONI team responsible for heading the search for records under the JFK Act. This team is directed by Lieut. Cmdr. Terri Pike; LCDR Doolittle works in the ONI FOIA office; Pike reports to Capt. Peiaec; LCRD Bastein is the JAG. …For reason not entirely clear to either the ONI team or ARRB, the tasking for this project only trickled down to them on Friday, March 7, 1997. They were a little confused as to why they were only being tasked with this now, but expressed a willingness to do everything they possibly could to achieve the objectives of the Act."

Mar. 11 1997 ARRB staffers Wray, Barger and Masih met with CAPT Pelaec, LCDR Bastein and LCDR Pike of ONI and discuss JFK Records Act and its requirements. LCDR Pike identified ONI action taken and intended searchers….would begin at Suitland at the Federal Records Center, but would later include district offices within CONUS. "Pike then presented us a small written briefing package detailing what they had identified that they are required to do and the process they will use to go about the review. She noted that their first priority was to identify the records collections they need to search, then determining the physical location of the records. Most of these will be at Suitland, she said, but there will be others located in district offices round the country in locations like Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, New Orleans, St. Louis and Boston. They have also identified a need to determine standard subject identification codes which should cause a document to be searched, and she concluded by detailing the records disposition procedures within ONI."

"Despite the fact that they had only learned of this tasking on Friday, they had located and designated approximately 125 cubic feet of documents that directly relate to subjects we mentioned in our letter to the Navy. These will be reviewed page by page. She anticipated being able to complete the review by the stated deadline set by the Navy and ARRB of April 30, 1997."

"In addition, she said that ONI had identified about 950 cubic feet, or approximately 2.4 million pages of records which might be related to the topics we were interested in, but that we had not specifically mentioned…LCDR Pike stressed that she, and ONI, understood that all information, even negative result, is important to our process, and that they will be providing reports on everything they search, whether relevant documents are found within or not. Pike provided us with a flow chart' documenting the normal records disposition process within ONI, explaining what each step of the process is and where documents go during each phase of the process. The final page of her briefing package was a sample of the clue sheets' being provided to each reviewer for the April 30 documents. Approximately two dozen subject headings are listed along with clues' or keywords for each subject, and a time window for each subject….In closing, it should be reported that this team, and LCDR Pike in particular, are very impressive, they appear very much to have their act together on this project. They provided details and planning we have rarely seen from other agencies, yet they have had this project assigned to them for less than a week. They were extremely helpful, and have taken an aggressive and proactive approach to complying with the JFK Act. We can expect more impressive work from this team."
The first mention of the ONI Defector File is in a March 24, 1997 ARRB Memo. Subject: Status Report in which a Review Board staff member wrote: "I telephone Terri PikeI asked her if she could give me a brief status report on what they have done so far…..She said that they have completed their review of about 40 cu. ft. of the 127 cu. ft. ONI has committed to having reviewed for us by the April 30 deadline. She also said that they have found one box based on our SF 135 requests. This box has to do with defections, both Cuban and Soviet; they plan on turning this box over to us "in toto." She said that most of the records in that box are CIA originated or have CIA equities, so they will need to be coordinated with CIA. She ended the call by telling me that if we want to come out there at any point and personally review any of their work, we are welcome."


[SF 135 Request Link:http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014...forms.html]


Chronology of ONI Defector File

I) - March 24, 1997 ARRB Memo Status Report: " LCDR Terri Pike…..said that they have found one box based on our SF 135 requests. This box has to do with defections, both Cuban and Soviet; they plan on turning this box over to us "in toto."

II) - 21 April, 1997 Staff Report: "LCDR Pike stated that review of the first 123 cubic feet of ONI records had been completed, and that as a result .8 cubic feet of records (18 district files) on defectors had been identified as responsive to the CNO tasking; these records were presented to ARRB staffers at the meeting for cursory review. Completion of declassification review and delivery of the original records to the ARRB was tentatively promised within 2 4 weeks."


