Secrecy and FOIA
Mar 14, 2016 | News, FOIA Audit
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of the Treasury's Comptroller, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are among a handful of agencies that have already admitted they will not meet the December 31, 2016, deadline for electronic management of official government email – like Hillary Clinton's – in their mandatory, annual self-assessment report to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Jan 26, 2016 | News
Washington, D.C., January 26, 2016 - The National Security Archive mourns the passing of Gen. William Y. Smith, one of the Archive's original board members and longest supporters, on January 19, 2016. Gen. Smith helped form the original advisory board of the Archive in the 1980s, served on the audit committee of the Archive's Board of Directors from 1999 to 2016, and played an instrumental role in multiple Archive projects, including conferences in Havana and Hanoi that dramatically re-wrote the histories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. As a young military aide, Gen.
Sep 16, 2015 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., September 16, 2015 - Today the CIA and the LBJ Library are releasing online a collection of 2,500 declassified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Aug 19, 2015 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., August 19, 2015 – President Gerald Ford was "offended" and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger "almost blind with rage" over Israeli negotiating behavior in 1975, according to newly released Kissinger telephone transcripts obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and posted today by the National Security Archive.
Aug 1, 2015 | Briefing Book
The Washington Post article "America classifies way too much information - and we are all less safe for it" By Tom Blanton July 31 at 8:06 PM Tom Blanton is director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Warning: If you hold a security clearance, reading this column could expose you to information that potentially violates your security agreement. Reading this column will certainly expose you to information that is currently classified by some securocrats, though not by others.
Jul 20, 2015 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., July 20, 2015 - Forty years ago this year, Congress’s first serious inquiry into CIA abuses faced many of the same political and bureaucratic obstructions as Senate investigators have confronted in assessing Intelligence Community performance since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Jul 17, 2015 | News
Washington, D.C., July 17, 2015 - In an important victory for transparency and corporate accountability, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has ruled that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should release to the National Security Archive some 9,257 pages of records produced by Chiquita Brands International to the SEC as part of an investigation of the company’s illegal payments to a Colombian terrorist organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group responsible for egregious acts of violence during Colombia’s civil war.
Jun 29, 2015 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C., June 29, 2015 – Long before Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities – based on gas centrifuge technology – became the center of international negotiations, the U.S. tried to deny that same technology to any country that sought it. In 1954, Washington prohibited a company in occupied Germany from selling gas centrifuges to Brazil, according to declassified documents published today for the first time by the National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP).
The National Security Archive and Historical Associations Win Lawsuit for David Greenglass Testimony
May 19, 2015 | News
Washington, D.C., May 19, 2015 - The National Security Archive together with leading U.S. historical associations today won a petition for the release of key remaining grand jury records from the prosecution of accused spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were indicted in 1951, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union, and executed in 1953. In today's ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K.
Apr 24, 2015 | Briefing Book
Washington, D.C. April 24, 2015 - The nuclear inspection agency that is central to the current Iran negotiations is flunking international transparency norms, according to a report posted today by Freedominfo.org and the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault. Key documents about International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proceedings, found in various national archives and private collections but closed at Agency headquarters in Vienna, are included in today's posting.