The below contains earlier information plus new details based on follow-up comments: Dear David K: Your experience is not at all unique. (In seeking information under the FOIA act on conversations between Chief of Station Colby and Ngo Dinh Nhu - but receiving virtually nothing of significance after a six-year wait). The CIA is one of the least responsive of all government agencies re FOIA requests. In a related sphere, a professor of history at Rutgers University, chairman of the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee, Warren F. Kimball, wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times (8/23/96) protesting CIA lack of promised cooperation in declassifying and releasing documents. I would advise that you seek help in preparing your appeal -- the ACLU in D.C. might assist. Also ACLU publishes guides to filing and appealing FOIA requests. (Phone Number 202 994 7060). In any case you should anticipate a long, drawn-out battle, that may produce little. (I also filed FOIA requests with little result.) Regards, Ralph McGehee CIABASE ----------------------------------------------------------- Congress some time ago exempted CIA operational files from the provisions of FOIA unless such involved illegal activities. Catch-22 is how can you prove illegal activity without some sort of access to those files. As Chief of Station in Saigon, Colby's activities would be well-documented in operational files. His conversations with Nhu would have been reported both operationally and to a lesser degree via intelligence reports -- with the latter the sourcing would be obfuscated. The Agency's operational files are maintained under variety of names and would take a dedicated search to find the proper files -- once found they would be a goldmine. But since they are operational, they are automatically exempt from FOIA. Incidentally another historian involved in preparing the official history of U.S. foreign relations also resigned and said: I cannot protect the integrity of [Foreign Relations of the United States] series. Warren Cohen, professor history at Michigan state, said re his resignation as Chairman of Department of State advisory committee of outside scholars, in protest of the intelligence community's deletion of historical documents on "security grounds." Duke u. historian Bruce Kuniholm said withholding "constitutes a gross misrepresentation of historical record, sufficient to deserve label of fraud." Washington Post 4/16/90 Ralph McGehee ------------------------------------------------------- (One poster noted that FOIA requests may be handled by New-Hires unfamiliar with Ngo Dinh Nhu). Comment: I think the CIA hires back retired officers under contract status to handle FOIA requests - I do not know the proportion of new hires to veterans but probably there are old-timers doing much of the work. As David K. notes the FOIA office is small and severely underfunded and understaffed. But in any case conducting an FOIA search one does not need to know anything about the named subjects of the request. Many requests I am positive deal with obscure individuals that no one has heard of. With a name, subject matter, time frame and geographic location -- searches can be run. It has been a long time since I have had anything to do with the file systems but I suspect that search procedures have been refined to some degree; but, also there were many deficiencies in those file systems that may never have been corrected. In both the directorate of Intelligence and directorate of Operations many of the names in correspondence have been recorded electronically in data bases that have not been purged - so a search for NHU would produce much information since he was both an operational contact (I do not know if he was a recruited asset) and a source of much intelligence information. One very important aspect of the file-keeping process is the 201 or personality file. NHU very early one would have an Agency 201 file that stored large amounts of information on a personality of such importance. This file is recorded in the central registry and reference to it would be accessed through a simple instantaneous electronic name search. Following are a couple of citations in CIABASE to 201 files. the 201 file - is a basic personnel folder in central registry on anyone, friend or foe, of interest to CIA. martin, d. (1980). wilderness of mirrors 123 files are divided into different levels security. 201 file opened when enough information exists to warrant filing in one place all data or when individual of interest to another gvt org that looked to CIA for info. sensitive file might be maintained on same individual. sensitive file encompassed matters potentially embarrassing to CIA or from sources and methods CIA sought to protect. rockefeller commission report. (1975). report on CIA activities within the u.s. 143 In addition the Directorate of Intelligence would have recorded a great deal of information on NHU and undoubtedly would have set up a file on him. Reference to this file should be accessible electronically. Maybe an interesting side note -- my career (unfortunately) had me spending a great deal of time on files and file procedures -- I made a number of recommendations re improving the file procedures. I believed and believe that there are great gaps in the capabilities of the various file systems and these gaps were, and probably are, unrecognized by Agency authorities. I felt that at any time I could take a file check response by elements of the CIA and augment it significantly. To satisfy myself on this point, when in a dead end assignment, I would occasionally run follow-up traces that almost always produced important and significantly more information than the original check -- sometimes the original check produced no record at all where my follow-up produced much information. My recommendations re file procedures noted these problems but they were for the most part ignored. One of my suggestions re file procedures through the Suggestions Awards System produced a "no interest" response. A short while later, ignoring my contribution, the suggestion which I felt went to the heart of file-checking deficiencies, was mandated but amazingly ignored in practice. I also found it a suicidal career move to go around the established bureaucracy and actually use the Suggestions Awards System -- my efforts here re Vietnam resulted in a warning that I jeopardized my career by my "end-run." Another officer found a quick and easy way around the combination locks on Agency safes. His efforts to bring this to the attention of his superiors over a period of several years were ignored so he used the Suggestions Awards System -- he proved his point many times in a demonstration -- he was locked overnight in an office with about forty to fifty safes, he unlocked them all in a short period of time and sat and waited until morning. This effectively ended his career and he left the Agency. Ralph McGehee CIABASE