16 September 2010

A sends:

A SMATTERING OF NSA REPORTS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

The National Security Agency has a longstanding historical program that has
produced hundreds of historical monographs, papers, brochures and oral
histories.  Here are a smattering that are available upon request.

A Reference Guide to the Selected Historical Documents Relating to the
National Security Agency Central Security Service 1931 - 1985, Ft. Meade, MD
1986

The National Security Agency Scientific Advisory Board, 1952-1963

General and Special-Purpose Computers:  A Historical Look and Some Lessons
Learned, 1986, by Douglas Hogan

It Wasn't All Magic

NSA's Telecommunications Problems, 1952 - 1968, by Arthur Enterlin, 1969

The National Security Agency and the EC-121 Shootdown

The Suez Crisis:  A Brief COMINT History

A Collection of Writings on Traffic Analysis

NSA's Involvement in U.S. Foreign SIGINT Relationships Through 1993

Presidential Transition 2001:  NSA Briefs a New Administration

The Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of NSA:  1940
- 1952

The Foreign Missile and Space Telemetry Collection Story - The First 50
Years:  Part One:  The 1950s and 1960s.

==

Here's the address:

National Security Agency
Declassification Services (DJ5)
Suite 6884, Bldg. SAB2
9800 Savage Road
Ft. George G. Meade, MD, 20755-6884

Important Note:  These documents are available from the NSA with a request
letter citing the Mandatory Declassification Review provisions in Section
3.5 of Executive Order 13526.  It can be as simple as writing:  I hereby
request Mandatory Declassification Review of the following document.

However, these documents are not likely available under the Freedom of
Information Act.  This may seem odd, because why would the document be
available following a declassification review for an MDR rather than for a
FOIA request?

In fact, I am told that FOIA requests for classified documents are rarely
successful while MDR requests for the very same documents are usually
successful if the requester follows a process of appealing first to the
agency itself and then again to a panel called ISCAP.

Agency classification reviews under FOIA are often cursory or nonexistent,
while Mandatory Declassification Reviews are typically more careful because
the agency is aware that the results might be scrutinized by ISCAP.  In
fact, if a FOIA appeal on a classification issue is brought to court, the
court will typically defer to agency decisions and decline to examine the
matter in camera, probably because classification decisions are deemed the
province of the executive branch.

So, if you request these documents under MDR, and at the proper time appeal
to the agency and then appeal to ISCAP, you will probably get the item you
seek, but if you file a FOIA request, you would not get that very same item.