Richard C. Tufaro (White House Special Files: Staff Member and Office Files)

Richard C. Tufaro served as a staff assistant of the White House Domestic Council from April 1972 to July 1973. During those fifteen months, he held two principal and concurrent assignments to other organizations. The initial detail was to the Interagency Classification Review Committee (ICRC), in which he was concerned with the problems of expediting the declassification of security classified documents, and, in the second, the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism (CCCT). Tufaro performed his duties with the ICRC under the supervision of John S. D. Eisenhower; and while engaged with CCCT activities, he represented Kenneth R. Cole, Jr., Executive Director of the Domestic Council.

The materials are arranged into two series:

1. Subject Files
2. Chronological Files

The first series is larger than the second and covers the period between July 1972 and June 1973. These subject files reflect in some detail Tufaro's active participation in the working sessions of the CCCT. The correspondence, memoranda, notes, telegrams, cables, and reports of the CCCT in Tufaro's files also indicate the White House's deep concern and determined efforts to combat international terrorism. Significant topics and subjects in the series consist of highly classified and sensitive information contributed by the members of the CCCT, who provided a diverse and broad base of information and expertise in developing, evaluating, and coordinating the government's counter-response and procedures against both domestic and international terrorist attacks. Airplane hijacking and political kidnapping and assassinations are recurrent topics in this series. Approximately 200 pages of security classified and sensitive information, relating primarily to terrorism and its containment, have been withdrawn from the Subject Files.

The Chronological Files almost exclusively pertain to Tufaro's tenure with the ICRC, between September 1972 and June 1973. As the principal assistant to the Director of ICRC, he was responsible for coordinating the administration's government-wide effort to implement the provisions of Executive Order 11652, concerning declassification of national security information. A small portion of Tufaro's chronological files also shows his efforts to revise that section of the United States Criminal Code on espionage and related offenses. In keeping with the administration's policy of attaching more stringent penalties on the unauthorized disclosure of security classified information, Tufaro considered the revision necessary to prevent a repetition of what had occurred in the so-called Pentagon Papers controversy. Despite any importance the administration may have placed on the code revision, Tufaro left the administration before it was completed.