The Puzzle Palace - Reclassified Source Documents and American Library Association Lawsuit

Reclassified Source Documents and American Library Association Lawsuit

Reclassified and re-sequestered source documents that Bamford had used when writing The Puzzle Palace were the subject of subsequent litigation. The NSA's historical account states that documents removed from the Marshall Library were "sequestered portions of the Friedman collection," i.e., the collection that included the copies of the NSA Newsletter that spurred one of Bamford's FOIA requests. The materials removed from circulation included 3 government publications and 31 pieces of Friedman's private correspondence. The American Library Association (ALA) challenged the document removal in court, and in 1987 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the case. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who was at that time a Court of Appeals judge, ruled that the ALA lacked standing in the case. A lower court ruling had already affirmed that the NSA had authority to remove the reclassified documents, but criticized the NSA's "cavalier attitude" toward the classification determination of those documents.

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