From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 15:16:15 -0800 (PST)
To: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Cypherpunks FOIA request
Message-ID: <199702062316.PAA02568@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 06:49 PM 2/5/97 -0800, Lucky Green wrote:
>My attorney used to fly planes with nuclear cargo. Another friend of mine
>has been visited several times by the FBI. In either case, the FBI claimed
>upon receiving an FOIA request that they have no record on either person.
>Does anybody here believe that the USAF would let pilots take off with
>nukes on board without ever conducting a background investigation (which
>are handled by the FBI)? I didn't think so.

Background investigations for defense contractors are handled by DISCO, 
the Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office; I don't know if they
also do internal military clearance work, but I'd assume it's
_somebody_ on the military side rather than FBI, though presumably
the military does also check FBI records (and the FBI probably doesn't
have a blanket policy of always lying to the military :-)
Nuclear clearances presumably go into more depth...

As far as your friend being visited by the FBI several times,
that's obviously part of an ongoing criminal investigation (:-),
so they don't have to tell you.  If they're still thinking about
going back and harassing your friend, it's still ongoing, even if
they now know that he is or is not a Commie Sympathizer.

That, or they could have just been unable to find the records.
Anything computerized should be findable (doesn't mean it _is_,
just that it should be), though they're probably more organized
about finding things they want to find than finding things
you want them to find.  But records that exist only on paper
are a lot tougher to wade through; you can't grep dead trees,
and if your friend was being checked out as "somebody suspicious
who knows somebody we're trying to investigate/harass", the files
may not be indentified under your friend's name, or may be
stored in some big warehouse where nobody's waded through them
in decades.



#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)