I arrived early for the Board's latest meeting. They held it in a small conference room on the second floor that they were never in before, at least not for an open meeting. Once getting off the elevators you had to go to in the opposite direction of where the Board usually holds meetings on the second floor, and around a corner. To my surprise a film crew was setting up. I later learned this was Indigo Films and they are doing a documentary on the Board. There was a lot of activity as a sound technician and another man who held the camera were setting up light and sound equipment. There was another man and a woman who seemed to me to be producers. This man got a young woman with the Board, whom I don't recall seeing before, was running around dressing up the room with a flag and plants borrowed from other rooms and offices at this producers request. They were discussing filming some documents. The producer introduced himself as it was just me and his crew in the room for a while. I asked if the Board was releasing some documents today, he said he didn't know. I didn't believe him, as I heard him say they were going to film some files. These turned out to be the grand jury records released the next day.

One of the reasons he was there was to film Steve Tilley with the Garrison grand jury records, or the other Garrison records that Connick was finally forced to turn over to the Board after the U.S. Supreme Court told him to. They were in a big cardboard box that said "keep refrigerated" on it. Whether or not that had anything to do with how they were stored, or if the box was just a convenience to carry the records over to the Board, or if the Board kept them in this box, or if they arrived in this box, I don't know. Tilley then came in and I was asked to leave the room by Eileen Sullivan as these materials were not released to the public yet. So I do. I was irritated with this but as the open meeting didn't start yet I felt they could ask me to do this. So I pace the hallway.

Outside in the hallway a somewhat tall and large man is also waiting. We briefly talk. He is a priest who came all the way from Helsinki, Finland! Dan Alcorn then arrived, as did Jim Lesar, and a strikingly good looking, young girl who I overheard Dan say is a new assistant at the AARC. She is probably a college kid. Max Holland, last seen at the H.R. 1553 congressional hearing reauthorizing the ARRB also showed up.

So, the Board holds its meeting. Another surprise, Dr. Kermit Hall is absent. If anyone is absent it's usually Dr. Henry Graff. I was under the impression that he was or is in bad health and that's why he has missed a lot, at least of the open meetings. Apparently not so. He seemed in fine health, and was unusually talkative.

Judge John Tunheim - "I will call to order this open meeting of the Assassination Records Review Board. Welcome to all of you who are here. [We are] very happy that you decided to join us today for this meeting. The primary purpose of today's meeting is to discuss recommendations that the Board may be making, [to] deliberate a bit on those recommendations in our final, for our final report which we anticipate having ready this fall as we close our operations at the end of this federal fiscal year.

"I might add that we have a film crew here today who will be filming part of our meeting, from Indigo Films, they are producing a documentary on some of the work that the Board has done and some of the records that have been opened over these past four years. So, we welcome them here today as well.

"We do have four members of the Board present today so we do have a quorum for our meeting. Dr. Hall was unable at the last minute to change some plans so he can't be here today.

"First, we have minutes from our open meeting on May 12th, that we need to approve, they have been submitted in advance by Ms. [Jerrie] Olson. Is there a motion relative to these minutes?"

Dr. William Joyce - "So moved."

Judge Tunheim - "Is there a second?"

Dr. Anna Nelson- "Second-"

Dr. Henry Graff - "Second."

Judge Tunheim - "Any discussion?"

( No response)

Judge Tunheim - "All in favor say aye?"

All - "Aye."

Judge Tunheim - "Carried, four to zero. Before we begin the Board's discussion of these matters we have Steve Tilley with us today, Steve has been our constant companion over the last four years, whether he likes that or not, he has been. Steve is the coordinator of the collection, the JFK Collection at the Archives, among his many other increasing responsibilities and we asked him to join us today to give us some of his thoughts and I thought first maybe we could hear a little bit from him on the current status of the collection and any points you wish to raise to the Board."

Steve Tilley - "Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Collection continues to grow as I think everyone is aware. Just about two weeks ago we opened an additional group of FBI records that were turned over by the Bureau including one of the official and confidential files on President Kennedy that had been maintained by the FBI and also in addition a Sam Giancana file. Interestingly enough those files created a great deal of interest amongst the press, and we have had a great deal of interest in them continuing. Other people have come in to look at those particular files. So that was obviously a release of some significance.

"And we have been receiving other bits and pieces of records, just today we received the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) case litigation files from the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, the files that pertain to the litigation that has taken place over the years about the assassination related records, and we are currently working with the court, the U.S. district court here in the District of Columbia to obtain the court case files of those same cases so we can have both parts of that process in the near future, but the Civil Division case files arrived today and we will begin processing them and plan to have them available within the 30 day period as stipulated by the statute.

"We have also been interfiling a great deal of the CIA records we have received over the months, and getting them up to date, and interfiling them within the CIA segregated collection where they belong, these are Board vote documents and consent releases also that have been provided to us by CIA, and we have been working assiduously to get all of the interfiling done. We have not interfiled the FBI records from previously released files but we are also work on that to get them where they belong.

"We have also gotten some material from the Kennedy Library recently, a small amount of material from the Kennedy Library has been interfiled, and then also we are working on some material received from the Johnson Library also.

"So we have had some additions recently and the collection is growing.

"I would also like to address the issue of our database, we are very close to being able to update our database. Hopefully, by the time the Board closes in September the transfer of the database to the new platform will have taken place and then we will be able to update the database and then we will get the database on the Internet will hopefully be up to date at this time. It has been a long time, I know, and it's not bee on of the... it's been a great deal of trouble, but we are very close to having that done so I just wanted to bring that to your attention."

