Steven Aftergood

Steven Aftergood is a critic of U.S. government secrecy policy. He directs the Federation of American Scientists project on Government Secrecy and is the author of the Federation publication Secrecy News.^[1]

Life and career

Aftergood has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and has published research in solid-state physics.^[2]

In 1991, Aftergood exposed the classified Project Timberwind, an unacknowledged U.S. Department of Defense special access program to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. That episode led the Federation of American Scientists to initiate an ongoing research project on government secrecy, led by Aftergood.^[3]

Controversies

Intelligence budget disclosure

Aftergood was the plaintiff in a 1997 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency which led to the declassification and publication of the U.S. government's total intelligence budget ($26.6 billion in 1997) for the first time in fifty years.^[4]

In 2006, Aftergood won a FOIA lawsuit against the National Reconnaissance Office to release unclassified budget records.^[5]

Preserving CIA email

A Central Intelligence Agency proposal in 2014 to eliminate the email records of all but 22 senior agency officials was derailed after a reference to the move was spotted by Aftergood, triggering a critical reaction in congress and elsewhere.^[6] The proposal was formally withdrawn by the agency in 2016.^[7]

Reducing nuclear weapons secrecy

As part of an effort by the Federation of American Scientists to reduce secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons, Aftergood acquired and posted a 2019 Joint Chiefs of Staff publication on Nuclear Operations. The document describes a potential role for such weapons in U.S. warfighting plans.^[8][9]

Promoting access to government information

Aftergood maintained several widely-used collections of government documents. These include Presidential national security directives,^[10] US military doctrinal publications,^[11] applications of the state secrets privilege,^[12] uses of the Invention Secrecy Act,^[13] Congressional Research Service reports,^[14] and studies performed by the JASON science advisory panel.^[15]

Awards

Aftergood’s work on government secrecy policy has been recognized with the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation,^[16] the James Madison Award from the American Library Association,^[17] the Public Access to Government Information Award from the American Association of Law Libraries,^[18] and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation.^[19]

Selected publications

• "Making Up My Mind, and Then Changing It", H-DIPLO series on Learning the Scholar's Craft, (2021), 13 July 2021
• Aftergood, Steven (August 2016), ""Ethics: Taming our technologies" (review), Nature, 536: 271-272 (2016)", Nature, 536 (7616): 271–272, doi:10.1038/536271a
• "An Inquiry Into The Dynamics Of Government Secrecy", Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 48:2 (2013) (PDF)
• "Reducing Government Secrecy: Finding What Works", Yale Law and Policy Review, 27: 399-416 (2009) (PDF)