National Archives/Federal Courts: Controlling History

The podcast for the documentary in progress: Indelible, for the week of April 3, 2018.

A small victory for open government!

In this podcast I discuss a series of events which occurred when I attempted to obtain the 1979 criminal trial transcript of the former kid survivor of dark pool military or mercenary training before the age of 16. He remains in federal prison after the expiration of his sentence. This important sub-story described an effort to keep these criminal court records from the public and even slate them for destruction. The Federal Records Center, part of the National Archives, and the Federal Courts worked together to destroy the records and place obstacles to make it difficult to obtain access to them.

Over a one week period I persisted in my effort to change the status of the documents so they would not be destroyed. Eventually I was successful. But not until I obtained help from an attorney, and the guidance of Diane Roark, the former congressional staffer who served on the House Intelligence Committee for seventeen years, and had oversight over the NSA prior to the Snowden disclosures. And eventually a Seattle Director of the National Archives.

This is an important story to understand.

 

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