Panel Sifts the Red Tape of a Black Day

John Tunheim still remembers that November Friday in 1963 when his fifth-grade teacher muttered the devastating news.

President Kennedy had been shot.

Tunheim recalls being let out of school immediately, then sitting glued to the television the entire weekend. He remembers watching the killing of suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and the solemn ritual that marked Kennedy’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Like so many Americans, Tunheim still wonders what really happened that day in Dallas. Unlike most, however, he is working to answer that question, or at least give the public the chance to come to its own conclusion.

As chairman of the federal government’s independent Assassination Records Review Board, Tunheim and the panel’s four other members seek to remove the aura of secrecy surrounding Kennedy’s death by making public government documents related to the event.

To date, Tunheim--a U.S. District Court judge in Minnesota--and his colleagues have approved release of 14,000 documents totaling 3.7 million pages. The information includes CIA reports of Oswald’s trip to Mexico City weeks before the assassination, FBI reports on Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald on live television, the official records of New Orleans Dist. Atty. Jim Garrison’s investigation of Clay Shaw, a businessman who was the only person to be tried in connection with Kennedy’s murder (he was acquitted).

Assassination buffs may wade through the released documents at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. And it is a collection that will continue to grow--the board has about 500,000 pages of CIA and FBI documents yet to sift through.

“It’s an attempt to restore some trust among the American people in government and government’s ability to manage its secrets and records,” Tunheim said. “We can at least provide everything the government has so people who are interested can determine for themselves what happened.”

Continued public fascination over the assassination became apparent with the release of Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, “JFK,” which depicted the shooting as an elaborate plot involving several individuals, including Shaw. Partially in response to the film--the latest in a long line of conspiracy theories--President Bush and Congress created the board in 1992. In 1994, President Clinton appointed its five members.

Aside from Tunheim, they are Henry Graff, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, Kermit Hall, dean of the College of Humanities at Ohio State University, William Joyce, associate librarian for rare books and special collections at Princeton University, and Anna Nelson, a history professor at American University.

The group meets every three weeks for intense, two-day sessions. Armed with research by the board’s 28 staff members, the group votes on which government documents to make public. Voting against release is rare, panel members say; they cite national security as the main reason for occasionally keeping a document secret. On some documents, Social Security numbers and names of active intelligence agents are inked over before the papers are released.

The board also seeks privately held information relevant to the Kennedy case. Recently, it obtained and approved for release Shaw’s diaries and correspondence. Board member Nelson called this move “one more step that totally discredits Garrison’s trial and, incidentally, totally discredits Stone’s movie,” which asserted Shaw was guilty.

In another recent ruling, the board declared the famed film of Kennedy’s assassination--a home movie shot by the late Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder--to be a permanent possession of the government because of its importance. The film has been housed at the Archives for years, and with the board’s decision Congress--and possibly the courts--will have to decide compensation for Zapruder’s heirs.

“This is the single most important piece of evidence in the crime of the century,” said Tunheim. It needed to be retained as government property, he said, because “there’s always the fear with modern-day techniques that people will alter it and somehow change the course of history.”

Although board members typically reach consensus on releasing records, they don’t agree on what happened Nov. 22, 1963.

Joyce said he believes the Warren Commission--which determined Oswald acted alone--did a “very good job.”

“To date, I have not seen any compelling evidence that leads me to believe there was a conspiracy,” he said.

Nelson said that before joining the board, she accepted the commission’s conclusion, but now believes it acted hastily. Although she believes Oswald fired the fatal bullet, she thinks there is likely more to the story.

Echoing these sentiments, Tunheim said government investigators rushed to point the finger at Oswald and probably missed other leads. “From reviewing a lot of records, it’s more complex than I thought it was,” he said. “It’s a very interesting story.”

* CASTRO FEARED ATTACK: Documents show Cuban leader feared that he would be blamed for JFK’s death. A15