ACCESSION NUMBER:00000
FILE ID:96041916.LAR
DATE:04/19/96
TITLE:19-04-96  STATE RELEASES TEXT OF DOCUMENTS ON CUBA

TEXT:
(Text: 4/19 Release)  +eg  (840)


WASHINGTON -- The State Department has announced it is releasing a
list of nearly 450 documents declassified for inclusion in a planned
volume in the Foreign Relations series: 1961-1963.

The following is the text of an April 19 Department statement on the
release of the list:

(Begin text)

Release of Documents:  U.S. Policy Toward Cuba

The Department of State is releasing today a list of nearly 450
documents declassified for inclusion in a planned volume in the
Foreign Relations series: 1961-1963, Vol. X, Cuba, January
1961-September 1962, as well as a microfiche supplement. The volume
seeks to present the official, authoritative documentary record of
U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation
that took place 35 years ago this week.

Although the volume and its supplement have been in preparation for
several years, they cannot be published until 1997 because the editors
are continuing to add recently located documents that are essential to
publishing a complete record of this critical set of events in
American foreign policy during the Kennedy administration. At the same
time, the Department wants to assure that the necessary delay in
publishing this volume does not thwart public access to and use of the
many documents that have already been declassified for the volume.
Carrying out this objective is especially urgent in light of the
President's Executive Order 12958 of April 1995 aimed at making the
nation's Cold War historical record open and available as soon as
possible. The anniversary this week of the tragic events at the Bay of
Pigs is all the more reason to postpone no further the fuller access
to the relevant records.

Releasing this list of documents now is also consistent with the
recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic
Documentation at its quarterly meeting in March. The Committee, which
was established by the same October 1991 law that sets standards for
compiling and deadlines for the publication of the Foreign Relations
series, unanimously urged that the list of already declassified
documents be made public for any volumes significantly delayed beyond
the statutory 30-year publication line and not already in the final
publication process. Apart from the aforementioned Cuba volume and one
other covering the 1961-1963 period (Vol. V, Soviet Union) all of the
other volumes delayed beyond the 30 year line will be published within
the next year.

This year the Department expects to publish up to 18 or more volumes
in the Foreign Relations series, including the remaining volumes
documenting aspects of the Eisenhower and Kennedy foreign policies
together with the first installment of the volumes for the Johnson
administration. This publication schedule will eliminate a
long-standing backlog and bring the series fully within its statutory
30-year line. Measures are being put in place now to ensure that
documents declassified for inclusion in Foreign Relations volumes will
be promptly made available to the records repositories and agencies
where the original documents are located on a routine basis. Scholars
and journalists will have the earliest possible access to the most
important declassified foreign policy records.

Most of the State Department documents on the list released today are
among the many Department files turned over in recent years to the
National Archives and Records Administration II in College Park,
Maryland. The original copies of presidential and other White House
documents included in Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, Vol. X are mainly
at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts.
Because the originals of the documents declassified for the volume do
not exist as a single separate file but are located in their
appropriate archival depositories, arrangements are underway now to
facilitate public access to these documents. In the interim, the State
Department will make available a copy of the working manuscript of the
still incomplete volume at the Department's FOlA Reading Room. This
manuscript will also include the texts of those Department of Defense
and Central Intelligence Agency documents declassified thus far for
the volume but included in larger files not yet available to the
public. Neither the list released today nor the manuscript can in any
way fully substitute for the volume to be published next year with its
complete scholarly editorial apparatus.

This notice will appear on the Department of State's World Web Site
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu.dosfan.html) and will also be posted to
H-Diplo, the E-mail list for diplomatic historians. Copies of the list
of documents released today will be available at the Department Press
Office and the FOlA Reading Room. Additional copies may be requested
from the Office of the Historian (telephone (202) 663-1123; fax (202)
663-1289; E-mail histoff@ix.netcom.com). For further information,
contact David Patterson, General Editor of the Foreign Relations
series, Office of the Historian, (202) 663-1127.

(End text)
NNNN