From the Ed: This our first FRINFORMSUM (Freedom of Information Summary). We plan to make this a regular feature. If you guys have any other relevant links, post ’em in the comments!
In his new memoir, Tony Blair discusses his complete reversal of his initial support for the British Freedom of Information Act. Maurice Frankel traces Blair’s arc from giving the Act his full backing to his eventual outright loathing for Freedom of Information. (Blair calls himself a “nincompoop” for his early support of the bill.) Blair’s primary criticism of FOI’s rise in Great Britain over the past decade is that FOI can be “used as a weapon” to expose political scandals. However, Frankel notes that some of these “scandals,” actually expose government corruption, as was the intention of the FOI Act that Blair initially supported.
On September 21 our own Thomas Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya will be presenting their new book, Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989, at the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center. To construct their narrative –an insider account of the end of the Cold War– Blanton and Savranskaya present freshly declassified government documents and communications from the leaders and top policy experts from the USSR, United States, and other Cold War actors.
Openthegovernment.org has just issued its annual Secrecy Report Card for the US government. The review, which aims to “push back governmental secrecy and promote openness,” finds that despite a “mixed” record on secrecy, “some indicators are trending in the right direction.”
The FBI recently declassified its file on American historian/author Howard Zinn.
Historian Richard Rhodes has written a new book —Twilight of the Bombs— documenting the recent history of nuclear weapons, focusing specifically on the last three decades as well as the future prospects of nuclear disarmament.
Finally, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus has been drumming on about Military bands –first brought to light by Steve Aftergood and featured in a recent Document Friday.
UNREDACTED: The National Security Archive Blog 