Dr. Henry Graff- "Steve, if I may, how extensively is the collection being used?"

Steve Tilley - "It continues to be used. We are on a pace to set a new high in written inquiries this year. We have gone up every year since the collection opened in August of 1993 and we are on a pace to have more inquiries than we have ever had in this fiscal year. The latest figures I saw from our web site indicate that the JFK database in the most used of anything on our web site."

Dr. William Joyce - "You mean the Archives web site?"

Steve Tilley - "The Archives web site."

Dr. Henry Graff - "The Archives-"

Steve Tilley - "The Archives web site that's correct, of all the things we have up there the JFK, the most recent figures I saw we were the most heavily used. And as I mentioned, I think before that many of the letters we receive now from researchers who can't come it to look at it at our facility at College Park, what they do is they access the web site, print out the Reader Identification Forms from the database, attache that to their letter and then send that in so they know exactly what documents they want and we are able to provide exactly what documents they need. So, there was a time when my staff did a lot of database searching to answer more general inquiries and now inquiries are very specific based on information from the web site."

Dr. William Joyce - "That's experience. That's a very common...at the Archives."

Dr. Henry Graff - "Do you get requests from abroad to?"

Steve Tilley - "Oh, absolutely. In fact we have seen an increase in requests from abroad, plus we are also seeing increases in requests from students from a whole new generation of researchers who are interested in the collection. We have done any number of responses to written inquiries from school groups that are studying the assassination as part of their school curriculum. So, there is a whole new generation that is interested in the history of the assassination."

Dr. William Joyce - "Can you tell anything about the changing patterns of use, you said that the inquiries are more detailed and specific, do they tend to show a particular direction of research? Any new trends or observable changes there?"

Steve Tilley - "I would say no. I don't think there is. It's pretty much a, occasionally we will see a new issue involved, somebody may be looking at a person who hasn't been researched before, but I don't think there are any new trends that we can see, and we're not looking for that, but certainly the level of interest has not softened."

Dr. William Joyce - "How big is the collection?"

Steve Tilley - "The collection now we are estimating at about 4 million pages, which is a significant increase from where it was when it opened in August of 1993"

Dr. Anna Nelson - "One of the things we were a little concerned with, as I recall from our last meeting, was that agencies were taking awhile to declassify stuff we opened and give it to the archives, have you found that they are moving a little faster? What about the Defense Department, for example, have you obtained those documents? We released quite a few.

Steve Tilley - "No, I can say that I don't think we have gotten as many Defense documents as we have some other agencies. There still seems to be a lag time between when the Board votes on something and when we receive the documents."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "That's really too bad because I think our assumption is we are opening, but we are not opening if you can't find it in the National Archives."

[Couldn't you just kiss her?]

"And that's a big, big factor. The FBI I gather has moved ahead

Steve Tilley - "Yes, yes.

Dr. Anna Nelson - "They were lacking for a long time."

Steve Tilley - "Yes, yes. There has been some time between FBI releases but now we have had one and there will be another one in the very near future."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "They had told us they had really tried, and the Libraries told us, the Kennedy, and, and I am pleased about that but we have released quite a few important Defense records. And they really aught to be out there."

Steve Tilley - "We really haven't received anything from them for some time. Let me mention one thing Mr. Chairman, that I forget to mention, the Archives located as part of its on going work under Executive Order 12958, the Declassification Executive Order, a lot file of the State Department, a lot file being, basically, a subject file, in their terminology, that clearly was the lot file on Operation Mongoose. And so after talking with members of the staff of the Board we decided that we would do declassification out there as opposed to, out there at College Park, as opposed to bringing it out here and putting it through the other group you have working here. I would like to tell you that that process is completed. All five members of the Interagency review group (Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, ISCAP)have been there and completed their review and we are in the process now of redacting those documents they have asked be withheld in part and withdrawing those they wished to be withdrawn in full. Copies of those documents, actually the original of those documents will be provided to the Board for a vote in the near future. And we will be including Reader Identification Forms on those documents. And we will make those documents available to the public as soon as possible. A sort of final piece of the Mongoose records we already have.

Dr. Anna Nelson - "That's good news."

Steve Tilley - "Yes."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "We will look forward to seeing those records. About how large are those records?"

Steve Tilley - "About 4, 000 pages."

Judge Tunheim - "And we are going to see 4,000?"

Steve Tilley _ "No, what you are going to see is much smaller, the entire group is about 4,000 pages."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, very good. Thank you Steve, excellent report. And as always we enjoy working with you and I presume that the staff working relationship continues to go well?"

Steve Tilley - "It goes very well. And it's been a pleasure to work with you and the staff all of these years. We look forward to these last few months..."

Judge Tunheim - "Jeremy, do you have anything to report to us today, that you would like to raise?"

Jeremy Gunn - "No, other than to say that the review pace is moving along. I have every confidence and expectation that we will be completing the major categories of records, the minor categories too, we believe the CIA and FBI which are the two largest groups of records will be reviewed on time and be available by the time that we close down in September. The Review Board staff has done an exceptional job. We have good people and they are doing good work."

Judge Tunheim - "So, the remaining records from the CIA and the FBI you expect that you will get them in time for a meaningful Board review?"

Jeremy Gunn - "Yes, what we are finding now is that the records very frequently are either duplicates of previous records or they contain information on which the Board has already voted so the review process will go much faster, so we see the light at the end of the tunnel."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, let's turn to our discussion today on what we should include in our final report we have a [?] time and it's reflected in the tentative outline in the minutes that we just approved today. We have generally gone through and agreed upon the broad outlines of our final report which will be done this fall by the time we have finished our work but we are most interested in having a discussion about today is chapter seven which we have tentatively titled, "Findings, Lessons Learned, and Recommendations." We have over the past few weeks invited members of the public or any interested parties to submit any thoughts they have on this subject in writing to us. We will read all of those suggestions and take them into account as we come up with our final recommendations in this final report. We debated whether to have a public hearing on that subject, decided we really wanted to focus on our work, in getting our records done, in getting the basic work done, so we are limiting the input in writing, but from my standpoint that's just as good, and all Board members will review any submissions that comes in and I think we asked for them by June 17th, is that correct?" [ That's what is printed on the minutes for the May 12th, 1998 open meeting but it's incorrect. ]

Jeremy Gunn - "No. I think it's July 1st. And then-"

Judge Tunheim - "July 1st, okay."

Jeremy Gunn - "This was published in the Federal Register, the call for comments."

Judge Tunheim - "Okay, so we got about another month to receive recommendations and thoughts from the public because we would like to consider those as part of our final report.

"So, let's talk about some of these issues, some of the recommendations that perhaps the Board can agree upon as we issue our final report. Anyone like to start off here?"

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Well, it might interest people to know that we have circulated some ideas to each other, and the thing that struck me when I saw the ideas that had circulated was how close we were to evaluating what went right and what we recommend. Not that we agree on everything, we shouldn't, five people shouldn't agree on everything, but basically we all understood the importance of our independence as an agency, our complete independence, our being non-government employees, and that was a subject we all agreed on, and I think another thing that we all agree on was the importance of changes in the culture of secrecy in declassification and declassification problems in government because basically that is what we have been dealing with all of these years and those were the things that we addressed ourselves to and we would be remiss if we did not address that in our chapter on recommendations. So that we are particularly interested in, I think, in matters that awry from, we all agree that Congress did not give us enough start up time, so the problem of getting security clearances for everybody and all that sort of thing kept us from working fast but other than that we thought the way in which the Board was set up was, [with] some exceptions, a good way of doing it, we sort of started on the right path."

Dr. Henry Graff - "A point that Anna makes about Congress not providing enough of an opportunity to get it started properly brings up the one point that we might want to consider in our final report some kind of, instructions is perhaps too bold a word some kind of indication to Congress that it must not just create legislation that establishes an independent agency and assume that everything then just takes care of itself. We have had to learn, there has been no infrastructure on which we could lean, we have invented ourselves.

Dr. William Joyce - "No money to spend."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "No, no money to spend

Dr. Henry Graff - "No money to spend, we did our own scouting of real estate to find an office, Congress attached great importance to this legislation, President Bush when he signed the enabling legislation in October of '92 talked of its importance in reestablishing faith in the United States government, but then we were on our own, almost as if Congress had done it's job and it would automatically be done by these people who were going to come out of some file, their names come out of some file in the President's desk. We have to do better than this in establishing an independent agency, which is what we are. We think we have done very well, but we have done it on our own.

Dr. William Joyce - "To pick up on that Henry, I think that the requirement that employees of the Board could not have worked for the government prior to being engaged by the Board, coupled with the requirement that all of our employees have to have security clearances in order to deal with these records, and then a very long slow and orderly process that further exacerbated the preparation time that went into getting ourselves organized to do this work, I think we have to be careful, if I may say, however, because while it's important for us to call attention to the complexity that went into gathering ourselves, and getting together so that we could do this work, I would hate to see anything compromise the independence that the Congress established, because it seems to me that of all of the attributes that we have, that independence and the separation of the Board from the work of the classifiers and the custodians of the classified information has given us a certain kind of perspective and perhaps even leverage that is very important to the process of our undertaking our work to get these materials released and to deal with the agencies. So, I think that while we want to be attentive to that we also want to make sure that the principle is something we call attention to and emphasize-"

Dr. Henry Graff - "Yes, I agree. I agree very much"

Dr. William Joyce - "Because it is absolutely essential."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "In addition to that the very fact that we had a strong congressional statute, that and the independence, two very important, and should be, certainly examples for the future."

Dr. Henry Graff - "I think also we have been very fortunate, if I may say this with our good friend Jack Tunheim, the judge, with us. We have been well led and we choose wisely in electing Jack to be our chairman and I think the country is much in his debt."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Actually Henry, my view was that since the rest of us were historians we just blamed Jack if anything went wrong."

(laughter)

"No, of course, we all support Jack."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I think the concept of independence I think really we are unanimous on this has to be the hallmark of our recommendation on how to make sure that there is broad public access to government information in the future. And what distinguishes us from the work done that has been done by other groups that have attempted within government to open up records has been the independence and the ability to force real answers to questions, and that is an ability that has not been had before."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "That's right."

Judge Tunheim - "To be able to say when the answer comes, 'We are not going to release that because that's the way it has always been done.' and to say that's not good enough, that's not an appropriate answer, we are not going to protect information just because that's the way it has always been done. And to have some teeth behind our ability to say that has been very important."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "And the fact that once we say it, the agencies have to go to the White House, focuses the mind. It means they go back and examine things. That was also a very good thing to have."

Judge Tunheim - "And it has certainly helped us to have a supportive President-"

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Oh yes, oh yes."

Judge Tunheim - "-on these matters because a signal from an appeal authority from the President which says I'm going to overturn these decisions they are going to far, would have had a dramatic impact on what we have done.

Dr. Anna Nelson - "That's right."

Judge Tunheim - "So I guess an effort like this is always subject to the ultimate appeal authority, this kind of mechanism, if this is set up again."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "We were well supported."

