---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "James S. Tyre" <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:48:05 -0800 Subject: Re: Classifed info To: [email protected]
Fun (if only in hindsight) and true story. In the mid-eighties, the FBI and Naval Intelligence raided my law office, sans warrant, claiming that I was in possession of classified docs and that I could be prosecuted under the espionage act. I did indeed have certain classified docs, but .... At the time I obtained them, I got them through a valid FOIA request made a day after they were declassified. So it wasn't exactly a secret that I had them, and I had obtained them completely legally. But then the gov't went "whoops, we didn't really mean to declassify them." And then, while copies were in my possession, the docs were reclassified. Eventually, the gov't agreed that I could keep the docs, and that was pretty much that. But it was certainly interesting for a while. (Everything about this was political, but deliberately I'm not giving enough detail from which anyone can infer what the politics were.) -- James S. Tyre [...] [email protected] Special Counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation
