From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:07:05 -0500
Archived: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:07:05 -0500
Subject: CIA Warming Up To Openness?




Source: Larry W. Bryant's UFOView Blog

http://ufoview.posterous.com/item-217-is-the-cia-grudgingly

February 02, 2009


Is the CIA (Grudgingly) Warming Up To Openness?

When, on Feb. 7, 2003, I submitted my FOIA request to the U. S.
Central Intelligence Agency for access to "the entire CIA case
file on 'Wendy Lee's' submission of her draft memoirs for
prepublication approval," the thought never crossed my mind that
the FOIA co-ordinator would take as long as six years to process
my request.

No wonder the Agency received the National Security Archive's
2006 Rosemary Award for FOIA laxity/non-responsiveness! See:

http://tinyurl.com/bzyjul

In a letter to me of Jan. 28, 2009, current CIA FOIA-meister
Delores M. Nelson invokes six of the Act's '(b)' exemptions to
deny me access to most of the sought-for case file.

What she did deign to provide was a copy of two legal documents
filed within the U. S. District Court for the District of
Columbia under case No. 1:03-cv-00206-TPJ: (1) the Feb. 3, 2003,
First Amendment complaint of Wendy Lee v. Central Intelligence
Agency (from the hand of Mark S. Zaid, Esq.); and (2) the July
7, 2004, memorandum and order granting summary judgment to the
Agency (under the hand of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson).

Basically, the pseudonymous Wendy Lee lost her case because the
Agency, in the court's view, has carte-blanche authority to
'classify' anything it chooses.

What's more, Lee, by having signed a pre-employment secrecy
agreement, had forfeited her First Amendment right to publish
anything relating to her CIA (undercover) affiliation without
prior Agency review/approval. Thus, her claim of official prior-
restraint censorship failed to persuade Judge Jackson that the
Agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying her
permission to publish.

I summarize this case here to point out an apparent breakthrough
in the Agency's almost impenetrable stone wall of recalcitrance
with regard to its obligation to process citizens' FOIA requests in
a competent and good-faith manner.

Can we attribute this turnaround to the fully activated, FOIA-
strengthening U.S. OPEN Records Act of 2007? Let's hope so. And
let's hope that there'll be fewer FOIA lawsuits, too - so that
some of the saved federal funds can be applied to beefing up the
various agencies' FOIA staffs.

-- Larry W. Bryant (independent writer specializing in national-
security affairs

http://ufoview.posterous.com

"... [CIA-deleted] in their telephone conversation,
suggested that we had not heard the last from Mr. Bryant."

>From an Aug. 14, 1973, CIA memorandum pertaining to the
Agency's clandestine courting of the ufological favors of UFO
researcher Richard H. Hall

http://www.hallrichard.com/newufopage.htm


See the May 17, 1990, FOIA lawsuit of Larry W. Bryant v. CIA
(Civil Action No. 90-1163; USDC for the D. C.), which
unsuccessfully sought access to the redacted portions of the
1973 memo.