Dr. Henry Graff - "We have to bear in mind that this is a unique event in American history that we are discussing, and I don't know how many generalizations we can make for future investigative agencies, independent, for agencies will go out of business as this one will, and that may be very instructive to the country. But I hope we will never have a national trauma like that again, the Kennedy assassination, but we are unique."

Dr. William Joyce - "Your comment calls to mind a question...engendered to me. Is there a future role for a Board like this? Is there anything about our experience that could be instructive in another set of circumstances? Perhaps? If this is a unique event. Would there be another event in which a board like this would be relevant to solving some difficulty in terms of access to federal records?"

[I thinking it so loudly I'm surprised I didn't scream it out, THE DR. KING ASSASSINATION!]

Dr. Henry Graff - "Well, we historians are never at our best when we predict the future. And I suppose we will just have to see. I dare say that what we have done or have left undone will be examined by any future organization that comes to grips with some investigation comparable to this one. As I say I'm not one of those who believes history repeats."

Judge Tunheim - "I think, in line with your question Bill, which is a very good one, we have to keep in mind that this is an expensive way of opening up records and I don't know how we can ultimately quantify it though when it is compared with the cost of keeping records secret, which relative to at least the Kennedy assassination that cost has been substantial over the years, the protection of this information. So where that all comes out, certainly there are costs associated with a targeted type of effort like this that some people might disagree with, that's it's too much to spend to get records open, but I happen to think in the grand scheme of things, given the importance of the event, the importance of this information, that it's a bargain, but I recognize that some would disagree. I think it's a more relevant question though that you ask, how does this get applied to other situations? Are there other groupings of information that is as important as this that you can apply a somewhat expense way of focusing government and forcing declassification en mass."

Dr. William Joyce - "I guess there is an alternative question to that, and that is, if the answer to that is no, and I think you are right, reasonable people might say that, then are there other aspects of our experience that might fall into recommendation that we think might say, 'We think on the basis of our experience maybe there's something about the whole declassification process that could be revised in some meaningful way, FOIA revisions and other legislative changes perhaps."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "I was thinking as you asked that question, ideally there should not have to be another board because ideally one of the things we have illustrated is that a lot of things that were thought to bring down the republic were opened, sitting in the National Archives for three years, so it's clear that if certain things were changed, and if the declassification process was simplified, records were released, there wouldn't be a need for another board, except for one problem and that is of course the federal government does not keep its records very well, and therefore, presumably, you might have to go searching for them. But, I think one of the things we can certainly do, which we have talked about over and over again, is recommend some changes that we have illustrated."

Judge Tunheim - "And I think naturally agencies that we have worked with have learned that they can release much more information and the republic will survive. And I think that is an important lesson that perhaps has been learned within the agencies, and I think we should emphasize that in the report as one way of encouraging people not forget, that once there was a focus on this, once there were broad public releases people found out that is was not as bad as they thought it was going to be, and in effect can be a good thing."

Dr. William Joyce - "Well, maybe then that point I think raises the importance of some of the presidential actions that were taken and some of the consent releases, and I wanted to ask Steve, over the course of the last year or so the volume of the material that is coming into the collection comes now from the agencies in the form of consent releases, is that not correct?"

Steve Tilley _ "That's correct."

Dr. William Joyce - "Where they understand what actions we have taken, we have been able maybe over the course of time to perhaps codify some of our own policies and we know better what we are going to do and can in turn communicate that better to the agencies. So, maybe there is another way in which, you know, we can have a contribution in terms of simply making the agencies more aware of the kind of possibilities that there are for release of information."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "In other words Bill, you envision somebody sitting back there and saying, 'No reason to give it to the Board, they will release it anyway, so we might as well just release it.' "

Dr. William Joyce - "Yeah."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "That's the scenario, we hope."

Dr. William Joyce - "And the very active ways we have engaged the agency. It was very interesting. In the beginning there were a few meetings we had with PR, a person would come down and talk to us about what they knew of our agency and a little about themselves and it took a long time I think even to give a clear message for ourselves to communicate what the attributes and requirements of the Act were and to form a dialogue with them but once that happened I think there was some progress."

Dr. Henry Graff - "So we have changed the culture in a sense, I mean we had these views of what their records were, and I think we are close to the best thing we have."

Judge Tunheim - "I think the one thing we really do need to emphasize is the importance of having a written standard that is clear for the release of records and in our case when combined with independence resulted in, I think, a very workable approach to release. And our standard, obviously, has been this straw balancing that we have been asked to apply by the statute, balancing public interest versus harm to the release of the records combined with a presumption of openness which together with the independence of the Board, I think, has served the cause of openness well but has protected information that legitimately still needs to be protected in this day and age. In our case that standard worked very well. If it's not an independent board, if it's an interagency board, for example, trying to apply those standards, I'm not so sure they would work under that instance."

Dr. Anna nelson - "Although they are very important they are written much, much, better, and, in fact, if there is ever an effort to amend FOIA probably someone needs to look very carefully at that statute. But, you are right, it would have been interpreted differently. No matter what guidelines you have there is an element of interpretation, and we gave one set of rules, because of our independence."

Judge Tunheim - "I think it has been particularly the presumption of openness that gave us enough ability to withstand the 'this is the way we have always done it' and 'we fear significant harm if this is going to be released.', that kind of an answer, which in many respects while we did not ever take that answer as one we would apply, we needed more information than that, I think it's the requirement of openness that required us to do that. So that's an important facet of this."

Dr. Anna Nelson - 'We have to keep working."

