The Latest

When President Obama announced last August that he would take steps to try and win back public confidence in the wake of a series of troubling disclosures by The Guardian and Washington Post about the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices he promised the public that his administration would be “transparent." …

Score one for transparency. A federal court judge on Thursday—in response to a motion I filed in July—unsealed Guantanamo warden Col. John Bogdan’s six-page sworn declaration pertaining to a genital search policy he implemented at the height of a hunger strike in April. Bogdan and Justice Department lawyers had argued …

Last month, Barton Gellman published an explosive story in the Washington Post about the NSA's widespread privacy violations, based on documents he obtained from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Gellman also wrote a companion piece to his main article that serves as a fact sheet highlighting his efforts to obtain comment from …

The Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) is the top cop that’s supposed to ensure all government agencies—including DOJ—comply with an important law: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).OIP is also supposed to make sure all government agencies—including DOJ—have implemented President Barack Obama’s January 2009 FOIA memorandum …

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just released 1,400 pages of emails and other internal records concerning the agency’s role in advising the Department of Justice and Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on changes made to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) guidelines used to collect and retain data …

Late Monday evening, I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice to obtain a copy of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA torture program.The panel spent four years "reviewing" the CIA torture program, which cost taxpayers more …

The warden of the Guantanamo Bay prison continues to make extraordinary claims about potential threats to the detention facility from enemies “foreign” and “domestic” if he is compelled to reveal information in a June 3 sworn declaration he signed about the rationale behind a genital search policy prisoners are subjected …

Last month, hours before a Senate subcommittee held a hearing on shuttering the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the White House circulated a two-page document to Congress that contained the administration's plans for closing the prison.One reason the White House drafted the document, sources tell me, was to beat back …

A few weeks ago, the nonpartisan organization Cause of Action posted a story on its website about a secret Pentagon policy that calls for certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that may generate media attention to first be approved by the Pentagon.Naturally, I was eager to find out …

Attorneys representing Guantanamo prisoners were notified by a government official late Friday night that the men who the Obama administration has determined can neither be prosecuted nor released will finally have their cases reviewed to determine whether they should still be indefinitely detained. In an email I obtained, retired Navy …