UNREDACTED: The National Security Archive Blog

The CIA recently declassified a list of Inspector General audit reports that the agency’s IG completed between 1999 and 2013. The declassified list, which remains heavily redacted, was released thanks to an Archive FOIA request and sheds valuable light on what the IG’s office – an independent office tasked with oversight of the agency – has investigated.

The Archive filed its initial FOIA request for the list of IG reports in 2014. The first list our office received totaled, by my count, 405 reports – 276 of which were redacted. We appealed the withholdings asking for further declassification, and were recently rewarded for our efforts with a somewhat cleaner copy – with only 265 reports redacted.

The titles of the 11 IG report that were revealed thanks to our appeal are:

• CIA Incident Response and Reporting Capability,
• Technology Management Office,
• Availability and Performance of CIA Information Systems,
• CIA’s Contract Settlement Process,
• Independent Quality Control Review of Financial Audit Services,
• Joint Audit of the SRP,
• Contract Award Process for the CASES Program,
• Corporate Information Retrieval Storage (CIRAS),
• Administration of Headquarters Area Vehicles,
• The Agency’s Fund Balance with Treasury, and
• CA Program Authorized by the 17 September 2001 Presidential Finding.

Each can now be requested under FOIA or MDR (although MDR is in all likelihood the better route — and the reason why the CIA is continuing to attack MDR). The Audit ID numbers were also declassified on appeal, which will also be useful when filing.

It’s worth mentioning that the critical work performed by the CIA’s IG office is currently going undone. The CIA’s last inspector general, David Buckley, resigned six months ago, and the Obama administration has yet to nominate a replacement – delaying investigations, including the one into the drone strike that killed Warren Weinstein, an American hostage being held by Al Qaeda in Pakistan, in the process.