Dr. William Joyce - "One of the strengths of our work has been how enmeshed in the Cold War the assassination turns out to be, there is a matrix of events that it is part of, an important part of, the fact that the Cold War has ended is part of our recovery, we can safely be said to be lackadaisical is some ways to the end of the Cold War and taking advantage of it in other ways, it makes me wonder thinking back to the point Henry made before, that in point of fact this is a new experience, that the event was a Cold War event, that the Cold War has ended, we've come into existence at a time where we could take advantage of some of these historical forces and work with the agencies to release these records. Whether posterity will record that remains to be seen of course."

Dr. Anna nelson - "But we could have acted differently. We heard lots of Cold War mentality out of the agencies, and I think you're right, I think we did come at the right time, we know that a lot of documents are coming out now, but we have heard a lot of...the past, in the protests from the agencies. They had not yet adjusted and if anything as Jack said in the dealings with the agencies in terms of just exactly what they might have gained from all of this, I think they gained something in the sense that I think we helped them move ahead, helped them look differently, helped them look away from the Cold War period, because as you know we heard a lot, we heard a lot, from the very beginning-

Dr. William Joyce - "We have facilitated an attitude adjustment."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Yes, we did, yes, we did."

Dr. Henry Graff - "I think that our report will be important only if it is well publicized. And I don't mean that in any Madison Avenue advertising sense, I mean what we try to do and what was set as our mission is [an] important element in the recent history of the United States, and if this is going to be filled away with a thousand other reports and boards that have gone out of existence our labors will have been lost. This is a report that should have public attention. It deserves that, and I would hope that members of our constituency would give it the kind of exposure to the world that our investment of energy and time and the government's investment of money should produce."

Dr. William Joyce - "What can we do to ensure that our constituency, as you put it, would respond in a way that will give our report the due that is hoped for?"

Dr. Henry Graff - "Well, some of our constituents are in this room right now and it may be that there are some suggestions there."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Well, you know one thing I think that we have talked about that would help was to write clearly, sections that are for the experts but to produce a report that is readable, that will come to a point where we lay out all of these issues and then some of the long more technical side of it will perhaps be in chapters with appendices, [but to] have something people can get their hands on. I think that's what our job is."

Dr. Henry Graff - "Well, in view of President Clinton's recent expectation that recent government reports will be written with great clarity we aught to start this report on the long list of new very clear government reports which in itself will be important."

(laughter)

Dr. Anna Nelson _ "Well, I have already suggested that we toss out the prioritize

Dr. Henry Graff - "Yes, no prioritizing."

Dr. William Joyce - "But it does raise the question though, in terms of if we are to get the kind of reception that we hope for how far do we go in terms of recommendations, how concrete do we want to be, how ambitious do we want to be about what to do with issues concerning declassification, and access, and accountability? Do we want to recommend an overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act? Do we want to suggest a new mechanism for how records are classified? Maybe we want to put more attention on the beginning so there are less problems trying to declassify what has already been classified?"

Judge Tunheim - "What is the figure that we heard over and over again? It costs for every dollar relating to records it costs 95 cents to keep a record classified versus 5 cents to open them, or something like that? it's quite a telling figure.

Dr. Anna Nelson - "The archives used to have a figure on page per page declassification versus automatic declassification. I don't remember what that was but it was a vast gap.

Steve Tilley - "Vast gap, yes, between what we call systematic review-

Dr. Anna Nelson - "and page by page-

Steve Tilley - "which is where we look at mark offs, and page by page, but there is a significant difference in the cost, no doubt."

Judge Tunheim - "Let me raise this in a different way, and perhaps narrow Bill's suggestion in a way, I think we can all see how the lessons that we have learned as part of this process can be applied to a small effort that is focused on a particular group of records, Congress determines that a particular set of records is very important and should be reviewed, something like this I think works quite well I think with some modification, but the bigger question is how did what we do, or what we are doing, or what we will complete this fall affect a broader systematic approach to records declassification and that's a harder question to answer because so much of what we have done has been tailored to, although it is becoming a large group in the grand scheme of things we have to recognize it is a very small group of records, how can that apply government wide with any sense of authority?"

Dr. Anna Nelson - "One problem with that is however we determine the technical side of that those are very political questions and depend a lot on the Congress and the Presidency, and I think we can recommend but I'm not sure what we can do for the political process."

Dr. Henry Graff - "Well, also we are dealing with an historical event, something that happened decades ago, we I think would be frivolous if we assume that records could be opened that are current, or I don't know how far back."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "In fact one of the biggest problems, I think, that over and over again is the historical record is mixed up with what is in yesterday's newspaper, and there is always this fear of something coming out, but we are talking 30-35 years ago, and that's generally what historians do talk about, that is generally what declassification, Executive Orders, talk about. So, maybe we should, somewhere, point this out."

Dr. William Joyce - "I agree. I think the need is self evident, and I don't mean to belabor the obvious but it strikes me that it's very important that whatever we recommend we recommend with no waste, that we speak clearly, in simply declarative language but that we achieve both unanimity and feasibility.

Dr. Henry Graff - "And elegance."

Dr. William Joyce - "That goes without saying."

Dr. Ann Nelson - "Henry, we'll leave that to you."

(laughter)

Dr. William Joyce - "I think we have to be practical with our work, what we think our recommendations can achieve."

Judge Tunheim - "Hey Steve, what aspects of our work, or how we have applied ourselves, or how the statute was set up do you think is particularly helpful for future declassifiers, future people who are interested in information?"

