Intel Community Ups Fees for Newly Declassified Documents

Researchers seeking newly declassified intelligence community documents will pay higher fees beginning in late April, according to a direct final rule published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Under the Mandatory Declassification Review provisions of 2009 presidential Executive Order 13526, agencies must respond to the public’s requests for unreleased information if the agency “may retrieve it with reasonable effort” under ground rules set by the Information Security Oversight Office housed at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The new rule—published under a process that skips the proposed rule stage, but which could still result in the rule being blocked if comments show reason—informs requesters where to send queries.

But notably, the new rule requires requesters to pay all fees, ranging from $20-$72 per hour for research; $40-$72 per hour for agency document review; and 50 cents per page for photocopying, or $10 per CD.

The new fees didn’t sit well with transparency advocates, who have long argued that agencies charge fees in part to discourage requesters. “The proposed ODNI fees seem extravagant on their face,” wrote Federation of American Scientists secrecy blogger Steven Aftergood on Tuesday. “No commercial enterprise charges anything close to fifty cents to photocopy a single page. Neither do most of ODNI’s peer agencies.”

He argued that fees are considerably smaller and in some cases optional for offices within the Defense and State departments. Aftergood also cited a pending lawsuit against the CIA filed by the private National Security Archive arguing that the CIA’s attempt to charge photocopying fees to requesters was illegal.

Comments on the ODNI rule are due March 28.

(Image via T.Dallas / Shutterstock.com)

Correction: The new fees come under the mandatory declassification review program, not FOIA.