Secrecy and FOIA

President Obama Signs Freedom of Information Act Improvements Into Law

At 4:00 PM today President Barack Obama signed the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 (S. 337) into law. The bipartisan, bicameral bill – introduced by Senators John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, and Patrick Leahy, and supported by Representatives Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings in the House – will improve FOIA in several meaningful ways and reflects many of the findings of the National Security Archive’s FOIA audits and litigation.

Saving Government Email an Open Question with December 2016 Deadline Looming

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of the Treasury's Comptroller, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are among a handful of agencies that have already admitted they will not meet the December 31, 2016, deadline for electronic management of official government email – like Hillary Clinton's – in their mandatory, annual self-assessment report to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

National Security Archive Board Member General William Y. Smith Dies at 90

Washington, D.C., January 26, 2016 - The National Security Archive mourns the passing of Gen. William Y. Smith, one of the Archive's original board members and longest supporters, on January 19, 2016. Gen. Smith helped form the original advisory board of the Archive in the 1980s, served on the audit committee of the Archive's Board of Directors from 1999 to 2016, and played an instrumental role in multiple Archive projects, including conferences in Havana and Hanoi that dramatically re-wrote the histories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. As a young military aide, Gen.