III) - April 21 1997 Meeting Report ARRB Military team met with…ONI records team. "Pike explained that most of the relevant records they found were discovered by accident;' that is to say, they were misfiled in boxes outside where they should have been. This is important for two reasons. 1) If they had been filed where they should' have been, they would have been routinely destroyed by this point, and 2) as they continue their review of records they expect they might well continue to discover records of interest to us…There are a total of 18 folders of material which ONI has determined should go into the JFK collection and have earmarked for delivery to us….Pike concluded her report by suggesting that we might find more of the records we wanted in BG38 the records of the CNO."


IV) - May 12 1997 LCDR Pike Fax…. to the ARRB; "the cover sheet for her fax indicates that she had finished declassification review of the .8 cubic feet of defector records, and had prepared a page-by-page index of same. She indicated that transmittal of these documents would occur in the near future."


V) - May 14 1997 ARRB fax explains the statutory requirement in the JFK Act to prepare RIFs (Record Identification Forms) for each assassination record in accordance with a standard software format prepared by NANA.

VI) - June 6 1997 ARRB mails RIF software disks to LCDR Pike so that .8 cubic feet of defector files can be RIF-ed prior to transmission to ARRB.


VII) - Aug. 19 1997 ARRB staff requested that "ONI look for 119 Reports' covering an alleged ONI investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald's October, 1959 defection to the Soviet Union. LCDR Pike accepted the tasking, but ARRB never received any feedback on its results."


VIII) - April 2 1998 Letter from ARRB to LCDR R. D. Bastien "The purpose of this letter is to memorialize for the record our meeting…..You advised that although ONI had district offices in the past, there are no longer any district offices within CONUS, subsequently to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) splitting away from ONI as a separate entity. You further clarified that the only locations where you would expect to find ONI records today would be at the Federal Records Center in Suitland, at the Naval Historical Center, or at Archives II in College park….you were confident that ONI had searched for and had not located any files for the Director of ONI,…Although LCDR Pike had promised delivery of the originals of those documents,….the Review Board was still not in receipt of these documents….LCDR Pike had recently mentioned to our staff that she had located Naval Attache Records responsive to the JFK Act during her searches of RG 289, and had placed them in a box that she had labeled 44 USC 2107.' It was unclear from our conversation with her whether this box was left at the FRC in Suitland, or whether it was located at ONI headquarters…"


Shortly after Pike was notified that the ONI "119 Reports" were created by ONI investigators in San Diego on two occasions when Oswald defected to the USSR and after the assassination, she was relieved of her duties and given a preliminary JAG military court martial hearing on trumped up charges of improperly traveling to search for JFK Assassination records. ARRB Staff Director Jeremy Gunn began an investigation into the Pike affair and the ONI records, but suddenly left the ARRB staff under a cloud, for reasons that have never been made clear.


Was an ONI records officer reprimanded for locating the ONI Defector File and did the ARRB staff director lose his job because of the troubling turmoil created by the very existence of the ONI Defector File?


IX) - May 18 1998 -…..LCDR R.D. BASTIEN - Designated Compliance Official for ONI, swears under oath under penalty of perjury that: "all Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Directories were tasked for search of any information or documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On May 3, 1998, Record Identification Forms were created for approximately .8 cubic feet of records on military defectors. These responsive records were obtained from the permanent documents location at the Washington National Records Center and will be submitted to the Assassination Records Review Board (Review Board) on May 21, 1998. …This submission completes our internal search requirements…known responsive items under the control of ONI have been assembled and submitted to the Review Board…I certify that...I have no knowledge of any JFK assassination-related records which may have been destroyed by this command....this completes our internal search requirements. However, under the Executive Order 12958 declassification mandate, we remain committed to searching the approximately 25,000 archival boxes at the Washington National Records Center and Naval Historical Center which have identified in RG 289 as having possible ONI equities..."


X) September 9, 1998 - Doug Horne memo: "RIFs should not have been created by ONI unless the documents were assassination records."


