Pentagon Seeks to Withhold More Documents from Public, What's Behind It?

The Pentagon has submitted a proposal that could potentially change the face of information transparency in the United States. If approved by Congress, the Department of Defence would gain new authority to withhold thousands of documents that are currently not classified from public access.

‘The last thing the government needs is new authority to withhold information under FOIA,’ stated Brett Max Kaufman, Senior Advisor at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who assessed that the proposal would worsen the culture of secrecy within the federal government.

The proposal, sent to Congress at the end of June, would provide a new legal basis for the Secretary of Defence to refuse the release of documents designated as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). These documents are not state secrets but are considered to contain sensitive information. Currently, the CUI designation serves only as an administrative marker, not a legal reason to deny a public information request.

The change lies in a new article desired by the Pentagon. Under this rule, CUI documents could be withheld if the Department of Defence assesses that their content relates to national defence vulnerabilities and that the risk of disclosure outweighs the public interest in knowing. Critics consider this criterion to be excessively broad.

For nearly six decades, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been one of the primary instruments for the American public to oversee the government. Enacted in 1966, FOIA requires federal agencies to disclose documents to the public, except for those falling under nine specific exemptions explicitly regulated by law.

The US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the agency overseeing the CUI system, has repeatedly stressed that labelling a document as CUI does not automatically make it exempt from disclosure. To deny an information request, an agency must still rely on one of the exemptions in FOIA. The Pentagon’s proposal would effectively reverse this principle.

Greg Williams, Director of the Center for Defence Information at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), described the proposal as a ‘significant concern’. He noted that the definition of CUI is already so broad that it is easily overused. ‘When I was a contractor, the unofficial guidance was simple: if in doubt, label it CUI,’ Williams told CBS News on Wednesday (15/7/2026).