hi, i'm lisa fletcher, and you in the stream. information you may be entitled to is kept secret by the government. mean the man being called a superhero for accessing what they may not want you to see. ♪ . >> you know waj we're talking about the freedom of information act which is law that allows people to get federal, public information. >> right. and apparently you need super powers to get some of this information. karen tweets in . . .

check it out. who are the faces? who are the names? linda tweets it . . . and a what effect does that have on the public . . . so this matters, lisa. >> it does. and speaking as a journalist, we know it can have a very chilling effect. >> indeed. >> there is a law that says that citizens have the right to access information from the federal government. it's basically designed to seem people in the know about their government. in the wake of 9-11 it was

amended. president obama restricted access to former presidential orders. when president obama took office he said things would change and promises an era of unpress dented transparency. but advocates say nothing could be further from the truth. has the government locked up the freedom of information act and thrown away the key? or are citizens and journalists just asking for too much. we're joined by ryan shap rear you, who currently has 700 requests pending before the fbi and is suing for information about nelson mandela. the former head and founding director of the department of

justice office of information and privacy. he guided all federal agencies on the freedom of information act. and fellow at the national center for board research and a member of black conservatives. thanks to all of you for being here tonight. ryan you are considered one of the leading transparency advocates in america. you know how to get information from the government, and you want to know why the cia viewed nelson mandela as a threat to security. you want to know what role if any the u.s. played in his arrest and prosecution. why do you want that information and what are some of the specific questions you looking to answer? >> yeah, absolutely. last week i filed a lawsuit for the failure to comply with any freedom of information act

records. i'm pursuing these documents because i want to shed light on exactly why the u.s. intelligence agencies viewed him as a threat to the intelligence community and what role it took in thwarting his fight for democracy in south africa -- >> why do you think they thwarted it. >> well, we know that provided intelligence in the 1980s. what we likely know but do not have hard documentation about is the cia specifically was intimately involved in nelson mandela's arrests. we have a former cia agent and south african intelligence agent who have said this is the case. so we have very good reason to

believe the cia did orchestrate his arrest. >> so what were the federal agencies response? >> they all responded differently. i think probably the most notable denial came from the nsa which refuses to even confirm or deny the existence of agency records about mandela. i'm quoting here, the fact of the existence or non-existence of the materials you request is a currently and properly classified matter to be kept secret in the interest of national defense. and the nsa invoted the nsa act of 1959 -- i'm sorry the nsa invoked the espionage act of 1917 to deny my request. and this is the same act in which chelsea manning was convicted. >> so professor, whether or not they are going to give these

records to ryan, shouldn't these agencies at least be able to confirm or deny whether these records exist? >> the answer is probably twofold. as a general matter agencies are obligated to both identify responsive records and release non-exempt portions of them. there is a major exception, and it is known as glowmarization in which the see can take the position that the abstract existence or non-existence of a document is a classified fact. i'm very familiar with that because i went to court on the first several judgments. it's a legitimate concept in general, but whether it has been properly applied is a different

matter. >> our community is tuning in . . . >> public information requests which are a little different -- >> well, that's his comment. and brad tweeted check this out -- >> yeah. obliterat obliterated. here is another one doj information. and joe says . . . horace, do you think the intent was for the public to have access to this type of classified information that ryan is seeking? >> it is not clear that that is the case at all, i would settle for access to information from the epa, access from the hhs,

all manner of regulatory agencies, of the department of commerce that presently aren't able to say that the information they are denying the public is information that is somehow classified. or threatens national security, but i do belief the act was never contemplated as a tool to make it possible for people who have not been cleared and had special access granted to classified information to be able to achieve that. >> ryan right now you have about 700 in motion. and your dissertation has been declared a national security threat. >> sure. if i may respond to horace first. i agree that it was never intended to be a means to obtain properly classified information.

