United States and Canada

Washington D.C., June 26, 2008 - Responding to a petition filed in January by the National Security Archive and several leading U.S. historical associations for the release of grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, federal prosecutors in New York conceded that a substantial portion of the grand jury materials could be made public after more than 55 years.

Washington D.C., June 11, 2008 - The National Security Archive’s General Counsel today warned that while “the establishment of trusted pathways for information is obviously essential to coordination amongst federal, state, local and tribal authorities, and private parties, those pathways are just as susceptible to manipulation and failure as individual agencies that jealously guard their secrets and turf.” The Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment of the House Committee on Homeland Security, chaired by Representative Jane Harman, asked for the Arch

Washington DC, May 14, 2008 - The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is overwhelmed and behind the curve, facing huge increases in both electronic records and classified records, according to Congressional testimony today by National Security Archive director Tom Blanton. The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, chaired by Sen.

Washington DC, May 8, 2008 - Today's Washington Post devotes the cover of its Style section and a full inside page to the National Security Archive, which the Post calls "the house that FOIA built and a mecca for document buffs." For the full text, photos and graphics, see the article on washingtonpost.com. Reporter Peter Carlson calls Archive staff "a good advertisement for the dubious proposition that spending your entire adult life poring through government documents has a fountain-of-youth effect."

Washington DC, May 7, 2008 - The National Security Archive's Meredith Fuchs was featured May 5 in a Fox-5 News (WTTG) expose about the FBI's mismanaged secrets. "The Fox News report would make anyone concerned about how well the FBI finds its own information for use in its investigations," commented Meredith Fuchs.

Washington D.C., May 6, 2008 - The White House yesterday admitted to a federal magistrate judge that it has no computer back-up tapes with data written before May 23, 2003, and that it cannot track the history of individual hard drives within the White House system that may contain missing e-mails. The White House filing responded to an April 24, 2008, order from Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S.

Washington, D.C., April 30, 2008 - The U.S. Air Force expected to use nuclear weapons against China during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958, but President Eisenhower required the Air Force to plan initially to use conventional bombs against Chinese forces if the crisis escalated, according to a previously secret Air Force history obtained from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and posted today by the National Security Archive. Eisenhower's instructions astounded the Air Force leadership, but according to Bernard Nalty, the author of one of the studies released today, U.S.

Washington D.C., April 24, 2008 - Responding to the National Security Archive's motion in the pending White House e-mail lawsuit, Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today ordered the White House to provide "precise information" about the users of the e-mail system from 2003 to 2005 and how many of their hard drives still survive today.

Today, the White House sought clarification from the court concerning its ability to restore missing records from backup tapes that are currently being preserved. The White House inquiry comes as the National Security Archive continues to await a ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on its pending motion to extend an e-mail preservation order against the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and to depose relevant witnesses about the state of the White House's e-mail archiving system.

Washington DC, March 19, 2008 - As if the sub-prime credit crisis was not enough, the U.S. Treasury Department today won the fourth annual Rosemary Award for the worst performance by a federal agency under the Freedom of Information Act. Given annually by the Emmy- and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Rosemary recognizes outstandingly bad responsiveness to the public that flouts the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act.