Court Gives CIA Sweeping Power to Protect Sources

The Supreme Court today gave the CIA practically unlimited power to keep its intelligence sources secret.

By a 7-2 vote, the justices said it is up to the spy agency to specify who is an intelligence source protected from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The ruling means that the CIA may withhold from the public even those documents that do not deal with sensitive issues of national security. It will hamper efforts by the public to obtain CIA documents, even if the documents do not pertain to sensitive intelligence gathering.

The justices said the agency legally denied a request for information about an experimental program involving brainwashing and experimental drugs, known as MKULTRA, conducted in the 1950s and 1960s.

Little Known Program

Little is known about the controversial program, initiated in response to U.S. concern over foreign brainwashing techniques, because most of the records from the program were destroyed in 1973.

The program became a source of concern when it was reported that several projects involved experiments in which researchers administered LSD and other dangerous drugs to unwitting human subjects. At least two people died as a result of the testing.

Today’s decision reversed the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which ruled in 1983 that the CIA may not refuse automatically to disclose the names of researchers involved in the research program.

The agency’s desire for secrecy appeared to be an attempt to avoid a public outcry, the appeals court said.