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Add Jeremy Scudder to the growing list of ex-agents who provide examples of why Ed Snowden is a fugitive.

His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

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Scudder [...] took an assignment in 2007 as a project manager for the CIA’s Historical Collections Division, an office set up to comb the agency’s archives for materials — often decades old — that can be released without posing any security risk.

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It was there that Scudder discovered a stack of articles, hundreds of histories of long-dormant conflicts and operations that he concluded were still being stored in secret years after they should have been shared with the public.

Scudder led efforts to upgrade the historical collection, converting thousands of documents to digital files that could be searched electronically. In the process, he said, he discovered about 1,600 articles that were listed as released to the public but could not be found at the National Archives. Further searching turned up hundreds more that seemed harmless but were stuck in various stages of declassification review.

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Scudder said he made numerous attempts to get the trove released but was repeatedly blocked by the Information Review and Release Group, the office in charge of clearing materials for the public.

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He made spreadsheets that listed the titles of all 1,987 articles he wanted, he said, then had them scanned for classified content and got permission to take them home so he could assemble his FOIA request on personal time.

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To get them released, Scudder submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

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His request set in motion a harrowing sequence. He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension.

  WaPo

So what were these documents that the CIA deemed so necessary to national security that they be kept secret?

The documents sought by Scudder amount to a catalog of a bygone era of espionage. Among them are articles with the titles “Intelligence Lessons from Pearl Harbor” and “Soviet Television — a New Asset for Kremlin Watchers.”

We wouldn’t want THAT to get out.

“As I reflect,” Scudder said, “I am hit again by the absurdity of it all.”

I invite you to read the entire article describing Scudder’s ordeal.

The CIA has fielded thousands of FOIA requests. Most applicants wait months if not years before getting a response — which is often an outright rejection.

Which allows me to bring up this:

Glenn Greenwald had announced that he was releasing a report “at midnight” several days ago. Instead, what he posted was this:

 And by doing so, the government has successfully kept the information from the public for another length of time. I do wonder why Greenwald made the pre-publication announcement.  I get that they have to investigate new claims, but in this manner, the government can stall indefinitely any story.  I shall give Greenwald the benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe he didn't have all the info he wanted to publish and made the announcement to get the government to react so that he could go ahead.  But I don’t trust him as much as I did before the Ed Snowden files came to him, especially after he bad-mouthed Luke Harding for writing a book about Snowden without having read the book.

Also recently, Amy Goodman stood in for Greenwald at the last minute for a speech, according to him due to a "family emergency."

Well, we're all on the outside now and we have no choice but to wait for the morsels.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.