Summary of December 2021 releases (updated)

I have not yet posted any notes on the December 15 releases. I may have an article on these elsewhere in the next few weeks, so I will hold off on extended discussion for now. Following is just a quick summary of the records posted on NARA’s website.

Agency totals

Totals of records released per agency (the number in parentheses is the agency prefix):

# agency record count percent
1 CIA (104) 958 64%
2 FBI (124) 355 24%
3 HSCA (180) 106 7%
4 SSCIA (157) 24 2%
5 Ford Lib (178) 15 1%
6 ACSI/IRR (194) 11 < 1%
7 OSA (198) 5 < 1%
8 JFK Lib (176) 5 < 1%
9 JCS (202) 3 < 1%
10 DOS (119) 3 < 1%
11 LBJ Lib (177) 2 < 1%
12 NARA/WC (179) 2 < 1%
13 NSC (145) 1 < 1%
14 NARA (181) 1 < 1%

Newly released records

One surprise in the December releases was to see 70 78 records which were not previously released in 2017-2018. The majority of these, 46 altogether, were “missing records.” As NARA has previously said, there were 79 record identification aids in the JFK database (aka RIFs, Reader Identification Forms) for documents which they were unable to locate in the collection. A number of these documents are resolved in this release. Many of these “newly found” records have cover sheets explaining the circumstances under which they were lost and how they were retrieved or reconstructed. There is a list of the “missing records” with links to the newly recovered ones posted on NARA.

Another 26 32 records released on 12/15 were apparently present in the collection in 2017-2018, but were not posted online at NARA at that time (not sure why). These records include 18 staff payroll records from the HSCA and 8 14 other records from various agencies. Comparing the updated version of the JFK database with the April 2018 list of records posted at NARA suggests that there were quite a few other records that were also not posted in 2018. Most of these are payroll records or FBI records with 10(a) and 11(a) material, i.e. tax returns and court sealed documents.

Here is a list of record numbers with links to these new releases:

119-10003-10216
124-10203-10159
124-10203-10164
124-10203-10165
124-10203-10170
124-10203-10174
124-10204-10037
124-10306-10025
124-10352-10027
124-10352-10028
124-10352-10029
124-90143-10161
124-90157-10110
157-10014-10103
180-10060-10435
180-10060-10443
180-10060-10448
180-10060-10466
180-10060-10474
180-10060-10485
180-10060-10487
180-10060-10488
180-10060-10496
180-10068-10340
180-10068-10342
180-10068-10351
180-10068-10353
180-10068-10358
180-10070-10151
180-10070-10167
180-10070-10168
180-10070-10172