CIA Hit with Class Action Lawsuit Over Declassification Fees

Most class action lawsuits we run across target companies, but that doesn’t mean the government is immune from being held accountable for improper actions. A class action lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court claims the CIA violated federal law by imposing a new higher fee structure that will discourage the public from trying to get the agency to declassify secret government documents.

The new fee policy was quietly changed last September and applies to Mandatory Declassification Reviews (MDR), which allow the public to seek the declassification of specific CIA records and appeal unfavorable rulings to an independent panel.

“Overnight, without public comment or notice, the Agency decreed that declassification reviews would now cost requesters up to $72 per hour, even if no information is found or released,” wrote Nate Jones of George Washington University’s National Security Archive, a historical research group that files numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and publishes declassified documents.

Jones calls the new regulations, which went into effect last December, “a covert attack on the most effective tool that the public uses to declassify the CIA’s secret documents.”

A class action lawsuit filed against the CIA last month, however, is asking the court to void the changes the CIA made to its MDR regulations and declare it a willful violation of the law. It is seeking class action status on behalf of all individuals who, since September 23, 2011, filed MDR’s and were impacted by the CIA’s new fee structure.

The class action lawsuit is accusing the CIA of violating the Freedom of Information Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Independent Offices Appropriations Act, the Mandamus Act, the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act, and the All Writs Act.

The class action lawsuit also claims the new fees undercut the transparency promises made by President Barrack Obama, and similarly made by former President Bush.

While it is legal for individuals to be charged “reasonable fees” for government services, it is not legal to charge individuals for services that benefit the general public, one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit told Truthout, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing independent news and commentary.  

“The entire point of this lawsuit is to expose and invalidate some of the CIA’s most problematic information access policies,” the attorney wrote in an email. “Not only did the CIA unlawfully bypass the entire notice and comment process when publishing this rule, citing an exception to normal rulemaking procedures that only applies in very narrow circumstances (none of which are even close to relevant here), but even had the CIA followed the rules when promulgating this regulation, it would have been against the express will of all three branches of government.”

 

A copy of the CIA Mandatory Declassification Review Fee Class Action Lawsuit can be read here.

 

The case is National Security Counselors, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, Case No. 12-cv-00284-BAH, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.