NARA 9-11 Commission Records - Released Jan 14 2009

About the 9/11 Commission Records
During the course of its work, the 9/11 Commission created thousands of pages of records, and reportedly had access to over 2 million pages of records from various Executive agencies. The Commission received 1.4 million pages, but others were simply reviewed by Commission staff members while at the offices of the respective agencies.

After the 9/11 Commission completed its work in July 2004, its records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. NARA was given authority to make them public in 2009, and on January 14 of that year, 391 boxes were released; approximately 35% of the textual records. However, many of the records in this 35% have not yet been made public; in place of the records are Withdrawal Notices, which identify the record and type of classification or exemption. In addition, many of the pages available to the public have redactions.

Of the remaining 65% of the collection, NARA is only processing records by request. This is somewhat complicated, as NARA does not have a comprehensive index of the collection's contents. Educated guesses can be made as to what records or types of records NARA has, but in the released records are various indexes of records submitted to or received by the Commission, which can aid in identifying certain records, or types of records.


 * ' NOTE: Some file names in this release are rather long, and Windows may have an error when trying to open them; this problem can be minimized/eliminated by moving the folder containing the entire set higher up in the directory, or renaming problem file names.

Data
  

About the 9/11 Commission Records at 911Datasets.org
911Datasets.org hosts a torrent file of over 50,000 pages, in pdf format, of 9/11 Commission Records, and NARA Withdrawal Notices. These were scanned at NARA by Erik Larson, a HistoryCommons.org contributor. Additional pages will be added as records are released and scanned.

About the Folder/File Organization
The organization of the files in the torrent file follows the Finding Aid published by NARA (see About folder in the torrent file, or Links below). The NARA Finding Aid is essentially an outline organized by 'Series, Box number, Folder name'. The Finding Aid Table of Contents lists the name of each Series. The main folders in the torrent are named after the Series, i.e. the staff that created or held the records. In these folders are folders labeled for the boxes the records came from. Folders were not created to correspond to the folders in the boxes; as each file name follows the Series-Box-Folder system, the files group themselves by Folder name. (see below)

About the .PDF File Names
To help keep the files organized and easily sourced, when scanned they were given a file name which follows the Series-Box-Folder system. The first 2 letters, or letter and number combo refers to the Series (T8 = Team 8). The next letter/number combo refers to the box number in that series (B5 = Box 5). The next bit of text exactly or closely matches the folder name in that box (for instance, NORAD Press Release Fdr). The text following that is a brief description of what the file contains. Some of the files have 3 digits at the end of the name; these are added automatically by the scanning application, and are not related to the documents.

NARA's website hosts a series of 1200+ Memoranda for the Record (MFR). The torrent includes MFRs that were not included in the NARA series, as well as different versions of ones that were. In addition, this torrent includes all of the MFRs from NARA's site. MFRs downloaded from NARA's website follow this naming system; 'MFR NARA- Team- Affiliation- Name- Date- url extension'. The 'url extension' is the last 5 numbers of the NARA url; the primary url for the MFRs at NARA follows this system: http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00000. To find, at NARA, any of the NARA MFRs in the torrent file, simply replace the 00000 with the 5 digits at the end of the file name.


 * NOTE: Some file names are rather long, and Windows may have an error when trying to open them; this problem can be minimized/eliminated by moving the folder containing the entire set higher up in the directory, or renaming problem file names.

Links
The files in the 9/11 Commission Records torrent are also available online; if you cite a record in published material, please find the record here, and reference the url at:
 * Scribd.com/911DocumentArchive is managed primarily by Erik Larson and Kevin Fenton, who are also contributors to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at HistoryCommons.org. 9/11 Commission records are being used as sources for the Timeline, but HistoryCommons.org does not own or control Scribd.com/911DocumentArchive
 * http://www.scribd.com/911DocumentArchive


 * Kevin Fenton has been reviewing the records and blogging them at HCGroups.Wordpress.com
 * http://hcgroups.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/911-commission-documents-masterlist/


 * Main NARA 9/11 Commission Records site:
 * http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/


 * 9/11 Commission Series - descriptions of staff focus and the types of records:
 * http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/commission-series.html


 * Finding Aid for the 9/11 Commission Records at NARA:
 * http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/finding-aid.pdf


 * 9/11 Commission Memoranda For the Record (MFR) at NARA:
 * http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/commission-memoranda.html


 * Official 9/11 Commission site, frozen and maintained by NARA:
 * http://www.9-11Commission.gov