Pressure mounts against CIA’s plan to destroy emails

Some of the Senate’s most powerful legislators are adding their voice to the growing chorus of criticism against a CIA plan to delete staffers’ emails after they leave the spy agency.

Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, on Monday told the National Archives and Records Administration to back off a plan to allow the agency to delete emails of all but the 22 most senior agency officials.

{mosads}“Transparency and accountability are critical to a functioning democracy,” the two lawmakers wrote to the record-keeping agency on Monday.

The CIA’s proposal to destroy emails by “non-senior” officials after three years or “when no longer needed” would “undermine the ability of citizens to understand how their government works and hold it accountable,” they added. 

“In an era when critically important government activities and decisions are conducted via email, a plan to delete the majority of emails at any agency should raise great concern.”

The call from the two lawmakers comes on top of concern from other corners of the Senate, including the two leaders of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee. 

In response to concern from lawmakers and transparency advocacy groups, the National Archives said that it would “reassess” the policy, which it had tentatively approved in August. The National Archives originally indicated that it would be okay to destroy the old emails since any meaningful information in them would likely be preserved in other forms.

“To lose permanent access to the email of every CIA employee, except the 22 most senior officials at the agency, is to lose access to a piece of American history,” Leahy and Cornyn argued in their letter on Monday.

The two lawmakers co-authored an update to the Freedom of Information Act which passed out of the Judiciary Committee last month.