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About the Assassination Archives and Research
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AARC President
James Lesar
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The Assassination
Archives and Research Center (AARC) was founded in 1984 by Bernard
(Bud) Fensterwald Jr. and Jim Lesar, to provide a permanent
organization which would acquire, preserve and disseminate information
on political assassinations. |
The AARC's initial holdings came largely from the personal library
of co-founder Fensterwald and the documentary archives collected
by his Committee to Investigate Assassinations, which he established
in 1969. Now augmented by donations from noted authors, researchers
and Congressional staffers, the AARC collection is the largest
private archives and library of its kind.
Records released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
have been primary source materials for researchers investigating
the J.F.K., M.L.K, and R.F.K. cases for the past two-and-a-half
decades. The AARC has obtained hundreds of thousands of these
records.
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AARC co-founder
Bernard Fensterwald, Jr.
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In 1992 Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination
Records Collection Act. This mandated extremely liberal disclosure
of Kennedy assassination records. As a result of two FOIA
lawsuits pending at the time this law was enacted, the member
of the AARC Board of Directors who brought the suits was able
to force the CIA and the FBI to reprocess under the terms
of the JFK Act approximately 750,000 pages of JFK assassination
records that these two agencies had made available to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations. He donated these
materials to the AARC. In addition, the AARC has obtained
additional records from these and other agencies which were
ordered disclosed by the Assassination Records Review Board
(ARRB).
The AARC's holdings comprise the most extensive collection
of records on the JFK assassination in private hands. It has
approximately 1,500 books on assassinations, organized crime,
covert activities, and a wide variety of other subjects relevant
to the study of assassinations and related topics. Its “main
files” consist of newspaper and magazine articles, unpublished
manuscripts, trial transcripts, photographs, tapes, notes,
letters and other materials which fill some 36 four-drawer
file cabinets.
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become a member of the
AARC
Support the declassification of government records
relating to political assassination by becoming a member of the
AARC. AARC members receive:
- Discounts on CD-ROM titles
- A free 2-month subscription to the Research Annex when it's
launched, and discounted rates after that
See the membership application
for more details.
AARC
1003 K Street NW
Suite 640
Washington, DC 20001
Tel: 202-393-1921
Fax: 202-393-7310
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