Nazi War Crimes Records Disclosure: Public Law No. 105-246 (CRS Report for Congress)
| Release Date |
Oct. 16, 1998 |
| Report Number |
98-329 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Paul S. Wallace, Jr., American Law Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
Public Law No. 105-246, amends the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. ¿552) to establish
a
presumption that Nazi war criminal records are to be made available to the public. This in effect
requires all materials to be released in their entirety unless a Federal agency head concludes that the
release of all or part of the records would compromise privacy or national security interests. The
agency head must notify Congress of any decision to not release the records.
In order to help expedite the process, the law establishes the Nazi War Criminal Records
Interagency Working Group. This group will to the greatest extent possible locate, identify,
inventory, declassify, and make available to the public all Nazi war records held by the United
States. The law targets two classes of Nazi-related information (1) : (1) war
crimes information
regarding Nazi persecutions; and (2) any information related to transactions involving assets of
Holocaust and other Nazi victims. This report provides a section-by-section summary of its
provisions and will not be updated.
1. Â The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would be
amended by proposed section 4(a) of the bill which
provides for expedited processing for these two classes of information. In effect, it would appear
that this
would suspend the existing requirements under FOIA that restrict disclosure of information by
creating its
own special category of rules for two classes of Nazi-related material which would be released
pursuant to
an implied compelling need .
