Personnel Building
Board Room H-160
450 North Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, California
Tuesday,
September 17, 1996
10:00 a.m.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
HONORABLE JOHN R. TUNHEIM
U.S. District Court Judge
District of Minnesota
DR. HENRY F. GRAFF (not present)
Professor Emeritus of History
at Columbia University
DR. KERMIT L. HALL
Dean, College of Humanities
and Professor of History at
the Ohio State University
DR. WILLIAM L. JOYCE
Associate University Librarian
for Rare Books and Special
Collections at Princeton University
DR. ANNA K. NELSON
Adjunct Professor of History at
American University
DAVID G. MARWELL
Executive Director
I N D E X
SPEAKERS: PAGE
Robert Tanenbaum 9
Former Deputy Counsel for the
House Select Committee on Assassinations
Author of Corruption of Blood
Eric Hamburg 30/117
Co-Producer of the Oliver Stone Movie
Nixon, and former Congressional staff
assistant of the President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992
Wesley Liebeler 46
Former Assistant Counsel to the Warren
Commission and currently a Professor at
UCLA
James Rankin 56
Son of former General Counsel to the Warren
Commission, the late J. Lee Rankin
David Belin 61
Former Assistant Counsel to the Warren Commission
and author of November 22, 1963: You Are The Jury
and Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About The
Assassination of President Kennedy. Executive
Director of the Rockefeller Commission, 1975.
James DiEugenio 84
Author of Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the
Garrison Case
David Lifton 103
Author of Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception
in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Steve Tilley 123
National Archives, Caretaker of the JFK Collection
P R O C E E D I N G S
CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: Good morning everyone. We call to order this public hearing of the Assassination Records Review Board. I want to welcome everyone here today to this public hearing in Los Angeles. We're very pleased as a review board to be here and very pleased that you were able to join us this morning.
The Assassination Records Review Board is an independent federal agency that was established by the Congress for a very important purpose. That purpose being to identify and secure for the American people all of the materials and documentation concerning the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy 33 years ago in Dallas.
The objective is to provide for the American people a complete public record of this national tragedy, and to lift the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the records of the assassination for so many years. And to present files that are fully accessible to any American citizen who wishes to see them, who wishes to study them, and to try to understand.
The members of the Review Board, which is a part time citizens' panel, were appointed by President Clinton. To my right on the end is Doctor William Joyce, the Associate Librarian at Princeton University. And to my immediate right is Doctor Anna Nelson, Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C. To my left, Doctor Kermit Hall who is the Dean of the College of Humanities at Ohio State University. Doctor Henry Graff, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University was unable to be with us today as the fifth member of the Board. My name is John Tunheim, I'm the Chair of the Assassination Records Review Board, and I am a United States District Court Judge in the State of Minnesota. Also up here today is the Executive Director of the Review Board, the top staff member for the effort, David Marwell. We have a number of other staff members who are with us today, Jeremy Gunn, Tom Samoluk, Tracy Shycoff and Eileen Sullivan.
I must emphasize before we begin today, that it is not the mandate of the Review Board to reinvestigate the assassination and to try to determine the answers of all the mysteries and questions that are still swirling around this event.
The Review Board is, however, on a search for records. Our primary focus has been, as it should be, a review and release of federal government records. Records that have been held by agencies of the federal government for the past 30 some years. But the Review Board is also seeking records, documents, photographs and other materials, whatever form they may be in, that will enable the American public to see the complete record of the death of their President and its aftermath.
We are nearing the end of our second year of existence and we have made significant progress. We've issued rulings on close to 2,500 records, federal records, and another 23 or 2,400 are in the category of consent releases by the agencies following our rulings on similar issues. Those add to a collection that is growing by the day at the national archives in College Park, Maryland. Later in our hearing we will hear from Steve Tilley who is our liaison at the National Archives. He will bring us up to date on the current status of the Collection.
The Review Board has nearly completed its review of the Central Intelligence Agency's corps file on the assassination, the Oswald 201 file. We're nearing completion of review of the corps files maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the assassination and have made significant progress at this stage on the records that were maintained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the assassination in the late 1970s.
We have secured now much of the record of the Jim Garrison saga in New Orleans. The only criminal prosecution that was taken involving the assassination. Other private parties have made significant contributions to the Board, to the Collection, to the American public, including new films that have been recently discovered from the day of the assassination. We've made significant progress recently on military records including the NSA, for which we hope to have announcements very soon regarding the release of those records. And we've made significant attempts to try to clarify the medical evidence, one of the more enduring of the mysteries surrounding the assassination. We hope to release materials concerning the medical evidence somewhere around the end of this year.
Much progress has been made by the Review Board and its staff thus far, but there is still much to be done and that is why we are here today in Los Angeles.
We're going to hear testimony today from a number of experts, individuals who we believe will greatly assist the Board in its search for records. Many more individuals have indicated an interest in testifying today. We simply don't have time to accommodate everyone. We thank them for their interest. We hope that those who are not able to testify today will provide the Review Board with written testimony and information that will be able to assist the Board.
The Board has held previous hearings in Dallas, in Washington, in Boston, and New Orleans, and those hearings have been extraordinarily helpful to the Board as its gone through its work over the past two years. And although the Review Board's review of classified records must by necessity occur in private out of the public eye, the Board does feel strongly that ongoing reports of the work of the Review Board should be as public as possible. The public hearings have given us an opportunity to hear from the public and to be able to adjust our work in response to legitimate interests that have been expressed to us by members of the public.
Before we hear our first witness this morning in Los Angeles, we have one matter of business that we'd like to take care of as a Board and that has to do with the extension of our existence for an additional year. When Congress past the original law The President John F. Kennedy's Records Collection Act of 1982, they specified the Review Board was to be in existence for a period of two years with a third year as the Board's discretion. When the Act was repassed several years later to give us additional time because of the slow start up, that provision was also contained in the new Act. The Board has made a determination that it is important to continue this effort for an additional year and we need to go about our business of doing that. Doctor Hall.
DR. HALL: Well pursuant to Section 701 of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, I move the Review Board extends its life for one additional year to October 1, 1997.
CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: Is there a second?
DR. NELSON: Second.
CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: It's been moved and seconded that the Review Board extend its existence for one additional year until October 1 of 1997. All in favor of that motion say aye.
BOARD MEMBERS: Aye.
CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: Opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN TUNHEIM: It's carried.
Again, I want to thank all of you for your interest today and now we are going to move on and hear from our first witness.