National Security Archives Director Thomas S. Blanton to Keynote Lazerow Lecture at
C.W. Post’s Palmer School

March 17, 2003 — Erosions of citizen access to government information — guaranteed under the Freedom of Information Act — will be the topic of discussion at the next Lazerow Lecture Series from 7 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 10, 2003 at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, NY.

This year’s keynote speaker is Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archives at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. NSA is thought to be the world’s largest nongovernmental library of declassified documents. Blanton will address "Information Wars on the Homefront. Will Increased Official Secrecy Ensure Greater Personal Security?"

According to Palmer School Professor Charles Hildreth, who is organizing the lecture, "Mr. Blanton will describe the assaults on the Freedom of Information Act and the Presidential Records Act now taking place in the post-Patriot Act, anti-openness climate of Washington. He will make a convincing case that the reflexive secrecy now in vogue in Washington actually decreases our security."

A noted journalist and author, Blanton is a winner of a George Polk Award for journalism from Long Island University. He served as the National Security Archive’s first Director of Planning & Research beginning in 1986, becoming Deputy Director in 1989, and Executive Director in 1992. He filed his first Freedom of Information Act request in 1976 as a weekly newspaper reporter in Minnesota; and among many hundreds subsequently, he filed the FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit (with Public Citizen Litigation Group) that forced the release of Oliver North's Iran-contra diaries in 1990.

His books include "White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House Tried to Destroy," which The New York Times described as "a stream of insights into past American policy, spiced with depictions of White House officials in poses they would never adopt for a formal portrait."

He co-authored "The Chronology on the Iran-contra Affair," and served as a contributing author to three editions of the ACLU's authoritative guide, "Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws," and to the Brookings Institution study "Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940." He is a founding editorial board member of freedominfo.org, the virtual network of international freedom of information advocates.

The Lazerow lectures are a series of annual discussions honoring the memory of Samuel Lazerow, a pioneer in the use of computers in libraries and information services. The general theme of the lecture series centers on issues of information services, access and policy.

Blanton’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Hutchins Gallery of the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library. A reception will immediately follow the lecture. The C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University is located at 720 Northern Boulevard (Route 25A), Brookville, New York. For information, contact Dr. Charles Hildreth at 516-299-2866 or charles.Hildreth@liu.edu.