New HSCA docs at MFF

The Mary Ferrell Foundation continues to dig out ARC records from its vaults. The latest find is a box of HSCA docs which fill some gaps and add a deposition from Bruce Solie.

HSCA-CIA boxes

This set of docs comes from several boxes in the HSCA-CIA segregated collection. Like the recent release of several sections of the HSCA-FBI liaison file, the box sat uncatalogued in the AARC vaults for who knows how long, but MFF is finally digging this stuff out and putting it on line. Cause for celebration among us hard core ARC observers.

Eventually these records will also go online at NARA, but at the rate NARA is going, it could take several years. I’d rather not wait that long, and am delighted to have AARC’s contribution now.

What’s in the box(es)?

The majority of the docs are letters from HSCA General Counsel Bob Blakey to CIA Principal Coordinator Scott Breckinridge and his predecessors, requesting all kinds of information, files, and interviews. There were already hundreds of similar letters available online from MFF, so the format and content are familiar.

These letters fill a gap that I looked at earlier this year, which I’ll try to explain here. Originally, all the HSCA docs dealing with CIA were in packed away in boxes and sent off to CIA’s Warrenton Records Center back in 1979-1980. Despite being mixed up with CIA records, they were legally and textually distinct, being generated by HSCA staffers, rather than CIA staffers.

When Mark Allen filed his suit asking for review and release of the documents CIA provided to HSCA, an attempt was made to separate out these HSCA generated records. Why? Because Congressional documents are not subject to FOIA.

It was only when the JFK Act was passed that the HSCA records were eligible for release. As one might expect, HSCA docs and CIA docs were filed together, with Blakey’s doc requests and CIA responses filed in the logical order. The JFK Act and the differing legal status of the records required that Blakey’s letter be put in one place and the CIA answers put in another.

The CIA responses have been online at MFF for years. The HSCA letters they were responding to, however, were only partially available. This latest posting from MFF thus fills some of this gap.

There are other things in these boxes as well. When CIA provided docs to the HSCA staff for review, the staff took lots and lots of notes. Since these notes came from classified files, the CIA had custody of them. There are lots of CIA letters concerning these notes that are also available at MFF. Again, however, some of the notes were not there. These “new” docs from MFF supply some of the missing notes as well.

The surprise of the new docs, however, is Bruce Solie’s deposition to the HSCA concerning Yuri Nosenko. I knew there were two copies of this deposition in the ARC, but neither of them was online at MFF, nor were they released post 2017, since they were already released in full in the 1990s. It turns out, however, that there was a third copy, 180-10144-10374, which is finally available online. For people interested in the Nosenko saga, this is quite interesting.

My two cents

Summing up, there are 340 new ARC records available on the MFF website, totaling about 1670 pages. About 322 of these were previously not available online. Overall, this is a useful addition to MFF’s outstanding collection of JFK assassination records. If you are interested in tracking HSCA-CIA requests and responses, it is essential.