XI) September 14, 1998 ONI Defector files transferred to NARA in two boxes.


XII) At some point the ONI Defector records are marked NBR Not Believed Relevant and postponed in full by the ARRB, an "Annotated RIF" written on the document, but RIF sheets not created and the records not included in the JFK Collection data base. This despite the fact that on ONI had previously signed off on a sworn statement on May 18, 1998 that "Record Identification Forms were created for approximately .8 cubic feet of records on military defectors" and they acknowledged these records to be "responsive" to the law.


XIII) ONI Defector files transferred to NARA on September 14, 1998. These files, totaling 2 boxes, are currently postponed in full. At this point, those are the only records we can confirm were received after May 1998.


XIV) - September 31, 1998 ARRB disbands, issues Final Report.


[Final Report ARRB on ONI Records:http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014...-docs.html ]


XV) - April 8, 2014. In response to my request for the RIF number of the ONI Defector File I received the following response from NARA which reads in part:


"We have located two boxes (.8 cubic feet) and one folder of disks labeled ONI Defector records. Binder one includes a subject name index to the files. These records are marked Not Believed Relevant (NBR) and postponed in full. There was a Board decision that declared all of the ONI defector records NBR' for release in 2017.


"It is important to note that the defector files do not include RIF sheets but do include annotated RIF numbers. If you are looking for a specific file, you will need to know the RIF number."


"Per an annotated recommendation memo from Doug Horne on September 9, 1998, RIFs should not have been created by ONI unless the documents were assassination records.'"


"If you would like to request these materials, you must submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to our office."


"We can not confirm that any ONI records are in fact missing from the collection. However, a review of the correspondence files of ARRB regarding transfer of the ONI records indicate that the ARRB communicated with several ONI officials consistently during 1997-1998 to ensure the transfer of all responsive records…..It has been our practice to search for records that are believed to be missing on a case-by-case basis. We will continue do our best to local the Review Board until the last two weeks of their existence, apparently hoping to outlast them, and refused to give these records RIF numbers, or create description forms for these documents despite the final statement that says, under penalty of perjury they did.


And then using the lame excuse that Doug Horne, the Chief Analyst for Military Records of the ARRB Staff said that non-JFK Assassination records should not be given RIF numbers, even though the ONI Defector File was immediately recognized as a relevant record that clearly fit the definition of a JFK Assassination Record, and were in a box(s) that an ONI Records Officer (Terri Pike) labeled with the JFK Act law 44 U.S.C. 2017, reviewed and indexed. Pike's index, that I also requested, is also classified and withheld in full.


So today, the ONI Defector File is safely secured in the hands of the NARA and locked away in a sealed vault at the Archives II, awaiting their fate that will be determined on October 24, 2017, when according to the law, it will either be released to the public in full or continually withheld at the order of whoever is elected President of the United States in the next election.





Also see: http://politicalassassinations.com/2013/...revisited/

[Drew Phipps]

It is amusing to me that our Secretary of State is asking whistleblower/traitor Snowden to "man up" and come home, and face the music, and then in the next breath the Federal government still refuses to "own up" to and face the music about what it knows about the assassination.

Why won't our own government "MAN UP" about all the JFK records (at least the ones that don't "out" any 50 year ongoing intelligence operations) and release them?

[Albert Doyle]

Because the government operates under the premise that its propaganda bs and justification of everything it does is always gold and 100% shining noble and accurate. Therefore when it says Bradley Manning and Snowden are traitors and bad people that means they are. The government has spoken in the JFK case.

Countries change and revolutions are sometimes a necessary thing. By the way didn't James Clapper lie to Congress? And what about the torture professors in California? Aren't they war criminals at large by definition? Arafat, TWA 800 where they have the goods on the criminal US government.

[Magda Hassan]

Wash your mouth out Albert. Clapper and the uni professors they're patriots who love their country!

[Albert Doyle]

Ja, ja Magda. For zee homeland... ::

[R.K. Locke]

http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/02/04/breakin...documents/