Steve Tilley - "Well, the main difference, I think, between your statute and the Freedom of Information Act is clearly the narrowness of the exemption categories, and that was the major change I think that the Congress wished to bring forth when they wrote that Act, and a major change in review decisions by agencies would be effected by a narrowing of the FOIA. I don't think there is anybody who would deny that. I think there has been a change in the agencies, as you mentioned earlier, towards this whole question of release of information, and I think I have seen some of that in what they are doing, but, of course, it's piecemeal throughout the government, and so the declassification effort that is taking place with the parallel work under the new Executive Order is proceeding but, probably, I would say, with mixed results. I think it is dependent on the agency and the leadership they are receiving about how they are handling their records. The Board's independence is one thing, obviously, as everyone has said. And that's going to be disappearing with the disappearance of the Board. And I think we could not have a whole series of independent Boards, unless, there is a movement for moving the whole declassification out of the agencies and into an independent agency. Now that would be quite a political battle, and I'm not sure anybody could win that battle, but that would be a significant change but probably one that is not feasible. So, to go back to what Henry said you are going to have to continue to work in changing the culture as far as what's disclosable, and what can be released. And the new Executive Order establishes a baseline of 25 years which the JFK Act also did, and I think people are getting used to that, the question is is everybody comfortable with it, and will it continue to hold, or will there be a regression? It is interesting to note that, basically we are the only country that is shortening this thing, the movement in the rest of the world is toward more and more closure."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Except for the British."

Steve Tilley - "Except for the British, which have just passed their own, they have their own Act pending, but in meeting with representatives from the British government to discuss their pending statute we learned that in other parts of the world the movement is towards more closure, to the point where I believe he said where New Zealand was going to destroy their census records without letting anybody see them. So, we are moving in a different direction from most of the rest of the world, and I think for the historical community we need to continue to do that. And I really believe that the Board's report is going to be a very important voice that people are going to listen to about how we can keep this moving."

Judge Tunheim - "Jeremy, thoughts that you have, that we should add to our discussion today?"

Jeremy Gunn - "Well, I would like to follow up on Bill's comment that it needs to be practical and I would like to think about the practical ways we could write the report."

(laughter)

Judge Tunheim - "You always remind us of that don't you?"

Jeremy Gunn - "Yes, I do."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "And we always look for instruction."

Judge Tunheim - "Let's look at it from a different standpoint. Is there any aspect of what we have done that has not worked particularly well by the way it was set up? I think a lot of this Board has worked, it's the only way we know of working of course, although everyone has experience with other ways but it's worked well generally speaking, are there aspects besides the unfortunate slow start up that we want to perhaps make sure that Congress doesn't allow to happen next time?"

Dr. Henry Graff - "Well, I think the frequency of our meetings has been remarkable."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Yes."

Dr. Henry Graff - "I hope it has all been for the good. Most federal boards to my knowledge do not meet as often as we have. We have met, what, every third week?

Dr. William Joyce - "Every third week, over 50 times."

Dr. Henry Graff - "Over 50 times, in a very short period of time-"

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Every three weeks for two days for the first three years"

Dr. Henry Graff - "Right, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission on which I serve used to meet, I think, four times a year. I think that has been true of most of the Boards. So I don't know whether this has been good or bad. I think our staff. I guess our staff will tell us if they saw too much of us, or maybe too little of us."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "What it means is we have looked at a lot of documents and we have made a lot of decisions. And those were ours to make. That was the way the statute was written and we had to do it. Nobody else could even do it."

Dr. William Joyce - "I found it hard, that I agree with you Henry, we met often, but we met just infrequently enough in my view that there was a certain amount of ground to be reclaimed everytime we met. I would have to be reminded of things, and I would have to recollect what we had been through in preceding meetings. So I found a lot of it to be somewhat inefficient in that respect. I don't know if I would recommend more meetings as a result, but I think one of the things we should keep in mind in response to your question Jack is that our effort was a small one, and it has unlimited applicability, and the trick for us is to find the kinds of experiences that we had that were useful that have wider application and then to try and press them."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "I agree Bill but I do think that one way we compensated recently for the infrequency was now our weekly conference calls, those have been very helpful to us. We might have started those earlier, if we had thought of that. but you're right how we apply this to a wider effort is going to be key. Of course we dealt with two agencies with voluminous records, the CIA and FBI.

Judge Tunheim - "The authority that we have had over records of the federal government has been extensive, our authority over records that were not held by the federal government was less extensive although certainly we have arguments to deal with those issues, in one sense we are a declassification board but in another sense we are a board that was called together for the purpose of creating the broadest possible public record on this very significant event in this century, the assassination of President Kennedy and it's aftermath. I think we have used our authority over records over records held in the hands of either private persons or state and local government wisely, but it's clear that we haven't had as much authority there. I don't know if we want to make any points about that in the final report or not.

"Jeremy, you struggled with that perhaps more than the Board has in your work as general counsel and administrator to the staff. Do you have any thoughts about that subject?"

Jeremy Gunn - "I think there are several provisions of the statute that should be,... if the same law were going to be passed on some other subject several provisions of the statute should be rewritten to make points clearer than they are in the statute now. We have had some difficulties dealing with some of the ambiguous language of the statute. I think the Board has made reasonable interpretations of some of the statutory language it has been a struggle with us with the Department of Justice on several instances over the interpretation of it, and I think some clarification up front would have been very helpful, but I think that's an area where there aught to be some recommendations made to the extent if something like this is done again."End tape 1 Side A

Dr. Anna Nelson - "...and I think another aspect of our work has been to look broadly at the assassination, and this comes from the fact that we did not want to narrow the search we wanted to broaden the search, we wanted to, basically, put it into a context, a historical context. Bill mentioned the Cold War as a historical context And we also wanted to take into account all of the, to the best of our ability, the records that might reflect on a lot of the public's ideas and public credibility. So why it was a small subject I think many times we lived with very hard difficult issues to solve. And you know looking back on it we have worked through a lot of issues, sometimes we...

