I have been looking at the ARC records released by NARA on 26 April 2018 again, and there is at least one error identifying a record.

NARA 18 lists the record 104-10012-10037; it is available here

In fact, this record has the identification sheet for ARC 104-10012-10037 on top of it, but the document that follows the sheet is not ARC 104-10012-10037. Instead it appears to be ARC 104-10012-10062. ARC 104-10012-10062 is available in redacted form at MFF here. A comparison of the NARA file and the MFF file shows they are the same document, except that the NARA 18 version releases the text withheld in the MFF version.

The story (in extremely condensed form): this was another one of the “leads” that popped up 10 years after the assassination, in which an ancient telegram that supposedly fell out of some books shows a couple of veterinarians in Tulsa were consorting with Lee Oswald ten years earlier. The FBI didn’t believe it, and you shouldn’t either.

I am sure that this mistake (labelling 104-10012-10062 as 104-10012-10037) is an error by the CIA reviewers. The CIA has its own database of JFK assassination records. It uses its own identification key to handle the ARC documents it reviews. I previously called this an “old RIF number.” I will change this term in the future to “NIA number” and will explain all this in a later post. Anyway, the NIA number for ARC bla-bla-10037 is 1993.06.24.16:03:26:400800, while the NIA number for ARC bla-bla-10063 is 1993.06.24.16:03:26:460800. This type of mistake is pretty easy to make, as I can testify in my work on the whole NIA number problem.

[Later note: 2020-01-20]
Took another look at the document. This turns out to be a CIA copy of an FBI letter head memo (LHM) from Lee Oswald’s FBI HQ file, 105-82555-5696, available in the ARC as record 124-10066-10216. The FBI version is listed as open in full as of April 1996, and some of the people redacted from the CIA version are even listed in the ACRS ‘Subject’ field for the eight or nine cables in the Collection that the FBI sent back and forth trying to get to the bottom of this mare’s nest: check the veterinarians, check the hotel, check dates the telegram form was used, check for fingerprints, check the typewriter face, check where Oswald was when the meeting was supposed to take place (New Orleans, not Dallas), etc. Cheez.

[Yet later note: 2020-01-20]
The redacted status of the CIA version of the record is confusing. There are two notices for 104-10012-10062 in the MFF collection. Both use the NIA form, instead of the RIF. The first version lists the doc as RIF (released in full), but is marked “coordination pending”, meaning CIA sent it to the FBI to see if they want to withhold anything. As is common with docs “pending coordination”, only the NIA form is there. The second version has the document with redactions and is stamped by the FBI-JFK Task Force (11/23/94); this would be the post coordination version. So what was the status of the CIA version after April 1996, when the FBI did a consent release of its version? It should have been open to begin with. And what do the ARRB record notices say about the CIA version? They don’t list it.