however the drafters understood it was an attempt to get overly classified material. overclassification and improper classification was addressed as a major problem area -- >> is there more classified or unclassified information now? >> well, as the professor at harvard has demonstrated right now the universe of classified knowledge is dramatically larger than unclassified. so this is a very serious problem and one of the problems that the drafters understood to be inner in view. and you brought up my dissertation. most of the records i'm seeking

to obtain we're in court where the fbi right now. but they are not invoking -- they are not classifying the records, they are not using exemption one, irn stead the fbi is arcombru guing that they need seven years to not comply with the freedom of information act. >> i think they had 20 days. that just to respond to you? >> you absolutely right. the fbi is new pursuing a nuclear option, but it's basically an end run around the freedom of information act, and they are utilizing an expanded and caddallized document to do it. my dissertation is looking at the use of rhetoric and national security to marginallize threats to the state. in 2004 the fbi designates

animal rights as the leading threat to the country despite the fact that not one of these movements have ever injured a person in this country. and one of the documents i have obtained is a document demonstrating fbi demonstration of terrorist acts on animal activists. activists who videotaped animals confined in cages so small they can't stand up, turn around or spread their limbs. i encourage everyone to learn what goes on behind the greats of farms. >> we're going to get into everyone's opinion on the role and influence of industry. but has president obama

delivered on the promise to make government more transparent and are that risks to you for looking into that. here is a look at a few other stories we're following.

♪ welcome back, we're talking about government secrecy, and the freedom of information act. president obama has committed his administration to quote . . . professor, do you

think the president has delivered on this commitment? >> no, unfortunately i have to say he has not. i have held several academic programs looking at the development of information policy, the implementation of it in the obama administration now, for five years in this point, and the resounding conclusion is one of great disappointment. there are enormous exceedingly high expectation not only of which president obama followed the bush administration, but then they came in on day one with this very strong lake wage that made every one very excited. he established the arms standard, we reinstituted that, but the problem has been not the words, not the stated policy, the problem has been the

implementati implementation. it is one thing to state a pro-discloseture policy, it is another thing to implement it. >> ryan beyond the work that you are doing, do you feel there is a larger crisis of secrecy right now? >> yeah, i think there absolutely is. the universe of classified knowledge far exceeds the universe of unclassified knowledge. they came in promising to be the most transparent administration in history, and yet he has out done even bush at this point. they have used the whistleblower more than any other administrations combined. and the obama administration has invoked national security to deny foia requests -- >> 9,000 times? >> yeah, more than any other

administration. and they also have the luxury of invoting the nsa act of 1959 which the nsa argues exempts it entirely from the freedom of information act. and the release of records which will paint them in a positive light, unsurprisingly, the nsa only complied with 2% of its requests last year. so absolutely we're facing a crisis. >> our community has tweeted in, and there is a facebook post from andrew . . . and speaking about the nsa, brad tweets in . . . check it out. another reacted document there, lisa. and then rich goes . . .

all right. horace i want to go to you. look, ryan mentioned the nine exemptions that the go uses to get out of foia requests. the one used most frequently is documents are in the interest of national security. do you believe the obama has abused that? >> i'm not sure of that. i would settle for if osha or the mine safety health administration or epa or department of transportation, if they would make this kind of information and data available, that there has been terrible foot dragging on the administration's part. i do not wish to throw the baby out with the bath water and say the use of the foia stature like a quasi key cam tool is

appropriate because the kinds of information that we need to keep classified is things like when a state senator in california is negotiating with an fbi agent to bring in cells of all kinds of all kinds of weaponry to potential international terrorists, that person's name and his associates is released would jeopardize the investigation and could jeopardize our national security. absolutely we have to be very careful about that, and there ought to be better tools to used to get the information to the public. >> how does a guy like nelson mandela stay on the u.s. terrorist list until 2008? and how do records that pertain to that somehow jeopardize national security? >> so a number of people who

were associated with mr. nelson mandela have also had some checkered past associated with other kinds of criminal activity. the very nature of the tracking of those individuals and their interactions with him would reveal that those people were continuing to be tracked. this is the point of the intersection. it's a very, very intriguing technique to allow for the personal waivers to allow people to have information precisely because it is designed to reveal the nature of the contact. >> do other government agencies have strategies for not filling a foia request? >> i can only answer as to what the approach was during my tenure as head of the office of information and privacy from 1981 to 2007, and the answer was with very limited exception, no.

