Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)

The public furor caused in the wake of the film JFK was directly responsible for Congress' passing the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. In order to implement this sweeping order to speedily identify and declassify JFK assassination records, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created.

The ARRB got underway in 1994 and remained in existence until the Fall of 1998, though some further declassifications have continued since the ARRB's demise. During the period of the ARRB's existence, a few million pages of documents were declassified.

Despite inevitable disappointment by those desiring a new investigation, most researchers acknowledge that the Board acted fairly aggressively in dealing with recalcitrant government agencies. Certainly the scope of documents declassified during the 1990s, aided no doubt by the end of the Cold War, was unprecedented in modern American history. The ARRB defined assassination records broadly, and some CIA and military records have illuminated U.S. foreign relations in the 1960s, including the early course of the Vietnam War and U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The ARRB generated its own files, which include a Final Report, deposition transcripts, internal memoranda, transcripts of public hearings, and more. Some of these materials are reproduced herein.