14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA is one twisted entity and that’s been quite obvious over the past year and a half. One thing that’s added to the agency’s image is its refusal to reveal to the public just what information it has leaked on its own.
Yes, that’s right. Not all information about the NSA’s operations nowadays came from Edward Snowden’s stash of documents or from other whistleblowers, as some was leaked by the agency itself.
To keep appearances that they actually have any type of Congressional oversight, the NSA has to periodically inform the Congress when it leaks certain information, showing that not all documents that are top secret need to remain so.
Following a request in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to provide a copy of any notification to Congress that may have been transmitted by DoD in the past 12 months concerning authorized public disclosures of intelligence information, the NSA issued a response.
That’s not too difficult or too complicated to obtain from the NSA, but there’s a catch. Even if the agency leaked the information on its own, it does not want you to know what exactly that was.
Secretive until the end
“Your request has been processed under the provisions of the FOIA. The document responsive to your request has been reviewed by this Agency as required in accordance with Executive Order 13526. This document meets the criteria for classification as set forth in Subparagraph (c) of Section 1.4 and remains classified TOP SECRET as provided in Section 1.2 of Executive Order 13526. The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. Because the document is currently and properly classified, it is exempt from disclosure pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA (5 U.S.C. Section 552(b)(1)),” reads the response to the demand.
That makes absolutely no sense. The information the request was referring to has already been leaked by the NSA and the Congress has been informed of the source of the leak. However, the NSA doesn’t seem to want to share with the world exactly what leaked info comes from them.
It’s mind-boggling, really, but the National Security Agency has always been one to hide behind words, to redefine those terms that don’t perfectly illustrate what the intelligence agency does, while still using them in public and having a laugh behind closed doors at the expense of the public who believes there are some limitations to its spying activities.