Yesterday, the CIA issued a press release stating that the Agency “had declassified the United States Government’s six oldest classified documents.” The documents –dating from 1917 and 1918– described World War 1 “secret ink” recipes and instructions on how to open sealed letters covertly. CIA Director Leon Panetta credited the declassification of the 90-plus-year-old documents to “recent advancements in technology.” Hogwash. The documents were released because of a decade-long dogged fight by Freedom of Information Advocates who used Freedom Of Information Act requests, lawsuits, a Mandatory Declassification Review request, and finally, an appeal to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel to pry the documents into the sunlight.
Here is the full MDR request filed by National Security Counselors –that the CIA neglected to mention– that forced the release of these documents. Kel McClanahan, Executive Director of National Security Counselors told Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk that Mark Zaid of the James Madison Project tried to get the documents declassified in the 1990s but was rebuffed by the Agency. In 1998 he even filed an FOIA lawsuit to win the release of the documents. (more…)
