Public Access to CRS Reports Public access to Congressional Research Service reports is mandated in the House’s Legislative Branch Appropriations Committee bill for 2018, which passed out of committee this morning. The act, if enacted, directs the Library of Congress’ CRS to make all non-confidential reports public. The topic has been subject of debate for […]
Survey results analyzed in a Secret December 20, 2012, FBI Counterterrorism Division report shed some light on the Bureau’s insights about homegrown violent extremists. The report, released to the National Security Archive’s Dr. Jeffrey Richelson in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, specifically focuses on radicalization. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to […]
Drastic Cuts Coming to State’s FOIA Shop The State Department’s FOIA shop, which is heavily reliant on Limited Non-Career Appointment (LNA) Foreign Service Officers with decades of experience in foreign policy, is poised to undergo a radical – and disruptive – shift. The National Security Archive has been contacted by sources within the department warning […]
Washington, D.C., June 2, 2017 – The Ford administration came close to igniting a constitutional showdown with Congress more than 40 years ago over demands by a House panel known as the Pike Committee for evidence of possible abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At the height of congressional pushback against the “imperial presidency” in the mid-1970s, Representative Otis G.
Now is the Time for Archivist to Call the Torture Report a Federal Record The Trump Administration reportedly is returning copies of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program to Congress. The move would effectively hide the report from FOIA and public scrutiny and comes after years of FOIA lawsuits to win access to the […]
Washington, D.C., May 3, 2017 – A Rand Corporation 1967 paper predicted many of the cyber dilemmas faced by policy makers today, and a 2017 expanded analysis of the “GRIZZLY STEPPE” hacking by Russian cyber operators disclosed key findings about the techniques the hackers used and ways to mitigate them, according to the National Security Archive publication today of 40+ highlighted primary sources from the critically-praised “Cyber Vault” at /project/cyber-vault-project.
Pollard’s Parole Restrictions Will Not be Laxed A federal appeals court rejected Jonathan Pollard’s petition to ease his parole requirements and reasserted that it acted within its rights to require Pollard to wear an electronic tracking device. Pollard is a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel in 1985 and who was granted […]
SCOTUS Won’t Hear Mugshots Case, Keeping Federal Mugshots Secret The Supreme Court left a July 2016 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which says that federal mugshots don’t need to be released under the FOIA, in place this week. Last July the appeals court ruled en banc against the Detroit Free Press and against the status quo, determining […]
Anonymous Phone Call Threatens Violence if Bankruptcy Lawyer Keeps Bothering Trump; FBI “Inadvertently” Claims Call Investigation Still Ongoing in Response to Records Request FOIA releases from the FBI raise new questions about President Trump’s business tactics, particularly when things were not going his way. The FOIA responses – to Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold and MIT’s Ryan […]
The CIA’s Homosexual Investigations In 1980, the same year the Democratic Party endorsed a gay-rights platform, the CIA issued a three-page memo on how to “ferret out” homosexuals during investigations, possibly for blackmail. MuckRock recently published the memo as part of a post of the CIA’s cringe-worthy (and insulting) practices and assumptions about the LGBT […]