Mar 3, 2008 8:00 am US/Eastern
New JFK Materials Could Go To Dallas Museum
DALLAS, Texas (AP) ―
The Dallas County district attorney says he probably will donate long-hidden items related to the assassination of President Kennedy to The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.
Craig Watkins Jr. said he will not make a final decision until next week.
"This is where I live, this is where it happened, and I think it would be good for tourism and good for the local economy to keep the documents at The Sixth Floor Museum," Watkins said.
Watkins presented the items at a news conference last month.
They include a purported transcript between Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and his killer, nightclub owner Jack Ruby; a leather gun holster that held the gun Ruby used to shoot Oswald; brass knuckles found on Ruby when he was arrested; and a movie contract signed by Henry Wade, then Dallas County's district attorney.
Watkins said investigators told him about the contents of the blue, two-door safe shortly after he took office in 2007.
A federal judge who said he was speaking as a private citizen recently urged Watkins to donate the thousands of pages of JFK-related materials to the National Archive's Kennedy Assassination Collection in College Park, Md.
The National Archives' JFK collection "is a treasure trove of information, preserved under ideal conditions and accessible to the public," U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim wrote in a Feb. 22 letter to Watkins.
During the 1990s, Tunheim was chairman of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board established by Congress to collect all previously undisclosed records related to the assassination and assess their value.
Tunheim argued against the documents going to The Sixth Floor Museum.
"I have always been concerned that it may not be a proper archival facility, particularly for documents, and may not continue into perpetuity," he wrote.
"What will happen to the records at the Sixth Floor Museum in the long term, I do not know."
Nicola Longford, the museum's executive director, said its storage facilities are equal to any in the country.
"I am surprised by Judge Tunheim's concern about the long-term viability of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza," Longford said in an e-mail.
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