"Dr. Henry Graff - "I think that we have to make clear because all of us privately and in conversations with friends and others have discovered that out there are people who think that we were redoing the work of the Warren Commission."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Yes, that's right."

Dr. Henry Graff - "We have to make perfectly clear that that was not out business, less there be big disappointment that we haven't come up with whatever would come up if we redid the Warren Commission-

Dr. Anna Nelson - "or an investigation of any kind."

Dr. Henry Graff - "And this I think has to be right there at the beginning of the report."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "Absolutely."

Jeremy Gunn - "If I could draw attention to something, I think it's important for the Board to reach a decision, I don't mean at this meeting but to reach a decision earlier rather than later about whether it wants to make recommendations on the larger issues, for example does the Board want to make any recommendations regarding FOIA and how FOIA is handled or not, and I can see where the answer might be yes and it might be no but I think that's something the Board should reach some determination on. I think the Board also needs to decide whether it believes that it should recommend that there should be something like a government wide declassification authority, a super board, if you will or a revised ISU (?), or something like that. Now those are both issues that obviously go far beyond the Kennedy assassination, to some extent go beyond the very obvious restricted mandate of the Board but those are areas that I think are within the Board's competence and certainly within the Board's moral authority to make recommendations, so I would urge the Board members to consider those issues and reach a decision, and I say that without recommending that they either do it or not do it but that the Board members reach a decision about whether they wish to do that.

"I think also the Board aught to decide whether it believes there aught to be other entities set up like this to deal with specific issues of controversy, that may be Guatemala, that may be other particular things that might cause controversy. Again, I say this without recommending that this be the proposal of the Board or not.

"I think it also makes sense for the Board to consider whether it believes that the standards for release of information under whatever guidelines should be changed to be more in line with the guidelines that the Board has operated under, and whether those should be cleaned up as well or straightened up or revised.

"But I think all of those large issues need to be addressed and the Board should reach some determination about whether it wants to go that route or not. I think that with many of the provisions of our legislation if the Board believes that some other entity aught to be set up like the Board, or the FOIA should be set up or revised to reflect the experiences of the Board, then we can give a lot of specific recommendations about how a statute can be written, what we have seen that is wrong, whereas if the Board is not recommending something like that then many of the details don't need to come forth. But I would recommend some early thought or judgements on those sorts of questions."

Judge Tunheim - "Again, I don't think the two approaches are necessarily...we don't have to chose between them, I guess is what I am trying to say. You can revise FOIA and have a much more extensive, ongoing, government wide, declassification effort, or recommend that and at the same time demonstrate that this process works well for a select group of records. Part of the problem with the setting it up, time and time again for select groups of records is the time that it takes to build the independence that we had.

Dr. William Joyce - "Yeah."

Judge Tunheim - "It is not going to be castle law two months later you have another board looking at Guatemalan records, for example. It's going to take a while to hire a staff, to build up an independent staff in the way Congress envisioned us here. So in one sense it's not very efficient to keep recreating..."

Dr. William Joyce - "I think that's right and it raises another issue that occurs to me and that is, however unique the work might be, or limited in its application it's all contextual and the larger context is the declassification of federal records. And my predilection would be to say that we may want to recommend some grand structure in declassification so that there would be an understanding of what an independent agency might do for example, or how a FOIA revision would be relevant to that, or even how another board for another set of problem records such as ours would fall within that framework. I think having said that though the problem as I see it that you create a politically very ambitious agenda that way and the question is if you can get enough of a consensus that people would want to go with."

Dr. Anna Nelson - "And if I may add one thing, you know, we discussed FOIA but most of our work has been under the Executive Order, on national security issues, and while those are taken care of by FOIA offices I think that we have had much more to do with the Executive Order than, first the Reagan amendment then the Clinton one, [FOIA] in that we might consider addressing ourselves to that, those provisions for our provisions are more closely linked to those executive orders."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, those are good thoughts Jeremy, I think that was a helpful focus for us to look at those issues of broader versus narrower, I guess my view is that we should probably address them both what we think is important, legitimate, government wide, and also the pluses and minuses of this particular type of effort, because if a broader effort government wide is not going to fly for political reasons or what not this method is available for areas in which the Congress can achieve broad consensus that records should be open and much as they would like to do in Congress that can't just simply order all records of a particular issue be opened within the executive branch and that's why you need something within the executive branch to handle it from a constitutional standpoint. So, I think we need to focus in this report on this particular mechanism used, what's good about it, how it can be improved, and the presumption that it is going to be used again because certain areas of records will be deemed important but I think we also need to comment, to the extent that we can agree, more broadly on government wide openness issues because we are probably one of the first group focused almost exclusively on openness in all of what we have done and I think we are in a good position to talk about openness in government because of that.

"Not that we want to create too many more records for Steve to administer, but he seems to be able to take all that we throw over there."

Steve Tilley - "It's a very interesting collection and I think the value of it is something I have said repeatedly but I think it continues to be true is that it is such a broad collection and that the work of the Board in including so much material has really given the research community an almost totally unfettered look into the workings of the government at that time and as it is tied to this particular event. And we are starting to see people coming in and starting to look at those records in a systematic way and moving through them in a systematic way and taking value of the complexity which marks the assassination clearly but looking at it in a more broader context as well, this is what the government was doing at this time, this is how it worked, this is what it did, this is what it didn't do. And I think that is really going to be the ultimate final result of this, is that we will have such a clear look into what was happening at the time which clearly did not exist before because the release mechanism wasn't there for the records at that time. So, I think the precedent set there is really one of the most valuable things to come out of the work of this board."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, that was a very significant decision that we made early on in this process to broadly define what the assassination meant in terms of the search for records.

