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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA) 38 DAYS TO RESPOND TO ARCHIVE; OUTSTANDING REQUESTS AS OLD AS 14 YEARS

Recordkeeping Issues - Although the CIA provided ten FOIA requests in response to the Archive's request, including six filed by the National Security Archive between May 29, 1987 and July 11, 1989 the Agency later denied that the Archive had pending requests filed prior to 1990. The reason for this is that the CIA stayed all pending Archive requests in the late 1980's pending the resolution of fee status litigation with the Archive. After the court held that the Archive is a representative of the news media for FOIA fee status purposes, the CIA reopened and renumbered several of the outstanding Archive FOIA requests. These requests may appear in the CIA's database as stemming from 1992 or even more recently.

Ten Oldest - The CIA responded approximately 38 business days after the request was made, reporting ten FOIA requests ranging from May 29, 1987 to November 22, 1989. Nine out of the ten were from media representatives including the National Security Archive, the Syracuse Post Standard, the Pennsylvania Intelligencer Journal, and American Broadcasting Corporation. The media requests concern topics such as Jonathan Pollard (the Israeli spy arrested in 1985), the Iran-Contra investigations, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (in December 1988), James Howard Guerin, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tenth request was from a current CIA employee requesting personnel and security files pertaining to himself. One of the Archive requests in the Ten Oldest group was processed soon after the response was received from the CIA. As noted above, several of the Archive requests to the CIA were suspended by CIA for several years pending resolution of a fee dispute with the Archive. The CIA then reopened most of these requests in 1992.

Workload Statistics - Although CIA's reported statistics from 1998 through 2002 indicate that the agency has experienced a dramatic reduction in the number of FOIA requests received (down 55% from 6,121 in 1998 to 2,727 in 2002), the number processed each year also has decreased (down 57% from 7,169 processed in 1998 to 3,046 processed in 2002). CIA's processing rate per year -- a comparison of the number of requests processed to the number received -- decreased from 121.73% in 1998 to 111.70% in 2002.

Backlog Statistics - CIA's backlog has increased (from 1506 FOIA requests pending at the end of 1998 to 1547 FOIA requests pending at the end of 2002). Its backlog as a percentage of FOIA requests processed each year has increased from 21% in 1998 to 43.2% in 2002. Its backlog rate per year -- a comparison of the number of requests pending at the end of the year to the number received during that year -- has increased from 21.10% in 1998 to 50.79% in 2002.

Processing Time - Under its two track system, CIA reports median response times in 2002 ranging from 7 days for a simple request to 83 days for complex requests. The data over 1998-2002 shows steady improvement in the processing time for complex requests. CIA's FY 2002 annual FOIA Report indicates that "[f]or those FOIA cases closed in FY 2002, 80% were closed in 1.5 years; median response time was 0.24 years; average response time was 1.06 years." The over 1500 backlogged requests at the end of fiscal year 2002, however, had a median age of 601 days (over two years). The 15 to 16-year backlog for the Ten Oldest FOIA Requests described above show that some requests suffer a much more extensive wait, as these requests have been pending from 4090 to 3400 business days. No processing times are reported for expedited requests.

 

TEN OLDEST REQUESTS

CIA Response Letter

CIA May 29, 1987 Letter

CIA March 1, 1988 Letter

CIA April 22, 1988 Letter

CIA May 15, 1989 Letter

CIA July 7, 1989 Letter

CIA July 11, 1989 Letter

CIA October 20, 1989 Letter

CIA November 2, 1989 Letter

CIA November 3, 1989 Letter

CIA November 22, 1989 Letter