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.” This is FPF’s weekly newsletter highlighting important secrecy news that shows how the public is harmed when the government keeps too many secrets.

FPF-New Yorker X Space interview on Haditha massacre

Please join us Thursday, Jan, 16, at 2 p.m. EST for an X Space with New Yorker journalist Parker Yesko to discuss her reporting on the 2005 massacre of two dozen civilians in Haditha, Iraq, at the hands of U.S. Marines.

Yesko was part of The New Yorker’s investigative team that used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain key records on the massacre, including photos of the carnage that the military tried to bury. The FOIA requests also helped the team build a database of 781 possible war crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. These crimes have largely gone uninvestigated and unpunished.

The reporting takes on renewed significance in light of Pete Hegseth’s upcoming nomination hearing to be secretary of defense. Hegseth has called service members accused of war crimes “heroes” and successfully lobbied President-elect Donald Trump for leniency in their cases.

Trump may fire the archivist. She can still fight secrecy if he does

The incoming president said this week he will replace the archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan. That’s not only a bad omen for the protection of presidential records but also for efforts to limit government secrecy.

Trump made the comment during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, underscoring his ongoing frustration with the classified documents case and the National Archives and Records Administration’s decision to refer the matter to the Justice Department.

Threatening to fire the current archivist over NARA’s work to recover the records Trump wrongly took to Mar-a-Lago raises genuine concerns about retaliation and future compliance with the Presidential Records Act. But if the writing is on the wall, then Shogan should spend her remaining time in office doing what none of her predecessors have done — being candid with the public about the resources the underfunded and understaffed agency needs to survive.

Doing so won’t just benefit the historians and researchers who comb through the archive’s collections. It will help reduce secrecy, thanks to NARA’s role in government-wide declassification efforts and its mandate to ensure the public is being provided access to government information.

Read more on our website.

CIA spied on Latino civil rights movement

The CIA has released dozens of documents on Operation Chaos, or MCCHAOS, a domestic spying project targeting civil rights leaders during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

While the project targeted a wide array of anti-war and civil rights groups, this release primarily focuses on the CIA’s monitoring of Latino activists between the late 1960s and early 1980s. The declassification was made in response to a request from Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jimmy Gomez.

The documents show, among other things, the CIA’s work with universities in the Southwest to monitor campus civil rights movements. A May 10, 1969, document entitled “Cable on University of Arizona” shows the CIA worked with campus administration to monitor students who wanted more Mexican American studies classes.

Castro and Gomez also asked the FBI to release its records, but the FBI has yet to comply — even though FOIA requests have shown the FBI spied on the Chicano Movement and the Puerto Rican Young Lords Party. (Castro’s mother was surveilled by the FBI for her work with the Chicano Movement.)

More public records put behind a paywall

Ohio officials can now charge public records requesters up to $75 an hour for reviewing and redacting video footage obtained from police body cameras. Shawn Musgrave reports for The Intercept that access to this footage has been an integral part of reporting on police brutality issues.

Hiding potentially embarrassing or damning records with exorbitant FOIA fees is nothing new, and the federal government is just as guilty of it as local officials.

In one memorable example, the Drug Enforcement Administration told a FOIA requester it would cost $1.46 million to search, review, process, and print documents about the DEA’s role in the search and capture of the Mexican cartel boss Joaquin Guzman, more commonly known as “El Chapo.”

In another, the U.S. Army tried to charge a FOIA requester $300,000 to release the results of water tests at military installations for a dangerous contaminant that is linked to cancers and other illnesses.

Whether the records are federal or local, they should be public, not hidden behind a paywall to prevent reporting on important issues.

What I’m reading

Nazi ties to Credit Suisse ran deeper than was known, hidden files reveal (The Wall Street Journal). Secret Credit Suisse files show that the Swiss bank may have maintained Nazi-linked accounts and hidden that fact from investigators for years. The U.S. Senate Budget Committee, which has jurisdiction over the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, began investigating the issue in 2023 after Credit Suisse fired independent ombudsman and former U.S. prosecutor, Neil Barofsky. Barofsky had been hired by the bank to find “information on possible Nazi clients that hadn’t previously been disclosed.” He has since been reinstated and told the Senate he expects to issue his final report in early 2026.

Watchdog finds signs politics drove Trump DOJ’s probes of pandemic nursing home deaths (Politico). A Justice Department inspector general report found that Trump officials “violated department policies governing interactions with the press” by leaking information about investigations into pandemic-related deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey. IG Michael Horowitz determined this may have been an attempt to sway the 2020 election.

The private donors behind Trump’s transition could set a troubling precedent (Politico). Trump has refused federal funds in his presidential transition committee, relying instead on private donations. This allows Trump to avoid disclosure rules and means that there is no limit on contributions. Trump’s inaugural committee, which is separate from the transition committee, has raised over $150 million. Whatever is not spent on inaugural activities will go toward The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc., which was set up after ABC agreed to donate $15 million to the Trump Library. As I’ve written before, don’t assume the money will go towards a traditional presidential library; it could also be spent on private foundation and museum space, whose use is entirely up to Trump.