HANDLING OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL IN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R001000200010-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 14, 2005
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 12, 1968
• Content Type: MFR

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12 September 1968
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Handling of Classified Material in Presidential Libraries
1. Here is what came out of a long conversation on 11 September
1968 with Mr. Evans Walker, the officer in charge of Presidential
Libraries in the National Archives and Records Service. It adds up to
an assurance that classified material in Presidential Libraries will
not become available to the public for many years - "we are thinking
in terms of 75 to 100 years," said Walker - and that CIA will remain
master of the disposition and use of its own donations to the National
Archives, of which the Presidential Libraries are a part.
2. The Archivist of the United States will shortly address a
letter to the DCI to assure him that access to CIA papers in these
collections will be kept under strict control. Meanwhile I have Mr.
Walker's assurance that CIA's wishes with respect to retention of
material in CIA custody for eventual transfer to Presidential Libraries
will be respected.
3. Here briefly is the status of four Presidential Libraries
already in being:
a. Roosevelt. The collection at Hyde Park contains some-
thing like 25 to mi lion pages. It is still being screened. Of
one large body of wartime maps, for example, 90% are still sealed and
unscreened, and no one has any idea when they will become accessible
to the public except that it will be "long years in the future."
Meanwhile only the Director of the Library and probably one assistant
will have access to such materials.
b. Truman. The Library at Independence has a security vault
intended to hv1 aTY classified materials. The problem here, however,
is that Mr. Truman has kept many of the most important documents in
his own personal possession. Until recently he occupied an office in
the Truman Library; I gathered that much of his sensitive material is
in this office, but it has not yet been integrated into the Library
proper. The known collection contains something like 18 to 20 million
pages, and there is no telling when screening will be completed.
c. Eisenhower. The Library at Abilene similarly holds some
18 to 20 million pages of documents, and sensitive materials are
stored separately in a security vault. These materials were turned
over to Archives about a year ago and screening began only then. It
too will take many years to complete.
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d. Kennedy. The entire Kennedy collection is in dead
storage, and it wi not even begin to be screened until the new
building is finished. Most papers are already stored near Cambridge,
but documents bearing on national security and foreign affairs have
been retained in the National Archives Building in Washington in
case any of them is needed by the Johnson Administration - i.e.,
asked for by Bromley Smith. Walker believes that Smith has asked
for documents only five times at most during the past five years.
(e. Johnson. All Walker could say about the size of the
Library at Austin i that it will be "fantastic." The vault-space
needed for sensitive material in each Library has been growing
larger and larger.)
4. Presidential Donations:
"About 99n" of the material in the Libraries so far has come
from the personal collections of the Presidents. It is conveyed to
the Library by an instrument of gift which is so complicated that it
takes several months to write. The one signed by the Kennedy family
provided for access to the documents by the Johnson Administration as
necessary, but it omitted to mention access by future administrations,
and this problem remains to be resolved. In general the instrument
sets overall policy for future handling, including rules governing
the date and manner of making presidential papers available to the
public.
5. Other Donations:
The archivists solicit personal papers from any person closely
associated with a President. Some are still coming in for addition to
the Hoover Library. Personal papers contain a great hodgepodge of
materials, and we must expect that they will include some from CIA.
Walker had noted a copy of a Current Intelligence Bulletin in one
recent personal contribution, and supposes that there must be CIA
papers in others. He had recently had occasion to go through an attic
full of documents which had gathered dust since 1945. The donor's
instrument of gift had placed no restrictions on the use of his dona-
tion, but a quick look showed that it contained so many sensitive State
Department documents that the archivists declared the whole collection
off limits to the public.
6. Contributions by agencies and departments are governed by the
stipulations of the donors. A number of agencies stipulated that their
material in the Kennedy Library was not to be made public for 75 years.
The Atomic Energy Commission has under way a massive program for ear-
marking materials for the Johnson Library, but most of it will not even
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leave AEC custody for 25 years. Walker is of the impression that
some 40 to 50 reels of microfilm are being maintained in CIA
custody for eventual inclusion in the Kennedy Library. Whatever
criteria we adopt for keeping materials in CIA custody for eventual
inclusion in the Johnson Library will be satisfactory to the archivists.
6. Screening
The process by which these masses of paper are brought into
some order is roughly as follows:
a. Basic policy is laid down in the original instrument of
gift signed by the President or any other donor.
b. The Presidential instrument usually provides for a
committee to oversee the screening of the collections; it usually
includes representatives of the National Archives, close associates
of the President, and maybe the President's family lawyer. It esta-
blishes the priorities for screening, and even this first step may
take several years.
c. Then the professional staff of the National Archives,
armed with all necessary clearances, goes through the collection
document by document, looking at every page. Three types of material
are separated out for special handling: those which deal with
national security or may be prejudicial to relations with other
governments or may reflect on persons still alive. Each originating
agency is asked for permission to screen its documents. The screen-
ing committee meets occasionally to review the work of the professional
staff.
d. The Archives people do not tamper in any way with the
system of filing bequeathed by the White House or any other donor.
7. There is at present no regulation specifically governing
the handling of and access to classified documents in Presidential
Libraries, but Walker agreed that it would be useful to create one
and that it would be appropriate for CIA to participate in this
action. Meanwhile Executive Order No. 10501 applies. Walker kept
pointing out that it is the policy of Archives to bend over backwards
in safeguarding sensitive materials, and it was he who proposed that
the Archivist write a letter reassuring the DCI.
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8. I suggested that one of our worries on this point was that a
President, instead of writing a book on his administration involving
security problems with which he himself was familiar, might assign
such a task to a trusted associate who would not understand those
problems. Walker acknowledged that this might be a real difficulty.
But short of a President's personal intervention in the handling of the
papers of his own administration, this danger is unlikely to arise. I
asked whether there was any chance that a trusted scholar with the right
security clearances might be given early access to papers on his under-
taking not to quote from them. Walker replied that so far as the Archives
were concerned, there is a vefirm policy not to allow any individual
to have access to Presidenti`aI-papers ahead of the public. "If Arthur
Schlesinger, for example, asked to use the Kennedy Library for research
ahead of other scholars, he would be turned down cold."
9. The Physical Problem:
In general the documents of government agencies are being
microfilmed by the Archives on the agencies' own premises, with
portable table-top cameras dating from World War II. The Archives
hope that the 35 mm microfilm can eventually be converted into Xerox,
copies. If CIA is able to do its own microfilming so much the better.
There will be no problem in handling material which is microfilmed in
batches of S to 20 thousand pages at a time, but the Archives urged
that the reels be properly identified; their problems would be reduced
if the material were properly indexed. Aperture cards would be satis-
factory, and, to the extent we could provide our own Xerox copies, we
would reduce the later workload on Archives. ,
Distribution:
DCI
Ex. Dir.-Compt.
DDP
DDI
DD/S& T
DDS
D/DCI/NIPE
OCC
OLC
D/ONE
D/S
CA Staff
Historical Staff
(Others to be added)
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