While at the CIA, William Barr drafted letters calling for an end to the Agency's moratorium on destroying records

While at the CIA, William Barr drafted letters calling for an end to the Agency’s moratorium on destroying records

Decades before he was Attorney General (twice), Barr served in the Agency’s Office of Legislative Council in the wake of the the Church Committee hearings

Written by
Edited by Michael Morisy

A memo uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives shows that during his time at the CIA’s Office of Legislative Council, current Attorney General William P. Barr drafted letters calling for the end of the moratorium on destroying records imposed on the Agency ahead of the Church Committee hearings.

Barr, who served in the OLC from 1973 to 1977, frequently appears in the OLC’s journal from that period, usually going by the far more familiar “Bill.”

The full memo and accompanying letter signed by then-CIA Director George Bush is embedded below.


Image in the public domain by the U.S. Department of Justice via Wikimedia Commons