Robert responds to my recent post on JFK files.
Black Vault deserves a thanks for putting on line a pdf and excel file of the latest data provided by NARA, but if you take the Black Vault figures to mean that there are thousands of records still withheld in full, that is not correct.
I’m not certain that Robert is correct but I want to air his concerns so that we get an accurate number of still-secret JFK files.
Rex Bradford, president of theMary Ferrell Foundation, has come up with another, smaller number, but we don’t yet have a lot of confidence in that figure either. The NARA JFK database is full of errors, duplicates, and anomalies, which need to be combed through to get good data. We’re still doing that.
Here’s what Robert has to say.
“According to NARA, the list they sent BV, call it NARA 2018, includes ALL JFK assassination records that still have redactions. It includes both documents still withheld in full and documents already released in redacted form.
“The numbers are actually pretty clear; there are 22933 rows on the spreadsheet. 798 give the document status as ‘Withheld’, 22135 give the document status as ‘Redact’.
“BV says there are 3082 records totaling 217,114 pages “that are not yet released to the public.”
“What they have done is compared NARA 2018 against the spreadsheet NARA posted of all the records they posted at Archives.gov in 2017 (call it NARA 2017).
“There are 3082 record numbers on NARA 2018 that are not on NARA 2017, and the page total, from NARA 2018, is exactly as BV says.
“Excluding the 798 ‘withheld’ documents, many, probably most, of these remaining documents are already released and available (with redactions) at NARA or Mary Ferrell. I haven’t found any yet that are NOT listed at one place or the other.
“I’d be interested to know if you have.”
I welcomed comment from readers. I’m asking Black Vault to comment too.