i have seen things since i retired since especially the last two years of the bush administration and parts of the obama that suggests that the fbi is going much further than it did before. the closest we ever came to a strategy was at a time when there was someone who was sort of a predecessor to mr. shapiro, scott armstrong who did file a 2000 foia question. we had an attorney general who got quite exercised by that, but our strategy was to get a lot of people in the same room so the left hand knew what the right hand was doing. it was coordination. it was not coming up with a new highly unprecedented, highly questionable basis for non-disclosure, which i gater is what mr. shapiro has run into. >> carlton tweets in . . .

and karla says . . . and the government apparently kills a lot of black markers, lisa. >> should people who challenge government secrecy be concerned about being targeted themselves? we'll talk about that right after the break. real reporting that brings you the world. giving you a real global perspective like no other can. real reporting from around the world. this is what we do. al jazeera america.

perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america. ♪ welcome back. we're discussing government secrecy, and the freedom of information act. ryan you accept the risks of what you are doing, but do you think people might legitimately shy away from delving into

government secrets out of fear of being harassed? >> foia is law. and they routinely violate the act. here we have an outrageous state of affairs in which the leading law enforcement agency in the country is in routine flagrant violation of the law. and i think who should be concerned are the agencies who are in violation, not the citizens who are simply trying to exercise their rights. >> dan you keep track of the progress ever year. how is it looking? >> it's not looking good. quite frankly after year one, we heard things from white house officials along the lines of give us more time. and year two, three, four, we would have an anal -- annual

evaluation. and now it's five years in. i testified a couple of weeks ago chaired by chairman laky. and i told him in my judgment there was an urgent need to improve the act with the use of the discretionary disclosure, to meet the standards of the backlog reduction and do a number of more things. but one thing i would add to that is based upon mr. shapiro's experience with the bureau, they really need someone there to ride herd on it. it's something that i and my colleagues did very actively during my tenure, and i can only imagine that that is not happening now at all. there is a head of that office, i'll be charitable and not mention his name, but he has been there for several year, and

i think he was under tremendous pressure to reduce black -- back loads and that influenced the bureau to take these extreme cases. >> our community is talking about the consequences that come from lack of transparency . . . ryan what do you think is ultimately the political and economic cost that this lack of transparency will have on our society? >> absolutely. an informed citizenry is important. i want information about government surveillance of peaceful protesters, sfl of journalists, and information about some of the most pressing topics of our time. in a democracy this should not be too much to ask.

>> but here is the point, as i said the kinds of information that we have been talking about tonight is the very category that this process really is ill suited to achieve. we are in the process of having a trial of the boston marathon bombers. the names of contacts associated with them, could lead in a whole number of areas and releasing information about that could be -- lead to jeopardizing. it is a very, very dangerous world that we live in. i would prefer senator feinstein, senator franken or other people concerned about these issues to look comprehensively at the kinds of information that is being held and make a change, make a demand externally on the system to release that. this says one individual, one american gets to decide what particular classified information they should have access and what they shouldn't.

i think that's dangerous. >> that simply isn't the case. it's not one individual. it's one individual submitting a foia request and the see gets to rule on the foia request and then i get to sue and then a judge adjudicates the case. i'm going to quote from les aspen who was involved in the 1974 amendments of the freedom of information act, quote, surely we are familiar by now with the extent to which any document tending to embarrass any agency tends to become top secret. the managers of those classification stamps have forfeited presumptions that their actions were reasonable. >> on that note, i have to taken all of our guests because we're out of time.

until next time waj and i will see you online at aljazeera.com/ajamstream. ♪ good evening, everyone, welcome to al jazeera america. i'm john siegenthaler in new york. the deadline for health care coverage. the last chance to sign up brings more glitches. obamacare, what now? our special report just ahead. under fire, allegations that general motors and now federal regulators repeatedly ignored safety issues. after a stern new warning to the world about