Steve Tilley - "I totally agree on that, I think it was probably one of the wisest things the Board did."

Judge Tunheim - "Well, we got good advice from the public on that issue, some of whom are here today, those who testified at our various hearings, and we appreciated that a great deal. It was important input. And I think it is a point worth making that we have tried through this process to take into account comments by interested members of the public at every step, and what we have fashioned has been fashioned in large part through a cooperation from the public, people who have been interested enough to testify, to write to us, to comment to us in various ways and I think we were really enriched by that as we have gone through this process."

Jeremy Gunn - "Could I put Steve on the spot and ask him a question which can be a personal answer rather than an official NARA answer? Do you think you have enough staff to be able to deal with the records that you have, does it make sense for the Board to recommend additional funding, or additional staffing for your entity?"

Steve Tilley - "I think the National Archives in general could use more funding and more staff to deal with questions of access, and I say that for the collection, and I say that for the more broader issue of FOIA work, and declassification work. The main weakness of the Freedom of Information Act to me personally has been the fact that it never included any budget information, there was never anything put in about whether the agencies would donate or put so much of their budget towards FOIA, the FOIA process has always had to live off of, sort of in the background with the rest of the budget and clearly I think NARA, like a lot of agencies needs additional funding to deal with these issues. It's becoming, absolutely, one of the most important things we do is making records available, and the JFK Records Collection has just focused that issue, the interest in the records that pertain to this particular event in history, as with other events, is growing, and people are very interested in what happened and they want to see the documentary record put out there. And the thing about disclosure work is that it is labor intensive and you need people and funds in order to do it properly. And I have no trouble in saying, yeah, sure we could sue more help and more funding to do both JFK and to do all of our other disclosure work. I think the National Archives would welcome, and that's a personal comment-

(laughter)

Dr. Henry Graff - "But I think this feeds into what I was saying before about Congress creates the legislation and says you go figure out how you are going to accomplish this

Steve Tilley - "Clearly FOIA was an unfunded mandate before that phrase was known."

(laughter)

"The Archives as an agency, unlike so many, is an agency dealing with openness, I mean our job is to make records available and to make as many records available as possible to the public in as short of a time as possible but we must also work within the framework of the government about how those things are done and we, like so many, are really a very small agency to begin with with a very small budget and it goes without saying that we could use more help in this field.

Judge Tunheim - "Just one more question for you Steve, as I am interested in your perspective having dealt with all of the, many of the same people in the agencies that we have been dealing with and your perceptions of this change over time, do you think, I mean, has there been a learning process within the agency classification process by this effort, or do you think it is something that will of necessity be limited to Kennedy assassination records?"

Steve Tilley - "It's hard to say, Mr. Chairman. I would like to think that there has been a learning process with the folks that we have dealt with in the agencies. Clearly, they have changed the way they have dealt with this issue, and the earlier question about "Consent releases" a lot of what we have received through the last couple of years has been the result of the agencies changing what they have been doing based on what the Board had done as precedent. Whether that will carry over into the FOIA process, the normal court process, I'm not so sure that I can say that that is going to happen. I am not involved in the systematic review that is now taking place under the Executive Order, it's not my, that's not my area, it's not my field, but I think I said earlier you see in the agency's representatives out there, different attitudes on the ways things should be done, and some are more progressive, and although clearly, as you reported last year the archives is responsible for over a 100 million pages being declassified that is a significant increase over previous years, whether that will continue,...I would like to think that it would, but how that is going to affect the agency people themselves, the people in other agencies and whether that will carry over into the regular FOIA practice, I think it's a lot more problematic than that, I would not say for sure, I don't think I can say for sure that that will happen."

Jeremy Gunn - "One of the kinds of recommendations that would be relatively easy for the board to make, and this might be appropriate following up from Steve's, the Board knows that currently chapter four of the final report deals with the guidelines that the Review Board has essentially applied to the release of information, something that could be done, again that is easy for a recommendation, is encouraging the President in an Executive Order or with new legislation to require agencies to look at those kinds of guidelines and to see what extent they are able to implement those in their systematic declassification review and if they have to report on whether they are following the guidelines or not that is an impetus, I don't presume for a moment that that is a magic, I won't say magic bullet, magic solution to the problem but that is an incremental recommendation that could be made."

Judge Tunheim - "Are there any other comments for this afternoon? I think this has been a good opening debate, discussion, on what should go into this report, as far as our recommendations, and I think I'm starting to get a better sense myself for where the Board is at. I do feel that we should have a strong section on recommendations here, that that's a responsibility of ours having gone through this process to inform the Congress and the president as we are required to do generally but to inform the public and how this effort can be perpetuated in the future in various different ways. So, good discussion, and good start. I'll repeat that we are looking forward to receiving any comments from the public. July 1st is our deadline we will consider each and every comment that we receive from the public as part of our deliberation and what goes into our final report as well. So, we look forward to hearing them.

"Anything else for our meeting today?

(no response)

"if not is there a motion to adjourn?

Dr. Henry Graff & Dr. Anna Nelson - "So moved"

Dr. William Joyce - "Seconded."

Judge Tunheim - "It has been moved and seconded that this open meeting of the Assassination Records Review Board be adjourned. All those in favor say aye."

All - "Aye."

Judge Tunheim - "Opposed? Carried, four to zero. Thank you. Meeting is adjourned."

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