Does NARA provide access under FOIA to all the executive branch records housed at NARA facilities?
36 C.F.R. § 1250.8
in effectEffective: 2024-07-01(a) NARA provides access under FOIA to the records NARA creates (operational records) and records originating in the executive branch that have been transferred to the legal custody of the Archivist of the United States (archival records). The NARA Office of Inspector General (OIG) is an independent unit within NARA that controls access under FOIA to the operational records that OIG creates. NARA OIG handles FOIA requests it receives separately and independently from FOIA requests to NARA.
(b) NARA's National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), located in St. Louis, Missouri, is the repository for twentieth- and twenty-first-century personnel and medical records of former members of the military and personnel records of former civilian employees of the Federal Government.
(1) Those official personnel and medical files that have been transferred to NARA's legal custody are processed by NARA according to this part, at §§ 1250.20 through 1250.32.
(2) Those personnel and medical records that remain in the legal custody of the agencies that created them are governed by the FOIA and other access regulations of the originating agencies, which the NPRC processes under authority delegated by the originating agencies, not under the provisions of this part. Because of the intricacies of other agencies' FOIA regulations, further explanation here is not feasible. More information about the NPRC processes, including access to NPRC records, is available on NARA's Web site at http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/ and at http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/civilian-personnel.
(c) NARA's Federal records centers store records that agencies no longer need for day-to-day business. These records remain in the legal custody of the agencies that created them. Requests for access to another agency's records in a NARA Federal records center should be made directly to the originating agency. We do not process FOIA requests for these records.
(d) If your FOIA request includes a record in the legal custody of an originating agency, we forward that request to the originating agency for processing. We also provide you with notification that we have done so and with contact information for the originating agency. (See 36 CFR 1256.2 for more information about how to access records that are stored in Federal records centers.)
Source: eCFRURL: https://www.ecfr.gov/api/versioner/v1/full/2024-07-01/title-36.xmlFetched: 7/26/2026