From: M. Duke Lane, 76004,2356
To: Anthony Marsh [J], 72127,2301
Date: 3/19/95, 1:58 PM

Re:	ARRB News

Copyright 1995 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The information contained in this news report may not be republished or 
redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
  
JFK ASSASSINATION
By MELISSA B. ROBINSON
 Associated Press Writer
   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to dispel notions that the government
is concealing information about President Kennedy's assassination,
an independent panel is gearing up to launch a nationwide search
for records.
   "We may debunk certain conspiracy theories because the records
aren't there to support those theories, or we might create new
possibilities," said John Tunheim, Minnesota's chief deputy
attorney general and chairman of the Assassination Records Review
Board.
   "At least we will have gotten to the point where the federal
government no longer is hiding information from the public,"
Tunheim said in a recent interview. "That's an issue of trust."
   After a slow start, the board, with a 1995 budget of $2.15
million and $2.4 million proposed for 1996, is beginning its work
of seeking out new materials related to the assassination and
reviewing records that government agencies would rather keep
secret.
   To uncover materials that might be in the hands of private
citizens, it is counting on getting leads from experts, documents
and a series of public meetings.
   "I'm prepared to see anything," Tunheim said. "What I'm
trying to do is to organize a very systematic and very detailed
process of finding every scrap of paper, every photograph, every
film. Whatever exists."
   Created by Congress in 1992 in the hopes of squelching any
public unease that the government has not divulged all it knows
about the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, the board was not appointed
until President Clinton took office. Five members, four from
universities and Tunheim, were confirmed by the Senate and sworn in
in April 1994.
   On Tuesday, the board is scheduled to hold its third public
meeting, in Washington. It met last November in Dallas, and plans a
trip to Boston to visit the John F. Kennedy Library later this
month.
   The board is considering trips to New Orleans, Miami and Los
Angeles, and is in the middle of defining an assassination record
to help set parameters for its work.
   In 1992, responding to renewed public interest created by Oliver
Stone's film "JFK," which portrayed an elaborate conspiracy,
Congress voted to compel the release of virtually all
assassination-related documents to the National Archives.
   So far, the Archives have indexed 120,000 records, with an
additional 60,000 pending for addition to the data base. After a
CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald was made public in 1993, 2,000
research requests were logged in under three months.
   One of the board's main jobs is to review records that
government agencies do not want released, possibly for national
security or privacy concerns. It can delay release, but only until
2017, the deadline set by law.
   Ultimately, the goal is to have all the records available to the
public at the archives, or possibly by computer.
   "But our focus is really on the records themselves," Tunheim
said, "to get them available to the public so that they can read
them and try to understand them for themselves."