Secrecy and FOIA
Jun 26, 2000 | News
On Friday, June 23, the National Security Archive published on the Internet a selection of recently declassified documents detailing restrictions intended to ensure that U.S. persons are not improperly identified in reports drawn from foreign communications intercepts. The documents, including formerly secret training guides and memoranda from the National Security Agency (NSA), were released under the Freedom of Information Act. NSA is the organization responsible for the interception and processing of foreign communications and other electronic signals (SIGINT) for the U.S.
Mar 23, 2000 | News
In May of 1978, the CIA’s National Foreign Assessment Center issued this comprehensive analysis of the Pinochet regime’s responses to being identified as responsible for the most significant act of international terrorism ever committed in the United States—the September 21, 1976 car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C. This eight-page assessment, classified Secret/Sensitive, addressed the impact inside the regime if “proof of Pinochet’s complicity in the Letelier slaying” came to light. At the time, the FBI had identified Pinochet’s secret police, D
Mar 17, 2000 | News
On March 17, 2000, Long Island University named The National Security Archive as winner of a Special George Polk Award for 1999 "for serving as an essential journalistic resource and for expanding access to previously classified documents" including, over the past year:
May 13, 1999 | News
WASHINGTON, May 13, 1999 — Challenging seven years of the CIA's broken promises on declassification, the National Security Archive at George Washington University today filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the CIA to force the declassification of key documents on the agency's role in the European elections of 1948 and the coup in Iran in 1953.
Jan 20, 1998 | News
Washington D.C. January 21, 1998 -- The National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras, Dr. Leo Valladares, today called on the Clinton administration to "meet its commitment" to assisting his inquiry by declassifying relevant U.S. records. In a new report made available to the press, In Search of Hidden Truths, Valladares detailed four years of "exceedingly frustrating" efforts to obtain CIA, State and Defense Department documentation on human rights atrocities by the Honduran military during the 1980s.
Oct 17, 1997 | News
The National Security Archive is leading a campaign to open secret U.S. files on human rights abuses in Latin America and the Caribbean to public scrutiny. President Clinton has stated repeatedly that democracy, human rights and respect for the rule of law are central to United States policy in Latin America. The Archive believes the release of U.S. documents on human rights should be a fundamental part of that policy. Human rights information can no longer be shielded by the system of secrecy prevalent during the Cold War.