Category Archives: Mary Ferrell Foundation

The Mary Ferrell Foundation provides the most extensive set of ARC documents available on-line. These notes discuss various features and questions in the MFF collection.

New CIA docs at MFF

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More ARC docs are up on the MFF website, straight from the vaults of the AARC. The latest additions: over 160 CIA records, including some very interesting docs on Cuban matters.

What’s in the docs?

The new docs at MFF are in two sets: 84 records from CIA’s Latin American Division (JFK-Work Files), and 85 miscellaneous records, mostly from the hard copy JFK records in the HSCA-CIA segregated collection, as well as three docs from the HSCA-CIA staff records, and a handful from the CIA microfilm docs.…

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.…

Reconstructing the J Walton Moore OS file

This note discusses how I was able to put together again virtually all of a lengthy CIA file using both the latest releases from the ARC and bits and scraps of an ancient file from 1993.

The file

The file I am discussing in this note is the CIA Office of Security file for J Walton Moore, who for many years was the head of CIA’s field office in Dallas, including the period when Lee Oswald was a Dallas resident.…

“Missing” CIA records in the ARC (II): The DCD Garrison files

I’ve been very busy with other projects recently, so there’s been a long silence on this blog. Having a few free hours this weekend, however, I’m putting up a note on some of the work I did this summer.

This note might interest people who are curious about which CIA records are available online, or who are looking for Garrison files in the ARC.…

New releases up at MFF!

That was fast.

The December 2022 releases in the ARC are up at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. These will be OCR’d and integrated into the superb MFF document database, substantially enhancing their research value. Big thanks from researchers everywhere to Rex Bradford, head guru of the MFF.

As a bonus, Rex also has a long note up on what’s in and out of the new releases.…

Judge Tunheim’s letter to President Biden

Judge John Tunheim served as chair of the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994 to 1998, and together with the other four Board members, deserves much credit for the important accomplishments of the Board, the greatest of which was the successful creation of the massive JFK Assassination Records Collection (JFKARC or ARC), a most valuable contribution to the history of both the JFK assassination and to the historiography of the cold war as a whole.…

MFF files suit against Biden and NARA

On October 19th, the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) filed suit against President Biden’s plan to release the remaining redactions in the JFKARC. For those confused by all this, a quick look back might be helpful.

In October 2021, President Biden issued a memo instructing Federal agencies with redacted materials in the ARC to get ready to release these by December 15, 2022 or to justify their continued redaction by jumping through an elaborate series of hoops.…

SISS records from the ARC now on line at Mary Ferrell

Some interesting ARC docs have recently been posted online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. These docs are records of executive session testimony before the SISS (Senate Internal Security Subcommittee), which conducted a “limited inquiry” into the JFK assassination in late 1963. The session records were acquired by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) all the way back in 1995, and are noted in the ARRB’s Final report (see here and here).…

Matching NARA to MFF, part 1: July 24 release

This is the first note in a new series on how the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) managed to match up the records from NARA’s 2017-2018 ARC releases with the appropriate metadata and plug them in to their massive document archive.

This was a big, big job; my hat is off to them, particularly to Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford, who doubles as the MFF’s website designer and programmer.…