A place to go

[Roger Odisio]

In posting an answer in another thread the following occurred to me.  A main purpose of the 1992 JFK Act was to establish the JFK Records Collection in the National Archives as a central place, open to the public, where one could go to research what happened that day.  Everything would be there, and if something was missing, a request can be made to add it.  Everything means everything.  When defining the term, JFK record, the ARRB took care define it as broadly as possible, to "achieve the fullest historical record of the assassination and its aftermath".  To "not exclude any information that would enhance historical understanding of the event".

That's not the Collection we have at NARA today.  To quote Larry Schnapf, "the JFK Collection is a mess. It is hard to determine what is there and there remain outstanding records searches from 1998 that have been not completed".  Digitization to facilitate use, NARA says, is only now being studied.  When it was in business, the ARRB tried to collect many non-governmental records.   Apparently, however, in the 24 years since the ARRB closed, NARA has done next to nothing to keep the collection up to date, despite all the new information that has emerged. 

The ARRB asked Gerald Posner for his notes, but he refused. (hmm...)  They got information from David Lifton and Vince Palamara.  The handwritten notes of James Hosty were gotten in November 1996, a couple of months before he published his book, including notes from the first interrogation of Oswald that afternoon. The notes were buried in a cart full of information retrieved from NARA by Malcolm Blunt.  Years later Bart Kamp discovered one of the notes going thru Blunt's material.  It was Oswald's alibi as recorded by Hosty, which has focused more attention back on the Darnell film as possible corroboration. 

Has NARA asked any you here for your information?  Would you donate it to them if they did so that other researchers could benefit?  

A centralized, well organized, up to date, digitized collection of JFK records at NARA would be invaluable for future work.  As envisioned by the JFK Act.  NARA doing its job.  Perhaps that's one outcome to hope for as a result of the MFF suit.