MEETING WITH (SANITIZED)

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
S
Document Page Count: 
13
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 17, 2012
Sequence Number: 
29
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
September 16, 1968
Content Type: 
MISC
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PDF icon CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7.pdf853.64 KB
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Meeting with Since the 303 Committee is a specific mechanism established by the President to implement his stated policies, it was generally agreed that the 303 papers are basic policy guidance documents which should be made a part of the CIA historical record, to be kept under CIA custody for a specified period of time, with a further review at the time they are eventually made available to the public (if ever). has in his vault the 303 Committee minutes and papers since 1963, with the exce tion of a few of the current ones which still has. writes up the minutes of the Committee meetings. Most of the documents are the signed originals and are usually filed by geographical areas and chronologically within areas. There is a complete set of the minutes filed separately and then other files of supporting papers. Some of these contain informal notations by to Rostow and others, some of which may contain important detai s, although believes that most of this material was included in the minutes. believes the 303 material about fills a 4-drawer safe. Certain of the papers and minutes involve BYMAN matters. 25X1 25X1 25X1 25X1 25X1 original papers and proposals on these matters are not in 25X1 files but are probably held by DDS&T. will discuss 25X1 these with DDSfT to determine the best method of ing. The OXCART project is one subject which the DCI specifically mentioned should be included in the Library. was 25X1 under the impression that the whole thing was isa rove a out a year ago and the project was put in mothballs but stated 25X1 that the matter still comes up occasionally. will -discuss this with Carl Duckett. has all the minutes and papers of the SIG since the .25X1 publication of NSAM 341 in 1966. This really is a State Department baby and 0 has asked Art Hartmann what they will do in this field 25X1 and he assumes that everything will be turned over to the Library. There is very little which comes up of direct concern to CIA other than for the DDI and DDP to look over papers for general evaluation. There has been little or nothing in the counterinsurgency field other than being involved in rewriting the old overseas policy paper 25X1 and SIG implementation directive last May. does not keep a complete record of the IRGs. He merely 25X1 keeps abreast of things which may eventually come up to the SIG.. It was decided that 16 September 1968 will get specific approval from 25X1 the DCI within the next day or so for inclusion of the 303 papers in the Library and then reproduction either by Xerox and microfilm can begin, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy /Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 also said he would chec k wit h) on the mat ter 25X1 of COMINT papers. was of the opinio n tha t most of such papers h ad 25X1 been returned to C a ter use. A discussion was had on whether the following types of CIA issuances would be included in the vault material going to Austin, in which case it would not be necessary for CIA to consider inclusion: Katzenbach Report 303 Papers - Rostow does not have any of these and doesn't want them. They always came back to after the President had seen them. NSAMs - would be in Presidential files. NIE's - can be dropped as they are already in the Presidential files. ONE production - already in files. USIB minutes - probably, but they don't generally don't go to the President. Check with McCafferty would help on this. Reports - also would be in the vault. CIB's - COMINT and photo reconnaissance - would probably be complete in the President's,' daily brief. OCI - Sitreps go to Rostow and President. Weekly essays published separately. Very few would go to the President. McCafferty would know about this. OER - Bomb assessments in North Vietnam. All kinds of material has come in on North Vietnam. Studies almost hourly. Is probably all in the vault. Their only sensitivity would be because of our relations with the Pentagon. Check with'McCafferty. Che Guavara - no special interest in the White House on this case. Scientific & technical reports - periodic briefs: office has a staff made up mostly of scientists who are on panels which have connections with the DDS T. Certain the technical papers do flow through and will check to see if material will go to Austin.. NIS - none of this is included that 25X1 25X1 25X1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Specially prepared reports - stated that would 25X1 know about these. Those things in the vault are only those of direct interest to the President. stated that as he saw it, the problems involved to .25X1 safeguard the materials already in the files made it necessary for CIA to consider what else to provide for Austin to make the CIA version of any important story available, and to decide what else to keep in our own files for later release. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01 930R000500160029-7 !D BOTTOM I UINCLASS,FIED I I CC NF'IDENTIAL SI r~I' i CIA e o as dmin Officer l Se UNCLASSIFIED 1 -1 CONFIDENTIAL SECRET FO RM k0. 237 Use previous editions (40) c. Constructing and operating our own Archives outside the Records Center. a. Turning all of our OSS collection over to the Roosevelt Library. b. Sub-dividing our Archives collection (6,000 cubic feet) into chronological groups to be put into the related Presidential collections. -.4. Destroying all of our old permanent records collections. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release OFFICIAL ROUTING SLIP TO NAME AND ADDRESS DATE INITIAL.', 1 _ rbie Support Services Staff 2 3 . 25X1 25X1 25X1 s 6 ACTION DIRECT REPLY PREPARE REPLY APPROVAL DISPATCH RECOMMENDATION COMMENT FILE RETURN CONCURRENCE INFORMATION SIGNATURE Remarks From this report on his visit there last week you will note was impressed with the security and controls National Archives exercises over Presidential Library files. He has ed to me informally upon a few alternative r iti p opos on; to which we will eventually have to respond, (OVER) FOLD HERE TO RETURN TO SENDER NAME, ADDRESS AND PHONE NO. DATE Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 12 September 1968 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 tort 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 hold afl 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. