Ä JFK_ASSN National Echo (1:101/505) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ JFK_ASSN Ä
 Msg  : 26 of 51                                                                
 From : John Prewett                1:355/2.1012            Sat 25 Mar 95 00:01 
 To   : Tim Bullard                 1:101/505               Tue 28 Mar 95 04:44 
 Subj : Government records                                                      
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

  TB> Are there still government files on the assassination that have not
  TB> been made public under the FOI act? When will everything have been
  TB> released? Since i was a kid i awas always hearing that some day, 50
  TB> years on down the line, they would release some documents. I've read
  TB> that some were released at the start of clinton's administration.

      Hi Tim.

 TB> When will we know the entire story from the government? -

          Never, IMHO.     WBW,  John

FWIW-

AP 7 Mar 95 6:44 EST V0633
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to dispel notions that the government
is concealing information about President Kennedy's assassination,
an independent panel is gearing up to launch a nationwide search for records.
   "We may debunk certain conspiracy theories because the records aren't
there to support those theories, or we might create new possibilities,"
said John Tunheim, Minnesota's chief deputy attorney general and chairman
of the Assassination Records Review Board.
   "At least we will have gotten to the point where the federal government
no longer is hiding information from the public," Tunheim said in a recent
interview. "That's an issue of trust."
   After a slow start, the board, with a 1995 budget of $2.15 million
and $2.4 million proposed for 1996, is beginning its work of seeking
out new materials related to the assassination and reviewing records
that government agencies would rather keep secret.
   To uncover materials that might be in the hands of private citizens,
it is counting on getting leads from experts, documents and a series
of public meetings.
   "I'm prepared to see anything," Tunheim said. "What I'm trying to do
is to organize a very systematic and very detailed process of finding
every scrap of paper, every photograph, every film. Whatever exists."
   Created by Congress in 1992 in the hopes of squelching any public
unease that the government has not divulged all it knows about the
Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, the board was not appointed until
President Clinton took office. Five members, four from universities
and Tunheim, were confirmed by the Senate and sworn in in April 1994.
   On Tuesday, the board is scheduled to hold its third public meeting,
in Washington. It met last November in Dallas, and plans a trip
to Boston to visit the John F. Kennedy Library later this month.
   The board is considering trips to New Orleans, Miami and Los Angeles,
and is in the middle of defining an assassination record to help set
parameters for its work.
   In 1992, responding to renewed public interest created by Oliver Stone's
film "JFK," which portrayed an elaborate conspiracy, Congress voted to
compel the release of virtually all assassination-related documents to
the National Archives.
   So far, the Archives have indexed 120,000 records, with an additional
60,000 pending for addition to the data base. After a CIA file on Lee Harvey
Oswald was made public in 1993, 2,000 research requests were logged in under
three months.
   One of the board's main jobs is to review records that government
agencies do not want released, possibly for national security or privacy
concerns. It can delay release, but only until 2017, the deadline set by law.
   Ultimately, the goal is to have all the records available to the public
at the archives, or possibly by computer.
   "But our focus is really on the records themselves," Tunheim said,
"to get them available to the public so that they can read them and
try to understand them for themselves."  -END QUOTE-

--- MacWoof Eval:17Nov94
 * Origin: Slinging Seeds,  FBKS,  AK (1:355/2.1012@fidonet)