Secrecy and FOIA

Washington D.C., March 19, 2025 - On the day of President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961, “47 percent of the political officers serving in United States embassies were CAS”—intelligence agents working under diplomatic cover known as Controlled American Sources, White House aide, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. reported in a Top Secret memorandum on “CIA Reorganization.” In the U.S. Embassy in Paris, 123 “diplomats” were actually CIA undercover agents; in Chile, 11 of the 13 Embassy “political officers” were CIA undercover operatives.

Washington, D.C., March 12, 2025 – The acting executive secretary of the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday night ordered the destruction of classified records and personnel files, according to the March 10 email reported by The Guardian, The New York Times, and other outlets.

Washington, D.C., December 6, 2024 - Yesterday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that he has asked the United States to expedite the declassification of archival records on the 1985 Palace of Justice case.

Washington, D.C., November 21, 2024 - The National Security Archive filed suit in federal court today to contest the estimated 12-year backlog of Freedom of Information requests for presidential records held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Washington, D.C., November 1, 2024 - A recently declassified “after-action” report from a 2002 war game “triggered internal warnings that the U.S. military was vulnerable to low-tech warfare,” according to an article in this week’s Washington Post written by National Security Archive fellow Nate Jones.

Washington, D.C., October 18, 2024 – National Security Archive director Tom Blanton reflects on 40 years of working “to dislodge and declassify U.S. government secrets” in the latest edition of “In the Room,” a podcast produced by veteran CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.

Washington, D.C., August 8, 2024 – On the week of the 79th commemoration of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the National Security Archive today publishes a fascinating new collection of papers from the office files of Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort during World War II to develop and produce the world’s first nuclear weapons.

Washington, D.C., July 23, 2024 - A major report on the current state of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently released by the National Coalition for History (NCH) includes a critical assessment of the state of declassification: “For the sake of accountability and a fuller historical record, NARA needs more funding so it can make steady progress in reviewing and declassify

Washington, D.C., July 16, 2024 - On 16 July 1945, 79 years ago, the United States, under the Manhattan Project, staged the first test of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexican desert. The first trial of a plutonium implosion weapon, the explosion on the ground produced radioactive fallout contaminating over 1,100 square miles of the state, although some debris spread as far north as Canada.