You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington,

D.C. I'm Peter Ernest, the Executive Director of the Museum.

I served for some 36 years in the Central Intelligence Agency,

largely as what is called an operations officer or a case officer.

Every month will be bringing you interesting talks with visitors, with authors,

with others who have something to do with the world of intelligence and espionage.

My guest today is Tom Blanton.

Tom is the founder of the National Security Archive,

which is housed here at George Washington University.

And it's very timely because there has just been the release by the CIA, the Central Intelligence

Agency, of something referred to as the family jewels.

And Tom, I think in the course of our discussion, we can describe what those are.

But I wonder if you would just start out by saying a little something about the National

Security Archive.

The archive was basically started by a group of historians and journalists about 20, 21 years ago

after the Freedom of Information Act in our country had really produced a lot of paper and I think some spouses were eager to get the paper out of their houses and they created the archive.

That's exactly right. They created the archive as a way to save their marriages.

But one of the things we inherited along all these boxes

of declassified documents were pending freedom of information requests.

A lot of them can take five years even ten years

in today's paper one of our studies shows the oldest pending request still unfinished goes

back 20 years. Sometimes that's because the material is so sensitive and there's

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