Presidential Briefings May Be Kept Secret
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
PALO ALTO, Calif. — A federal appeals court ruled that the CIA may keep secret the contents of its daily briefing for presidents, even when the president in question is long dead and the reports are 40 years old.
The decision from the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a University of California professor, Larry Berman, seeking two editions of the so-called President’s Daily Brief from the 1960s.
“We hold that the CIA has provided ample justification that the disclosure of the two PDBs would reveal protected intelligence sources and methods,” Judge Raymond Fisher wrote. Judges Pamela Ann Rymer and David Thompson joined in the ruling.
The appeals court accepted the CIA’s contention that access to the briefs, even in an edited form, could jeopardize sources abroad by informing foreign intelligence services about when American leaders learned of national security-related developments.
However, the judges rejected as “boundless” the CIA’s claim that its technique for briefing presidents is itself an intelligence method entitled to confidentiality under the law.
“Historians have documented the PDB process in such great detail that even if that process could be deemed a ‘method,’ that method has already been fully disclosed to the public,” Judge Fisher wrote. He said the court was not “categorically” denying access to all PDBs, but he did not say when their release might be required. Withholding the briefing records might be difficult to justify after “four or five generations” had passed, the judge wrote.
A Justice Department spokesman, Charles Miller, said officials were pleased with the decision.
An attorney for Mr. Berman, Meredith Fuchs of the National Security Archive, called the decision disappointing but said she was gratified that the court refused to approve the CIA automatically denying access to PDBs. In recent years, portions of about three dozen briefs have been declassified and released by government commissions, presidential libraries, and, in some cases, by accident.
