A federal appeals court last week overturned (pdf) a lower court ruling that the CIA had won in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving JFK assassination records, and ordered CIA to continue processing the request.

The case involves records sought by journalist Jefferson Morley that he believes will provide new insight into the assassination.

"This decision, if the CIA respects it, will shed new light on one of the murkiest areas of the Kennedy assassination story: the CIA intelligence collection operations that picked up on Lee Harvey Oswald in the weeks before JFK went to Dallas," Mr. Morley said.

FOIA decisions against the CIA are relatively rare. The latest decision does not immediately imply any new release of records, but requires the CIA to perform a new search and to provide further justification for its opposition to disclosure.

See "CIA Loses Case at DC Circuit" in The FOIA Blog, December 7.