Franz Boening, a former CIA employee of twenty-five years in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, brought this civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the CIA as a challenge to the CIA’s classification of a whistleblower complaint. The whistleblower complaint, originally drafted pursuant to the Intelligence Community Whistlblower Protection Act of 1998 and submitted to the CIA’s Inspector General and appropriate Congressional committees, addressed concerns about possible violations of law by the CIA due to its relationship with a particular foreign national. Mr. Boening submitted it to the Publication Review Board in 2004 but did not receive a determination for two years, at which point the CIA provided thirteen pages of redactions it required be implemented prior to publication.
Mr. Boening raised several claims, including: 1) a First Amendment challenge to the appropriateness of the CIA’s classification determinations; and 2) an APA claim alleging that the CIA’s lengthy administrative delay violations its own regulations pertaining to PRB classification reviews.
This case is listed as Civil Action No. 07-0430 (D.D.C.)(EGS).
Mark S. Zaid, P.C. 