The Bring Our Heroes Home Act creates a system to find, preserve, and publicly release government records about missing military personnel and civilian employees who disappeared since December 7, 1941. The law establishes a special collection at the National Archives where all these records will be stored and made available to the public, particularly to families trying to learn what happened to their loved ones.

The act sets up an independent Review Board made up of five members appointed by the President with Senate approval. This board's main job is to review records that government agencies want to keep secret and decide whether those records should be released to the public or kept hidden for legitimate national security reasons. Government agencies have strict deadlines to find and send copies of all relevant records to the National Archives—they must start within 270 days and finish within one year. Agencies also have to certify under penalty of perjury that they've done a thorough search.

The law strongly favors releasing information. Records that were already public before this law passed cannot be hidden again. Any records more than 25 years old must be released unless they involve active military operations, intelligence sources, foreign relations, or weapons of mass destruction—and even then, only if the harm from releasing them clearly outweighs the public's right to know. After ten years, all records must be released unless the President personally certifies that keeping them secret is absolutely necessary. The Review Board will review postponed records every five years to see if they can finally be released. The board itself will shut down four years after it's established, but the National Archives will keep the collection available forever.