ARRB vs. FRUS Part 1

     This is the first of four posts about differences between the  records the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) -- and hence the National Archives -- got from the CIA pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 and the records State Department historians got from the CIA in preparation of the Foreign Relations of the United States histories (FRUS) that they  publish. As you will read, State Department historians had access to a highly significant JFK assassination record that was not turned over to the ARRB and National Archives. Moreover, not even the historians, apparently, were given access to a second possibly important assassination record.

      As the Church Committee was winding down and under deadline to get its report on the Kennedy assassination completed, I was concerned that although the committee had taken sworn testimony from 1963 CIA Director John McCone, it did not have memoranda of any meetings with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson about the AMLASH operation with Rolando Cubela.  McCone and the CIA were notorious for writing such memoranda.

      In this regard, I was puzzled by a memorandum Desmond FitzGerald prepared that summarized what Johnson should be told about Cuban operations, saying Cuban dissidents had been given general and specific assurances of support. President Kennedy's speech of November 18, saying Castro was a barrier to be removed, seemed such a specific assurance. Indeed a copy of the speech as it was reported by the NY Times was given to Cubela at the November 22, 1963, Paris meeting, and he was told the CIA wrote the speech.  This was true.  

     Lyndon Johnson had been kept out of the loop on Cuban operations when he was vice president. For this reason, I thought the CIA surely briefed him about the AMLASH operation after President Kennedy's death.  When I questioned FitzGerald's security officer about why there were no written records of such a briefing, he explained that such a sensitive matter, i.e. providing Cubela assassination weapons, would never be put in writing for the president.  Too many eyes would see it. In fact, he added, it probably would be conveyed by McCone to LBJ when no one else was present.  

     Therefore, I made a written request of the CIA for access to whatever papers the CIA had prepared for briefing Johnson about Kennedy's Cuban policy, e.g., FitzGerald's papers, and for memoranda of any of McCone's briefing of LBJ.  Below is the CIA's response.  It is NARA 157-10005-10402.  The letter from Walter Elder, the CIA's liaison to the committee, was addressed to committee staff director, William Miller.  The CIA denied  me access.  Among the reasons given was that some unnamed Church Committee staffer was once given access to the records.  (This doesn't mean he or she read them).  It was too late in the Church Committee's life to pursue the matter.

     In short, in 1976, when I asked to see memoranda of CIA Director McCone's briefings of Lyndon Johnson about Cuba after the assassination,  the CIA denied the request, saying someone else had looked at those memoranda.  But there was and is no record of who that person was or what he or she saw.  And even if he was allowed to see memoranda of McCone's briefings, he didn't acquire a copy for the Church Committee files. Indeed, there is no proof, other than Mr. Elder's assertion, that the Church Committee reviewed the memoranda.