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 d. Kennedy. The entire Kennedy collection is in dead not even begin to be screened until'the new d it w storage, an 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 is 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 99%" 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, instrument h l e t and this problem remains to be resolved. In genera sets overall policy for future handling, including rules governing the date and manner of making presidential papers available to the, public. S. Other Donations: The archivists solicit personal papers from any person closely to dditi f on or a associated with a President. Some are still coming in 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 SECRET Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 unLl 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. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 SECEET 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 very firm policy not to allow any individual to have access to Presidential 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 5 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 Distribution: DCI Ex. Dir.-Compt. DDP DDI DD/S$T DDS D/DCI/NIPE OGC OLC D/ONE D/S CA Staff Historical Staff (Others to be added) Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 ME4DRANUUM FOR THE RECORD Stt,ttiT 9 September 1968 .`SUBJECT: CIA Materials in the White House and in e is a summary of a 90-minute conversation I had on S 1 H er b th M. Arthur McCafferty -the staff officer of the S 2.. Ever- thing in the vault is scheduled to be shipped to Austin 'I:for inclusion in the special classified section of the Johnson Library. hower and e E" Cl Iona y vault which contains all material in the White House on foreign affairs, national security, and intelligence. m epte ex wi N t' 1 securit Council who is responsible for maintaining the , n -This practice was followed in assembling the Truman, is ;:Kennedy Libraries. Even though CIA made no specific contributions to either the Truman or Eisenhower Library as such, Mr. McCafferty said "you would be absolutely astounded to know how much CIA material is in them. I think you can take it for granted that every goddam piece of paper ever sent to Mr. Eisenhower by CIA is in the Eisenhower - Library. There are probably two full safes of material in the Kennedy .,Library devoted to the missile crisis, and this certainly includes material provided by CIA." 3. At 5 o'clock on the afternoon of the assassination in 1963, the roadway outside the entrance to the West Wing was piled high . with boxes from the vault to be shipped to the Kennedy Library. This will be true again on 19 January 1969. (And it raises the question whether CIA should try to obtain permission to inspect and catalogue :the CIA materials already in the various presidential libraries. The is himself unable to go into certain safes. (E(e U11plied CIA might , m suc a p ,nating Agency. In the case of the Kennedy Library, McCafferty pointed out that even the White House staff has difficulty in getting access to material, and that the archivist in charge of the Kennedy Library .are binding on the Presidential Library and wil continue o presumably by the origi- terial is s ecifically declassified h .matter of pressing. unfinished business. 4. At the same time McCafferty emphasized that the Government's laws and regulations applying to the handling of classified material 1 t be until to be made by Walt Rostow and McCafferty implied that this is a . y genera , ) ingly large task.) The decision as to what papers in the foreign and :security fields will be made available to the next administration is White House filing system by which documents are filed according to and not by origin would make this an exceed- "ect onl 1 sub Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 SECRE1 have considerable difficulty in gaining access to the sensitive parts of the Kennedy collection.) Meanwhile the current practice is for most White House files to be kept in a central registry, except for those under the charge of Mr. McCafferty. The central registry includes only one type of material of concern to CIA, so far as Mr. McCafferty is aware. This is material on CIA's congressional liaison: for example, the monthly letter and a weekly synopsis of events relating to congressional liaison which CIA used to provide. S. As for McCafferty's vault, which he showed me, it is a room about 8 x 15 feet which contains four banks of open shelves from the floor almost to the ceiling, all stuffed full, with boxes or other material on top. All this material has every type of classification through SI. Material of higher classification is kept in safes requiring special access and one safe is reserved for material con- sidered extremely sensitive. The only material systematically broken down within a large subject is that dealing with Vietnam. The manner in which material on Vietnam is filed is illustrated by two documents he gave me and which are attached. These files contain, for example, t h Vi nam e all the assessment reports of the effects of bombing of Nort which were prepared either by t or By E and an sent to the White House. As McCafferty flipped through one file for me, the one on attitudes of the North Vietnamese leadership, I noticed papers produced by ONE and OCI, a number of CS reports from FE Division, and a memorandum signed by George Carver, along with other materials from DOD and State produced both here and abroad. It looked as if the files on Vietnam made up about one quarter of the total; McCafferty said-,that almost everything sent to the White House on Vietnam has been saved with the exception of picture boards and other products of photo reconnaissance. 6. McCafferty believes that only two of the continuing serial products of CIA are present in their entirety: the President's Dail ecial Daily Report on Vietnam. But the situation f and the S B i p e r reports on past crises are also present Mc afferty showed me two long shelves full of material on the Dominican Republic which he said included the sitreps.