CIA Asks to Destroy Email of Non-Senior Agency Officials

The Central Intelligence Agency has asked for authority to destroy email messages sent by non-senior officials of the Agency. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has tentatively approved the proposal.

In an August 18 appraisal of the CIA request, Meredith Scheiber of NARA wrote that any permanently valuable material in the emails would almost certainly be captured in other permanent CIA records.

“It is unlikely that permanent records will be found in these email accounts that is not filed in other appropriate files appraised as permanent,” the appraisal said.

“There are multiple records systems to capture the actions and decisions of employees and multiple internal controls in place in the event an employee was engaged in malicious activities.”

Any “remaining email not captured in other recordkeeping systems is routine or administrative in nature; transitory; or personal in nature.”

The NARA appraisal of the CIA proposal noted in passing that “The Agency’s current email policy is to print and file” rather than to save permanently valuable email in softcopy format.

“The average career of an Agency employee is 22 years,” the NARA appraisal also observed.

The CIA proposal for email disposal authority and the accompanying NARA appraisal were announced for public comment in the Federal Register on September 17.