Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to “The Classifieds.” Read on to learn more about how the firings at Freedom of Information Act offices undermine the legislative process, why excessive secrecy might make Booz Allen Hamilton a risky investment, and more of this week’s top secrecy news stories.

Congress’ investigative powers face existential threat

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who’s also acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and acting archivist of the United States) are just two of the administration officials who are ignoring members of Congress when the legislators request information about the officials’ agencies.

This political stonewalling, combined with the mass firings at executive branch FOIA offices, represents an existential threat to Congress’ investigative and oversight powers.

If Congress wants to stop President Donald Trump from wresting even more authority away from the legislative branch, every member should vocally defend FOIA offices. Not doing so could undermine the entire legislative process.

Read more on our website.

Deleting Signalgate messages violates records law

A lawsuit brought by the watchdog group American Oversight uncovered that the Signalgate messages were deleted from CIA director John Ratcliffe’s phone. In a court filing the CIA’s chief records officer, Hurley V. Blankenship, declared that the screenshots used to “preserve” the Signal messages and transfer them to agency systems only contained “residual administrative content” and did “not include substantive messages from the Signal chat.”

Not only does this violate the Federal Records Act, it calls into question any records retention policy that allows screenshots as a way to preserve ephemeral messages.

Who, you might ask, has a policy explicitly allowing screenshots as a way to preserve Signal messages?

That would be the Department of Government Efficiency.

DOGE FOIA lawsuit update

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper issued a good order and opinion this week in a FOIA lawsuit led by the nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington seeking DOGE records. The opinion notes that DOGE’s claims it is a Presidential Records Act entity, and thus not currently subject to the FOIA, are undermined by the executive order establishing DOGE. Cooper finds that the founding order suggests that DOGE “is exercising substantial independent authority,” which would preclude DOGE from being subject to the PRA.

Earlier in the week, Cooper also ordered DOGE to process CREW’s FOIA request at a rate of 1,000 pages a month. This might not sound like a lot, and certainly the efficiency wizards at DOGE should be capable of producing more records more quickly, but it’s double the usual production rate of 500 pages a month in most FOIA cases.

What I’m reading

Will DOGE take a bite out of this spy firm’s stock? That’s classified (The Wall Street Journal). A “substantial portion” of Booz Allen Hamilton’s contracts are with the intelligence community and classified, making it impossible for investors to predict how DOGE’s cuts may impact Booz Allen’s business. “Given this, one could reasonably argue that Booz Allen shouldn’t be a public company, because by law it can’t fulfill the normal disclosure duties of one.”

A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data (NPR). A National Labor Relations Board whistleblower told Congress and NPR that DOGE officials appear to have stolen and destroyed agency records and tried to cover the evidence of their actions. (After trying to raise concerns internally, the whistleblower received threatening notes, as well as images taken by a drone of him walking his dog.) There are a lot of disturbing elements to this story, but it’s worth noting that if DOGE is stealing or destroying NLRB data, the same thing might be happening at other agencies as well. This should increase pressure on acting archivist Marco Rubio to show he’s capable of investigating when agencies and DOGE officials destroy records.

SBA investigating staff for talking to press, former colleagues (Government Executive). The Small Business Administration’s general counsel sent a memo to agency employees in an apparent attempt to intimidate them from communicating with the press. (GovExec notes the memo “was promptly shared with reporters.”) The memo warned employees that any leaks might “run afoul” of the FOIA. It’s a sad state of affairs when agencies forget that FOIA is a disclosure statute, not a withholding one — much less one that should be twisted to bully would-be whistleblowers from informing the public.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

Transparently yours,

Lauren Harper

Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation