Nuclear Weapons

National Reconnaissance Office Yields to FAS Lawsuit

12.21.06 | 2 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

A government attorney indicated yesterday that the National Reconnaissance Office will cease to oppose a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists for unclassified NRO budget justification documents, and that it will provide the requested records as early as next week.

Last July, a federal court ruled (pdf) in favor of FAS and told the NRO that the budget documents are not “operational files” that would be exempt from processing under the FOIA. In September, the NRO filed a notice of appeal (pdf) seeking to overturn the court order.

But this week, after FAS filed a motion to compel the NRO to comply with the order, the agency said it would withdraw its appeal and provide the document.

The case will have a favorable ripple effect throughout the intelligence community, since other intelligence organizations such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency also claim that their budget records are “operational files” that are exempt from FOIA processing. Now that the court’s order on this issue stands unchallenged, such claims will be nullified.

One Secrecy News reader wrote to express his concern that we were using the law to force NRO to disclose records that should not be disclosed in the interests of national security. But that is not the case. FOIA exemptions for properly classified national security information and for intelligence sources and methods remain in place and in effect.

But NRO has now been forced to disclose all non-exempt budget information, as the law requires.

Selected case files from Aftergood v. National Reconnaissance Office may be found here.

The anticipated receipt of NRO budget material will be noted in Secrecy News when it occurs.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more