Electronic Frontier Foundation Suing to Win Release of Documents on Intelligence Malfeasance
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Related subjects: Congressional Oversight, Executive Powers, Rendition & Ghost Flights, U.S. Law, U.S. Politics, Warrantless Wiretaps Comments Off
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is filing a federal lawsuit to force release of documents the intelligence community has refused to turn over in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. US intelligence agencies keep records of internal reports and investigations of alleged wrongdoing, and are obliged to report that wrongdoing to the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), but may have failed to do so in recent years.
The IOB is a body made up of private citizens, with top-level security clearances, who are tasked with overseeing the conduct of the intelligence communities, including examining all internal reports of alleged misconduct. The IOB reports to the president, and is meant to be an independent oversight body, providing important information about the activities of the intelligence community that may raise legal or diplomatic concerns.
The CIA is among the agencies that failed to respond to the EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for copies of the reports. Given the unfolding controversy over the CIA’s apparent failure to notify Congress of a secret agency assassination program, the withholding of these documents takes on even greater importance, according to EFF lawyer Nate Cardozo.
“If the CIA hasn’t been reporting these types of activity to Congress, which apparently they haven’t, then who are they reporting it to?” Cardozo asked. “If this is only body for the intelligence oversight, whether they are actually filing these reports is a good question.”
The EFF has been among the groups fighting a fast-mounting culture of government secrecy that many believe allows —whether intended to or not— persistent illegal acts and wrongdoing by agents too-little constrained by legal checks and balances. In 2008, it succeeded in helping the Internet Archive defeat the unilateral lifetime gag order associated with a so-called “National Security Letter” (NSL) demanding the release of documents that might otherwise be protected under the 4th Amendment and statutory privacy protections.
Recent tensions between the CIA and Congressional leaders culminated in the release of information from a classified hearing with CIA director Leon Panetta, in which the CIA director testified that his agency had systematically withheld information about a major counter-terrorism operation —allegedly involving covert assassination squads (illegal under US and international law)— from Congress, for 8 years.
In February 2008, EFF sued for release of all intelligence agency misconduct reports to the IOB. Many remained concealed, prompting a new FOIA request, which also has not been filled in the required time. The digital rights watchdog is now naming more federal agencies in one suit than ever before, including the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Homeland Security, the State department, and the Department of Energy.
They have also demanded release of documents from the office of the Attorney General, as part of an effort to ascertain whether any misconduct reports were referred to the Dept. of Justice for prosecution and whether any of those prosecution requests were dealt with, ignored or pursued by officials at the Dept. of Justice.
According to Wired:
Some agencies, such as the Department of Energy, have filed reports that are illuminating, such as reports of lost laptops. The NSA, on the other hand, returned several years worth of reports, but the pages were so heavily blacked out as to make them useless, according to Cardozo.
The Intelligence Oversight Board forms a part of the broader Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board, which is currently not staffed. The oversight boards were stripped of authority by Pres. George W. Bush, who in 2008 ordered that they no longer have the power to oversee issues of potential prosecution. The EFF and other groups want to know if such orders were part of a “hear no evil” policy of the former administration, or whether they were part of a deliberate cover-up effort that could conceal more wrongdoing.
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