The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced today that a partially declassified version of the OIG’s July 2009 "Report on the President’s Surveillance Program" was released late Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by The New York Times in the Southern District of New York. The classified report, which was prepared by the Offices of the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was delivered in 2009 to the relevant Congressional oversight and intelligence committees, as well as agency leadership offices. Because the report was classified in its entirety, its contents could not be disclosed to the public at that time, and the Offices of the Inspectors General instead released publicly a separate, unclassified summary report. The partially declassified version of the full report released Friday, which contains information that has been declassified by agencies with the authority to do so, can be found on the OIG’s website at: www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2015/2009JointIGReportonthePSP.pdf.
The release of this report is the last in a series of seven DOJ OIG reports released in response to requests by Inspector General Horowitz to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DOJ to conduct declassification reviews of these reports, and in response to FOIA requests by The New York Times, among others.