Assassination Archives and Research Center

918 F St., NW

Washington, D.C. 20004

(202) 393-1921

The Digitized A.A.R.C.

CD ROM Development Proposal

This presentation is a preliminary proposal for a project to organize and digitize the JFK assassination holdings of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (A.A.R.C., pronounced "Ark"), a non-profit, tax-exempt organization located at 918 F St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004. Its telephone number is (202) 393-1921.

The Assassination Archives and Research Center was co-founded in 1984 by two Washington attorneys, James H. Lesar, Esq., who has long served as its President, and Bernard Fensterwald, Esq. (deceased), for the purpose of establishing a permanent archive to "....acquire, preserve and disseminate information" that would increase the public's awareness, understanding and knowledge of politically motivated assassinations.

From its inception, the A.A.R.C., in performance of its mission, has been renowned as housing the world's largest private archive devoted to that body of literature, including government records, which pertains specifically to political assassinations in general, and, in particular, of our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. To enable its members to remain well-informed, and abreast of relevant developments, it publishes a newsletter called the A.A.R.C. Quarterly.

Since its founding in April 1984, the A.A.R.C. has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as an educational, 501 (C)(3), tax-exempt organization. Its Employer Identification Number is 52-1354369, and donations in support of its work are tax-deductible under Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code.

The aims of this project are to: 1) implement the goals of the A.A.R.C.'s founding mission and 2) serve the public interest by providing public access to newly released government records. The records which comprise this collection had, for over 35 years, been systematically suppressed by various agencies.

Implementation of this project will achieve not only the A.A.R.C.'s founding mission, but would also fulfill the intent of the United States Congress as signified by its unanimous enactment of the "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992" (Public Law No. 102-526). In compliance with the mandate, as set forth and expressly defined in that legislation, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA.), on December 28, 1992, formally established the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

From August 1993 to the present, a wide range of agencies have released their records to the Collection officially housed in the National Archives, which has burgeoned to over 400,000 records, comprising some 4,500,000 pages.

The formal procedure of records release was administered by the five members of a quasi-executive civilian board of review, as had also been stipulated in the Records Collection Act, which entity was designated the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board (A.R.R.B.). An amendment in 1997 extended its term, by an additional year, until September 30, 1998.

Prior to their formal release to the National Archives all "assassination-related" records were subject to formal review by the Review Board, and its full-time staff of thirty employees. Upon their release to the National Archives, photocopies of all records in the Collection became available to the public at-large, and are sold on-site where the Collection is housed, i.e., the N.A.R.A. facility in College Park, Md. (known as "Archives II"), for the price of 10 cents per page if copied on-site by an individual researcher, or 25 cents per page, if sent via postal delivery.

The keystone of the project has, from its conception, derived from the fact that, under the terms of an exclusive agreement, negotiated at the outset of the process with the curator of the Records Collection in the National Archives, the A.A.R.C. has obtained duplicates of all 400,000 records released to N.A.R.A. in accordance with the Act, which officially constitute (in their entirety) the "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection." The A.A.R.C. also possesses numerous other, large and pertinent, archival collections. It sells photocopies of all of its holdings, including those made from the official Collection, at a (members only) rate of 12½ cents per page.

Due to the sheer volume of the entire Collection, active participants in the "research community," not to say the interested public, are as yet unfamiliar with most of the records. Considering the sheer volume of newly declassified document stored in boxes at the A.A.R.C., it becomes obvious that research and analysis, has just barely begun.

The availability and "full disclosure," of long-suppressed assassination-related records has yet to be translated into their unfettered accessibility. The purposes of this project are to 1) accelerate the rate and 2) improve the process by which records in this Collection are made accessible to the research community and the general public, and to remove the constraints which impede access to all of these records.

In the public interest the primary focus of this project will be on developing and achieving the means, whereby accessibility of those records which comprise this Collection, will be greatly enhanced, and brought up-to-speed with the most current technology of the "Information Age" for use by students, researchers and scholars. This project will provide an invaluable resource for the research community, many of whose active participants are dedicated to research and analysis, and have embraced a commitment to increasing the public's awareness, understanding and knowledge of politically motivated assassinations, especially of our country's 35th President.

The proposal which follows is necessarily short, high-level and very preliminary. It presents a multi-phased plan which will provide a blueprint for an ongoing endeavor to provide access to documents as they are released.