CIA Backs Down on Deciding What’s Newsworthy

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Faced with a lawsuit and years of precedent, the CIA backed off its decision to judge the “newsworthiness” of each FOIA request made by the National Security Archive before granting a fee waiver. The Archive won media status for its requests in a 1989 lawsuit. Recently, the agency refused to grant the waiver, arguing the information sought was not newsworthy. “This whole dispute shows how easy it is for agencies to harass the news media when they want to and how it can delay a FOIA request,” said Meredith Fuchs, the Archive’s general counsel. (9/15/06)