NARA FOIA docs on the ARC

NARA has released two sets of FOIA docs on the ARC. This page provides links to both sets. I have posted several notes on these docs at this blog, as well as a long article at the Washington Decoded website. See below for links.

The 2020 FOIA docs

In February 2020, four records were released in response to a request for correspondence between the Archivist of the United States (AOTUS) and the President of the United States (POTUS) concerning the ARC, from the years 2017 to 2018. I have a post on the release here.

These records are available from NARA’s website here.

The four documents are:

  • The full 2018-3-26 memorandum (pdf) from the AOTUS to President Trump on the Archivist’s recommendations for release of ARC documents.

This memorandum had eight tabs (attachments), three of which were also released in 2020 and are available on this page:

  • Tab 6, a 2017-09-26 letter (pdf) from the AOTUS to the POTUS recommending that Social Security numbers of living persons in the collection be withheld until their deaths.
  • Tab 7, a list (excel file) of record forms in the ARC for which NARA was not able to find matching documents.
  • Tab 8, a list (excel file) of records in the ARC which were not yet released in full as of March 2018.

The 2023-2024 releases

From 2023 to 2024, NARA released eleven pdf files of NARA docs and emails related to the 2017 and 2018. The files are roughly chronological, from 2017 to 2018, and arranged in threads.

I have a long article based on the docs at Max Holland’s website, Washington Decoded, available here. I have a page giving citations for the article here. This page gives links to specific emails and documents from the 2023-2024 releases.

Following are links to the complete pdfs for those interested in seeing all the original docs.

Note that release 9 part b includes attachments for all the material from the 2020 releases, plus the previously withheld attachments, tabs 1-5. I have links to these in the reference page for my Washington Decoded article. For comments on these see the article.

Related articles

In addition to my article at Washington Decoded, there have been a couple of other news articles on NARA’s FOIA docs. Journalist and author Philip Shenon had an article on the earliest releases at Politico’s website, available here. Lawrence Schnapf has a long commentary on the docs at Jefferson Morley’s substack blog, JFK Facts, available here. I disagree with both writers, particularly Schnapf, and will probably post responses on my blog at some point.