Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, speeches, reports, legislative proposals, research files, notebooks, travel materials, campaign materials, financial and legal papers, Senate floor statements, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other papers pertaining primarily to Liebengood's service on the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (known as the Watergate Committee), as minority staff director of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as legislative counsel to Senate minority leader Howard H. Baker. Topics include the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Watergate and other aspects of the affair, scope of CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operations, renewed investigation of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Panama Canal treaties (1977), Koreagate scandal (1977-1978), Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II, Abscam Bribery Scandal (1980), Billy Carter's activities relating to Libya, and other issues during Jimmy Carter's administration. Includes a portion of Baker's papers (1975-1982)
Irene Marr made a review of the documents in 2017. “Based on my review of the Leibengood papers at Library of Congress, I recommend that the following files be opened as they contain information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Based on my review of the Leibengood papers at Library of Congress, I recommend that the following files be opened as they contain information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy.
1 document dated 1978, refers to Oswald/Nosenko/Jay Epstein
Box 31 Folder 5 Intelligence “Cuba”
1 document, “The Bay of Pigs, the Untold Story”
Box 32 Folder 7 Intelligence “The JFK Assassination”
entire folder
Box 33 Folder 5 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz”
Letters to Alexander Rourke
FBI reports on Lorenz 8/16/62
FBI cable on Lorenz 4/22/76
Folder 6 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz”
Folder 7 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz”
Folder 8 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz”
- Notes on ML being pursued by assassination writers e.g. Mark Lane
- Handwritten notes,
- Affidavit re: HSCA testimony
- List of articles being held by attorney “National Security Items”
Folder 10 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz”
- All documents, notes on Frank Sturgis and Alexander Rourke
Folder 11 Intelligence “Marita Lorenz” Undated
Entire Folder (re:ML relations with Frank Fiorini aka Sturgis and JFK assassination)
Note: I also reviewed the file on Frank Sturgis and the files on Richard Helms but they contained nothing relevant to assassination and were clearly outside our window of interest.
Irene F. Marr. Irene Marr served as a Senior Analyst for the Review Board. Ms. Marr received her M.A. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and her B.A. from Smith College.
"A person appointed to the staff shall be a private citizen of integrity and impartiality who is not a present employee of any branch of the Government and who has had no previous involvement with any official investigation or inquiry relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy" JFK Act, ñ 8 (b)(2).
Executive Directors. The JFK Act charged the Review Board's Executive Director with the duties of overseeing all of the work of the Review Board, including overseeing the review and declassification process, and serving as a liaison between the Review Board and federal agencies.
He worked as a lawyer in Nashville before becoming minority (Republican) counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. In 1974, he and Thompson co-founded a law firm in Nashville.[1] In 1975, Liebengood returned to Washington to work as a consultant for the Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities).[1][2] The next year, he became minority staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.[1] In 1980, he became legislative counsel to Senator Howard Baker.[1] Liebengood and William Hildenbrand were Baker's two leading advisors.[3]
From 1981, Liebengood became sergeant-at-arms of the US Senate; in that role, he supervised more than 1,200 employees, including 500 Capitol Police officers, 185 computer specialists, nine carpenters, and seven barbers.[1] In 1983, Liebengood stepped down to become executive vice president for federal relations at the Tobacco Institute. In 1984, Liebengood and Martin B. Gold established the lobbying firm Gold and Liebengood, which lobbied on behalf of clients such as the Chemical Manufacturers Association, Federal Express, Fiat, Martin Marietta and the Hopi tribe. In 1989, Burson-Marsteller purchased the firm, and Liebengood moved to the Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy law firm before becoming the head lobbyist for the Philip Morris Companies Inc. in 1995.[1] In 2001, he became chief of staff to Thompson, who had become a US senator; in 2003, after Thompson retired, Liebengood became chief of staff to Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate Majority Leader.[1]
On January 13, 2005, one month after retiring, Liebengood died at his home in Vienna, Virginia, of a heart attack.[1]
His son, Howard Liebengood, was a US Capitol Police officer who participated in the law enforcement response during the January 6 United States Capitol attack in 2021.[4] He joined Capitol Police in April 2005. His death by suicide at age 51, occurred on January 9, 2021, three days after the Capitol attack.[4][5][6]
I don’t know if the Howard S. Liebengood Papers were released by the National Archives on March 18, 2025 or not, but they are clearly relevant documents, as stated in no uncertain terms by Irene Marr, who reviewed them.
The National Archives stated:
In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released.
The National Archives has partnered with agencies across the federal government to comply with the President’s directive in support of Executive Order 14176.
Library of Congress, the de facto national library of the United States and the largest library in the world. Its collection was growing at a rate of about two million items per year; it reached more than 170 million items in 2020. The Library of Congress serves members, committees, and staff of the U.S. Congress, other government agencies, libraries throughout the country and the world, and the scholars, researchers, artists, and scientists who use its resources.
The library was founded on April 24, 1800, when U.S. Pres. John Adams approved the $5,000 appropriated by Congress when the U.S. capital moved from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C. It was housed within the new Capitol building, where it remained for nearly a century. However, on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, the library’s original collection of 3,000 volumes was destroyed when the British burned the Capitol as well as the White House. To rebuild the library’s collection, Congress, on January 30, 1815, approved the purchase of former president Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books for $23,950. On Christmas Eve 1851, another fire destroyed two-thirds of the collection. Many of the volumes have since been replaced.
Library of CongressInterior of the Library of Congress Reading Room, Washington, D.C.
Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1864–97) was the first to propose that the library be moved to a dedicated building.
Largely as a result of Spofford’s vision, the library’s burgeoning collection outgrew its space in the Capitol. In the early 21st century the Library of Congress complex on Capitol Hill included three buildings containing 21 public reading rooms. The Thomas Jefferson Building (originally called the Congressional Library, or Main Building) houses the Main Reading Room. Designed in Italian Renaissance style, it was completed in 1897 and magnificently restored 100 years later. The John Adams Building, completed in 1939, received its current name in 1980 to honour the president who in 1800 signed the act of Congress establishing the library. The Adams Building was built in Art Deco style and faced with white Georgia marble. The James Madison Memorial Building, modern in style, was dedicated in 1980. (That same year the Main Building was designated the Thomas Jefferson Building.) The Madison Building more than doubled the library’s available Capitol Hill space. The continued growth of the collection in a wide variety of formats during the 1980s and ’90s necessitated the off-site relocation of some materials to storage facilities in Fort Meade, Maryland, and to the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, the library’s state-of-the-art facility for audiovisual preservation.
Perhaps the Howard S. Liebengood Papers were not included in the National Archives release because they were held by Congress, not the “federal government.” It is noteworthy however that the documents held by Congress include reports from the FBI, suggesting that the FBI may also have documents that must be released to satisfy Executive Order 14176.
In the issue of transparency, of course, Congress should release these documents if the National Archives did not.
Did anybody, ever, seriously believe the CIA or Mossad, or the Federal government would tell the truth, and release everything they had in storage? Does anyone, anywhere, seriously believe that incriminating documents have not long been shredded or burned?
Did anybody, ever, seriously believe the CIA or Mossad, or the Federal government would tell the truth, and release everything they had in storage? Does anyone, anywhere, seriously believe that incriminating documents have not long been shredded or burned?
Thank you. They damn well should release them.