* The criterion for preserving these three types of material is that they have been personally seen by the Presi- dent. This same criterion dictates preservation - and shipment to Austin - of all memoranda from CIA to the President - e.g. the DCI's of 27 March 1967 on the report of the Katzenbach Committee. 25X1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP1 OT01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 -3- 7. Contrary to the impression given to the office of Security,. 25X1 the file of National Intelli ence Estimates and.Special National Intelligence Estimates is not comp ete: each estimate Tic as been s~upersede3by a rater one is usually destroyed. Other products of OINT, are present only if they have been sent to the President personally or are on a subject of particular importance at the moment. I saw several which had buckslips from the DCI to the President. ;25X1 8. The Current Intelligence Bulletin is generally kept for three mnnthc and then returned to CIA. 9. The preservation of White House copies of reports has been very selective. McCafferty estimates that 75% are estroyec and of the remainder onl a ve small number have been shown to the President. Since the report was long to provide a summary, and McCafferty obtained this necessar it y was from CIA. (Incidentally, when he selects such a report for the Presi- .dent to see he usuall asks OCI fora uick analysis of its si cance. ) 10. The practice of destroying outdated NIEs and returning out- dated CIBs represents almost the only effort of the White House staff to purge the files of old material. McCafferty and his assistant l i h y me to app e t emphasized that they have neither the manpower nor t any criterion of selectivity to documents in general once they have been put in the vault. The breakdown of Vietnam files into categories and sub-categories, only recently reorganized, is a much more systematic approach than it has been possible to apply to other materials in the vault. Thus what is preserved for posterity reflects to a considerable degree the pressure of workload and lack of opportunity to purge rather than a carefully conceived program of selection for historical purposes. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP.10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 U 11. The quantity of White i Souse material from photo reconnaissance is negligible. McCafferty believes there are no picture boards, an said readout of. overhead photography will be present only if it has been transmitted by the DCI or is included in a special report to the President. The quantity of this type of material is exceedingly limited. 12. Of FBIS material the reports on worldwide reactions to such events as the GTtassboro meeting and the Russell "Tribunal" are in the White House, but propaganda analyses are not and neither are the daily reports of FBIS. 13. Material in the White House which came from the National Intelligence Surveys consists of a few sections on Vietnam, perrhaps some on t eDoominican Republic, and maybe half a dozen other isolated sections. 14. There is practically nothing in the White House from the Forei Documents Division. 15. Special Briefings provided by CIA are in the White House only if they were pi ~~ roviae in written form. Hearings of CIA before committees of Congress are included only if the DCI provided them personally to the President. 16. The following is the situation as McCafferty understands it with respect to material bearing on CIA activities from sources outside the Agency : a. Papers produced by or for the 303 Committee are not in Walt Rostow's file, and in principle are not consider to be part of the White House collection. They have been returned to file after use, and thus even those which are still in the White Hou.r- can be considered as in the present or eventual custody of CIA. This would be true of the Trueheart Report, for example. b. Minutes and other documents of the U.S. Intelligence Board are not formally received by the White House. NSC Liaison may send them to Bromley Smith, "who reads them and throws them away". McCafferty can think of no USIB papers in his files. c. There are no PFIAB papers in the White House files, and McCafferty doubts that any = papers will be provided to the Austin Library. (We must check this with-General Taylor or 0) Special .papers such as the reports of the Knox and Eaton Panels went from PFIAB to the White House but were returned to PFIAB. d. National Security Action 'Memoranda are published by the White House and wii go to Austin, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7 25X1 e. McCafferty estimates that 98% of the papers produced by the Senior Interdepartmental Group are in the vault, but very few of those pro uce Ty the Inter e artmental Regional Groups. There is, of course, IRG material in the tiles of the in ivi a staff officers in the White House who are members of an IRG. It is not certain whether their files will go to Austin, but the answer is probably yes. It is also not certain whether the files of f . will go to Austin but again the answer is probably yes. is remains to be checked, along with the question of what materials from the DD/SF,T may be provided the Library by him or other donors. McCafferty thinks that the entire files of the Warren g . Commission are in the Kennedy Library, and that nothing affecting the Warren Commission is now in the White House except perhaps in those personal files of McGeorge Bundy which date from the Johnson Admin- istration. 17. From all this it is clear that CIA has already made, willy - Hilly, a voluminous and important contribution to the Johnson Library. In the next few days I shall circulate some observations on what we can most usefully do to round it out. We ought also to be thinking of a systematic approach to this problem in the next and future administrations, since Presidential Libraries containing everything in-,the White House vault are clearly here to stay. Coordinator, Johnson Library Project. .Attachments: 2 Memos on Vietnam Files DCI Ex. Dir.-Compt. DDP DDI DD/SFT DDS D/DCI/NIPE OGC OLC D/ONE D/S 4,.. CA Staff Historical Staff (Others to be added) 25X1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/17: CIA-RDP10T01930R000500160029-7