Secrecy and FOIA

Nacropolis: Medellín Cartel “Financed” Senate Campaign of Former President Álvaro Uribe, Colombian Senators Told U.S. Embassy State Department cables released to the National Security Archive shed new light on the U.S.’s awareness of, and concerns about, then-senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s relationship with the Medellin drug cartel. One cable shows a Colombian senator telling the U.S. […]

Luis Posada Carriles, CIA-Created “Frankenstein”, Dies at 90 CIA-trained Cuban exile and suspect in the 1976 Cuban jetliner bombing that killed all 73 people on board, Luis Posada Carriles, has died at the age of 90. The National Security Archive’s Cuba Project Director Peter Kornbluh, who has fought for the release of U.S. documents to […]

Fact-Checking Haspel’s Nomination Hearing Against the Declassified Record PolitiFact reached out to the National Security Archive’s CIA expert John Prados to help fact-check key claims Gina Haspel made during her contentious nomination hearing to lead the agency. Among the claims Prados debunked was Haspel’s assertion that the “CIA has historically not done interrogations.” The executive […]

Mulvaney Moves to Hide Important Consumer Complaint Database Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is trying to take a database intended to hold financial institutions accountable offline, ending the public’s ability to file and view complaints. The database (tagline: “How one complaint can help millions”) is currently available here. Americans have […]

Gina Haspel’s CIA Torture File The Trump administration’s nominee to be CIA director, Gina Haspel, personally supervised the torture of a CIA detainee in 2002 leading to at least three waterboard sessions, subsequently drafted the cable that ordered destruction of the videotape evidence of torture, and served as a senior CIA official while the Agency […]

FOIA Federal Advisory Committee Recs Will Help Agency FOIA Shops Pass “Common-Sense Test” An incredulous Senator Chuck Grassley told the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s Melanie Pustay this Sunshine Week that her defenses of lackluster government-wide FOIA performance didn’t pass “the common-sense test.” OIP’s support of agencies who claimed 508 compliance concerns were a valid […]

By Michael R. Lemov* & Nate Jones** This article originally appeared in the Southwestern Journal of International Law, Volume 24. INTRODUCTION John Moss was an obscure Congressman from a newly created district in northern California when he arrived in Washington D.C. in 1953.1 He had survived a razor-thin general election victory (by about 700 votes), […]

FOIA Shows Steep Rise in Military Aviation Crashes A six-month Military Times FOIA investigation shows an alarming trend – accident rates are soaring among the military’s manned warplanes. Specifically, the Times found “that accidents involving all of the military’s manned fighter, bomber, helicopter and cargo warplanes rose nearly 40 percent from fiscal years 2013 to […]

Judge Finds No Legal Basis for Commerce Dept. Attempt to Charge Hundreds of Thousands for Two Data Sets A federal judge has ruled against the Commerce Department and in favor of reporter David Yanofsky in a FOIA lawsuit targeting the agency’s attempt to charge exorbitant FOIA fees. Specifically, the court found no legal basis for […]

To celebrate Sunshine Week 2018, the National Security Archive’s FOIA Project director Nate Jones talks to the Export Import Bank about the Freedom of Information Act from a requester’s perspective.  Watch the video below: