Intelligence and Espionage

Washington D.C.: The National Security Archive today hailed the release of more than 16,000 secret U.S. records on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington’s role in the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the advent of the military regime to power. The release, totaling over 50,000 pages of State Department, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records, represents the fourth and final “tranche” of the Clinton Administration’s special Chile Declassification Project.

Washington D.C.: Under pressure from the Clinton White House and human rights groups, the CIA has agreed to release more than 700 documents on covert operations in Chile that the Directorate of Operations had refused to declassify last August, according to the non-profit foreign policy center, the National Security Archive. The CIA documents have already been turned over to the Department of State for final processing and are slated to be publicly released on November 13.

On Friday, October 6, the National Security Archive at The George Washington University published a newly declassified United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID). This version of USSID 18, issued in July 1993, currently governs the National Security Agency’s interception of communications involving U.S. persons. Until publication of the directive, which was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act on September 20, 2000, the only version of USSID 18 available to the public dated back to 1980.

Washington, D.C., September 27, 2000 – In September 1992 the Department of Defense acknowledged the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency established in 1961 to manage the development and operation of the nation's reconnaissance satellite systems. The creation of the NRO was the result of a number of factors. On May 1, 1960 Francis Gary Powers took off from Peshawar, Pakistan on the U-2 mission designated Operation GRAND SLAM. The flight was planned to take him over the heart of the Soviet Union and terminate at Bodo, Norway.

After twenty-seven years of withholding details about covert activities following the 1973 military coup in Chile, the CIA released a report yesterday acknowledging its close relations with General Augusto Pinochet’s violent regime. The report, “CIA Activities in Chile,” revealed for the first time that the head of the Chile’s feared secret police, DINA, was a paid CIA asset in 1975, and that CIA contacts continued with him long after he dispatched his agents to Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C., 8 August – U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has overruled the CIA’s claim that it can neither confirm or deny the existence of CIA-prepared biographies of nine former Communist leaders of Eastern European countries, seven of whom are now dead. The judge last week granted the National Security Archive’s motion for partial summary judgment against the CIA’s “Glomar” claim, named after a lawsuit over the ship Glomar Explorer in which the courts allowed the CIA neither to confirm or deny information sought under the Freedom of Information Act.

Plaintiff's Original Complaint 
and Today's Court Filing
Exhibits in Support of 
Today's Court Filing

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 2, 2000 – Lawyers for the National Security Archive today filed in federal district court (in paper and CD-ROM formats) a legal challenge to the CIA’s claim that only one line out of 350 pages of internal histories can be released under the Freedom of Information Act without damaging U.S. national security.

From:  Center for National Security Studies, Federation of American Scientists, National Security Archive

Re:  Freedom of Information Act Exemption for Defense Intelligence Agency Files in S. 2549, Defense Authorization Act.

On Friday, June 23, the National Security Archive published on the Internet a selection of recently declassified documents detailing restrictions intended to ensure that U.S. persons are not improperly identified in reports drawn from foreign communications intercepts.  The documents, including formerly secret training guides and memoranda from the National Security Agency (NSA), were released under the Freedom of Information Act.  NSA is the organization responsible for the interception and processing of foreign communications and other electronic signals (SIGINT) for the U.S.

Washington, D.C., March 31, 2000 – During late 1998 and 1999, the Wen Ho Lee espionage controversy and debate over U.S. corporate technology transfers to China made the Chinese nuclear weapons program the subject of heated debate in the U.S. media and in American politics.