[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Excerpt from Secrecy News



GAO PUSHES FOR ACCESS TO NSC RECORDS

Over the past year, the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the U.S.
Congress has engaged in a remarkable tug of war with the National Security
Council (NSC) over access to records concerning U.S. support for U.N.
peacekeeping operations.  Details of the struggle for access were provided
in a GAO report to Congress that was published last month "by mistake" and
withdrawn from circulation.

At the request of the House Committee on International Relations, the GAO
began an investigation in 1999 into how the Clinton Administration
determined whether to support peacekeeping activities in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone.  The GAO
project required access to records held by the State Department, the
Defense Department and the National Security Council.

"We have been unable to complete the study because of difficulties in
getting access to some of these records," GAO officials wrote in a March 6,
2001 report to Congress.

"Our [unsuccessful] experience in trying to obtain access to executive
branch records concerning U.S. decisions to support new or expanded U.N.
peacekeeping operations has impaired our ability to conduct meaningful
oversight work for Congress that is timely, independent, objective,
fact-based, accurate, and complete," the officials wrote last month.

The March 6 report to Congress provides a rather gripping account -- if
quarrels over access to government information can be gripping -- of the
clash between executive branch policymakers and congressional
overseers.  The GAO report and attachments, totaling 28 pages, document the
escalating conflict between GAO and the executive branch, leading all the
way up to a notice to the President informing him of an intent to seek
"judicial enforcement" of its demand for access.

The report was published "by mistake" on the GAO web site,  a GAO official
said, and it has been removed.  "Ordinarily, documents reporting the status
of ongoing jobs are not supposed to be posted on the web," the official
said.

However, the withdrawn report and attachments, entitled "U.N. Peacekeeping:
GAO's Access to Records on Executive Branch Decision-making" (GAO-01-440R)
were acquired by FAS and are now posted here:

    http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao-01-440r.htm

Despite the change of Administrations, the dispute with the NSC continues,
an official said today.  "Their concern is the same," the official
said.  "They want to avoid a chilling of the deliberative process in the
executive branch."

The GAO official expressed cautious optimism today that the conflict would
be satisfactorily resolved.  "I think we'll get what we need."  A related
dispute with the Defense Department was settled last month without the
threatened need for litigation.  State Department cooperation was achieved
late last year.  A final GAO report on the subject could be published in "a
couple of months."

******************************
To subscribe to Secrecy News, send email to <majordomo@fas.org> with this
command in the body of the message:
    subscribe secrecy_news [your email address]
To unsubscribe, send email to <majordomo@fas.org> with this command in the
body of the message:
    unsubscribe secrecy_news [your email address]
Secrecy News is archived at:
    http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

___________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
Email:  saftergood@igc.org

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>