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

# NSA Material at the National Archives

    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