15 February 1997: Added response message on research at NARA.
3 February 1997
This message describes access to the 5,000 items declassified by the National Security Agency under its OPENDOOR program and transferred to the National Archives: http://www.nsa.gov:8080/programs/opendoor
Return-Path: kenneth.schlessinger@arch2.nara.gov Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 13:14:04 -0500 From: Kenneth Schlessinger <kenneth.schlessinger@arch2.nara.gov> To: jya@pipeline.com Subject: NSA Material at the National Archives Dear Mr. Young: This is in response to your electronic mail inquiry of December 20, 1996, concerning National Security Agency records transferred to the National Archives. The material described on the NSA web site was transferred to the National Archives and made available in April 1996. We can supply you with electrostatic (paper) copies of select files for $0.25 per page. Please let us know which files you would like copied, and we will send you a reproduction price quote (please include your mailing address with all such requests). We ask that you limit each request to five files. Should you choose to come to Washington to do research, our records and microfilm publications are available for consultation without charge in our research room. The National Archives at College Park (Archives II), is located at 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, Maryland. If you do not have a research card, you must apply for one in the reception area. Research room hours (except legal holidays) are 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday and Wednesday; and 8:45 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Our subject matter specialists are not on duty after 5:15 p.m. The research rooms also are open on Saturday from 8:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., with a small research room staff present. Requests for records must be made before 3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; no requests can be made on Saturday. The telephone number for the Archives II Reference Branch is 301-713-7250. Ken Schlessinger Archives II Textual Reference Branch National Archives at College Park 8601 Adelphi Rd College Park, MD 20740-6001 kenneth.schlessinger@ARCH2.NARA.GOV
From frode@sp067.cern.ch (Frode Weierud)
Organization CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:19:30 GMT
Newsgroups sci.crypt,mail.cypherpunks
Message-ID <frode.855303570@news.cern.ch>
It is correct that you can order paper copies of the documents at NARA,
but there are a few obvious drawbacks. First of all the cost per page is
$0.25 instead of $0.10 when you do your own copying. Next you are limited
to 5 documents per request. As the index on the NSA Web page does not
include any information about the size of each document you have no idea
if your request is reasonable or not before you get the quote back from
NARA. The problem with this is that NARA only will copy the whole document
entry. If the archive box contains 1000 pages or more you will have to
decide on everything or nothing.
You will normally get the price quote in about three weeks and from the
moment you place the order it will take another 10 to 12 weeks for the
order to be processed. Therefore if you have the possibility to visit
NARA in person this is to be highly recommended. You will then also be
allowed to access many more archive boxes. I think an archive trolley
can take up to 20 boxes.
You are also allowed to use a laptop computer and an aproved scanner in
the reading rooms, which means that you can scan in documents instead of
queing at the photo copying machines and paying $0.10 per page. However,
you need a laptop with a big harddisk, :-)
Frode
--
Frode Weierud Phone : +41 22 7674794
CERN, SL, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Fax : +41 22 7679185
Switzerland E-mail : Frode.Weierud@cern.ch