Documents / FOIA release
This CIA FOIA release contains a June 5, 2006 appeal from independent writer Larry W. Bryant to the CIA Records-Release Panel. He challenges the agency's no-records finding on former Army captain John Joseph McCarthy, Jr., whom he says was assigned to the clandestine Vietnam-era Project CHERRY. He also disputes fee denials on his request for records on Philip J. Corso. Attached are Scott Koch's May 2006 replies and Bryant's UFO magazine column on the FBI dossier on Philip J. Klass.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Bryant's UFO View # No Class Act: The FBI Dossier on Philip J. Klass by Larry W. Bryant Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, USN We may never know if the late, consummate character assassin Philip Julian Klass ever knew that the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was keeping records of his activities and associations. And even if he knew, would he have wondered whether his demise would trigger the birth of a freedom-of-information request for public access to those records? As soon as I'd learned of Klass's death on August 9, 2005 I fired off an FOIA request to FBI headquarters in Washington, D. C. Sure enough, the Bureau, known for its having compiled dossiers on such UFO researchers as Stanton T. Friedman, Leonard H. Stringfield, William L. Moore, and Larry W. Bryant, had made no exception for the notorious king of the UFO debunkers. By its transmittal letter of January 19, 2006, the Bureau sent me a package of 56 responsive documents from Klass's dossier, a portion of which was declassified from its original protective marking of SECRET, while several pages were redacted in whole or in part on grounds of you guessed it—national security. Let's jump right into the dossier's contents and analyze the documents, as best we can, right here. The very first document, dated November 9, 1964, consists of a partially censored, two-page memorandum from FBI director John Edgar Hoover to the director of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, marked: Attention: Director of Security. Subject: Philip J. Klass. In responding to the CIA director's apparently SECRET letter of October 26,1964, Hoover's memo's last paragraph states: In January, 1958, a matter was referred to this Bureau for investigation by the District Commander, 4th District Office of Special Investigations, Department of the Air Force, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D. C. This matter involved the unauthorized disclosure of information classified "Secret" in "Aviation Week Magazine" article entitled "Exclusive Report on Counter Measures" by Philip J. Klass in 18 November, 1957, and 25 November, 1957, editions. No investigation was conducted in this matter by this Bureau inasmuch as this Bureau was advised by Department of the Air Force that such classified information as was contained in the article could not be declassified for purposes of prosecution. ## The memo concludes: No additional pertinent information regarding Klass is contained in the files of this Bureau. Any pertinent information developed at a later date will be furnished to you. The executive branch's decision not to prosecute Klass and/or his magazine, which today enjoys the dubious distinction of being unofficially labeled Aviation Leak, has much relevance to today's politics of secrecy. Will the leaker of the National Security Agency's electronic surveillance net entrapping American citizens daring to communicate internationally, along with the New York
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 10 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.