Freedom Of Information Act

The National Archives agreed to seal previously public CIA and Pentagon records and to keep silent about the role of U.S. intelligence in the reclassification, according to an agreement released under the Freedom of Information Act. The 2002 agreement, requested three years ago by the Associated Press and released this week, shows archivists were concerned about reclassifying previously available documents -- many of them more than 50 years old -- but nonetheless agreed to keep mum.

Jonathan Wiener was a radical student in the 1960s, fascinated by the turbulent politics, social issues and rock music of his time. He protested, he wrote for an underground newspaper and he idolized the Beatles, particularly the mercurial John Lennon. Today, Wiener, 48, is a self-described "radical historian" who still loves the Beatles.

It began with the title of a fairy tale -- Snow White. That was the benign code name Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard gave to an ominous plan that would envelop his church in scandal and send its upper echelon to prison, a plan rooted in his ever-deepening fears and suspicions.

The Justice Department is investigating claims that officials of its Nazi-hunting unit lied under oath and withheld crucial evidence involving a former Southern Californian convicted of war crimes by a Yugoslav court, it was learned Thursday. A source familiar with the internal investigation, however, said that there are no indications that the late Andrija Artukovic was falsely convicted of bearing responsibility for hundreds of deaths during World War II.

More than 200 pages of documents released by the FBI this week reveal that agents investigated award-winning Times journalist Ruben Salazar on several occasions as he reported on Cuba during the Cold War, but the records shed no new light on the questionable circumstances of the newsman's 1970 slaying by a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy.

The Orange County district attorney's office Thursday released new documents on former Harbor Municipal Court Judge Brian R. Carter that detail the exchanges in taped conversations between the judge and a prostitute in which he appeared to be worried about an investigation of their relationship.

The Orange County district attorney's office on Wednesday released documents detailing for the first time how it conducted a highly unusual, 3-year investigation of former Harbor Municipal Judge Brian R. Carter that included surveillance of his friends and interrogation of his staff.

It wasn't just bobby-soxers and paparazzi following Frank Sinatra around all those years. Turns out the FBI was keeping close tabs on Old Blue Eyes too. The release last week of the bureau's surveillance file on Sinatra came as particularly welcome news to Jon Wiener, a history professor at UC Irvine and one of some 30 people who'd filed Freedom of Information requests for the file.

FALL RIVER, Mass. -- Ed Lambert, Al Lima and Mike Miozza never thought of themselves as activists, just as regular guys. Then an energy company announced plans to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in this small community on the Taunton River. The men -- the mayor, a city planner and an engineer -- had nightmare visions of gas igniting into a huge fireball on the river. They asked for government-held reports that studied the threat to the town if the plant or a tanker were attacked.

The Internal Revenue Service has told a prominent Pasadena church that it has ended its lengthy investigation into a 2004 antiwar sermon, church leaders said Sunday. But the agency wrote in its letter to All Saints Episcopal Church that officials still considered the sermon to have been illegal, prompting the church to seek clarification, a corrected record and an apology from the IRS, the church's rector told standing-room-only crowds of parishioners at Sunday's services.