Does anyone know how long the US government can seal records for?

By way of explanation... Say something happened in 1999 but that full disclosure of events was not deemed to be in the public interest and the intelligence agencies decided to cover things up. Would the records of said event be released in full at a later date, say in 30, 50 or even 100 years later?

Also, can records be sealed for longer than a standard number of years? For example, because people involved at still alive?

Hope that is all clearer than mud.

Any light anyone could shed on this would be gratefully received!

Thanks,

Chris

I'm just taking a stab here, but if we're talking US government, it would probably be safe to say that there may be records sealed for good. I'm sure there are skeletons they don't want to be found and the general population might never know about them.

Many court records, if sealed, are sealed indefinitely.

Many documents are "sealed" informally -- no one has ever asked to see them, basically. That was the idea behind the Freedom of Information Act . So if something was just not well known, and a journalist were to dig up clues, and pursue details . . .

Census information becomes available after 72 years .

Other information may be destroyed (this is often illegal), if there is concern about it getting into the wrong hands.

Are you talking about some specific kind of information?

Sounds like there's another intriguing Chris fanfic on the way...

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, Rivka, I have something specific in mind. The trouble is that I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to give the story away. But...

I want the US government -- and probably its security services -- to have decided that covering up the events of a pivotal historical event was a good idea. Nobody -- not even intrepid DP reporters! -- ever find out the full story, so years / decades later people are still wondering.

The release of information date is only important in so far as I don't want to put the story fifty years after said event and find out that there is some rule by which information is released into the public domain after forty! (Going for accuracy / authenticity here, folks!)

(In Britain, there is something called the thirty-years rule; after thirty years, documents from the Cabinet Office are made available to the public; I guess I had that kind of thing in the back of my mind. BTW, individual census returns here are sealed for 100 years -- very annoying when you are trying to do research on the 1920s and 1030s!)

Of course, I could go down the totally illegal destruction of information route, which would get me out of a huge hole with very little effort on my part. Yeah... Looking good...

Rat: "intriguing Chris fanfic"? H'm. Don't know about that. At the moment, it is a few thousand words of disjointed angsty drivel festering on my hard drive. Can't really guarantee that it will ever be anything more.

Chris

Depending on the kind of of information they would or wouldn't get released. For exmaple if we were talking about sealed CIA or KGB records most would probabaly remained sealed although many KGB records did get reelased after the collapse of the Soviet Union so I'm not sure.

I think I read or heard somewhere that a lot of the information concerning the Kennedys in the 60's was sealed for 75 years. I guess they figure that's long enough for all the people involved to be gone.

Also, in England the records regarding Jack the Ripper were supposed to be sealed for 100 years, but I guess they'd be available now.

Thanks for the suggestions / information Crazy Babe and Anne (and the others higher up the thread ).

I did some more hunting around a couple of days ago and found some useful looking documents about the Freedom of Information Act in the US (as well as a bunch of stuff about the Public Records Office in the UK.) Re the FOIA: some of the material I found was quite difficult to get my head around -- ah, confusion! -- but that's fine, at least as far at the story goes. So long as I can make things plausible, I'm happy.

So... one day in the very dim and distant future I might have another story to share with you. Don't hold you're collective breath, though. As I'm sure you have all figured out by now, I am a very slow writer.

Chris