US government secrecy making historical research difficult

From Al Jazeera America: While much has been made of the government’s current penchant for secrecy, few have noticed that this atmosphere now shrouds government history as well.

Working on a biography of a noted Washington journalist, I placed a routine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2011 for her FBI file. The timing of my application seemed propitious. Two years earlier, President Barack Obama had signed an executive order to speed declassification of materials and had issued an encouraging FOIA memorandum.

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ACLU sues DOJ, demands to know whether suspects were placed under NSA surveillance

From The Daily Caller: The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Department of Justice in regards to whether a criminal suspect was placed under NSA surveillance.

On Thursday, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain the U.S. government policy for notifying criminal defendants that they are being monitored by the government.

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Justice Dept. watchdog never probed judges’ NSA concerns

From USA TodayThe Justice Department's internal ethics watchdog says it never investigated repeated complaints by federal judges that the government had misled them about the NSA's secret surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet communications.

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DOJ ordered to turn over documents in Ensign probe

From TheHill.com:  The Justice Department is being forced to hand over an index of every document amassed in its criminal investigation of former Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.).

The federal court decision will grant the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) watchdog group a broad list of what documents the DOJ possesses and the reasons why Justice is arguing to withhold them from the public.

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DOJ: FBI has started to process Michael Hastings documents

From Jason Leopold at Public Record:  The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated that the FBI has likely located responsive records pertaining to investigative journalist Michael Hastings, who died in a tragic car accident in Los Angeles in June, and the agency expects to finish processing the records in about three weeks.

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