2026年7月15日 / 美国东部时间晚上7:06 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿 —— 五角大楼正在请求国会授予其广泛的新权限，以扣留非机密记录不向公众公开。 transparency倡导者表示，这项提议可能会大幅削弱公众监督这个美国最大联邦机构、了解数十亿美元纳税人资金如何使用的能力。
这项立法提案旨在创设联邦法律的新条款，允许国防部长将某些“受控非机密信息”（即CUI）依据《信息自由法》免于公开，前提是美国军方认定相关记录涉及国防漏洞，且认为公开带来的损害超过公众利益。
美国公民自由联盟民主中心的高级法律顾问布雷特·马克斯·考夫曼在发给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的电子邮件中表示，数十年来，行政部门一直存在“大规模过度分类问题”。
“政府最不需要的就是新的权力，以依据《信息自由法》扣留信息，”考夫曼写道。
受控非机密信息制度是奥巴马政府时期通过一项行政命令设立的，用以取代数十年来各机构制定的数十种不一致的“仅供官方使用”标识。
设立CUI制度的初衷是规范各机构保护敏感但非机密信息的方式。重要的是，CUI本身并未创设扣留公众记录的权限。
负责监督政府CUI项目的国家档案馆多次强调，被指定为CUI并不影响记录是否可依据《信息自由法》公开。包括国防部在内的机构仍需依靠《信息自由法》规定的九项法定豁免之一，才能阻止公众披露文件。
五角大楼的提议将从根本上改变这一关系。该提议不再将CUI视为一种行政标识，而是允许国防部将其作为完全扣留记录的核心依据之一。
华盛顿监督机构“政府监督项目”国防信息中心主任格雷格·威廉姆斯在接受哥伦比亚广播公司新闻采访时称该提议“令人严重担忧”。他表示，这将使通过《信息自由法》程序获取信息“变得更加困难”。
“受控非机密信息本身就存在很大问题，因为它的定义并不十分明确，却被用于保护各类不同信息，”威廉姆斯说，他补充道，自己作为承包商时，通用指导原则就是“拿不准的时候，就标记为CUI”。
1966年颁布的《信息自由法》旨在扭转政府保密的推定，要求联邦机构披露记录，除非它们属于九项狭义规定的豁免范围之内。国会曾多次修订该法律以强化这一原则，最近一次是通过2026年《信息自由法改进法案》，该法案强化了公开推定，要求机构在扣留许多记录之前，必须证明存在具体而非推测的可预见损害。
五角大楼的这项提议已于6月底提交国会，有望纳入今年的立法。该提议出台之际，正值国防部长皮特·赫格斯瑟领导下国防部信息管理方式发生更广泛转变。过去一年，该部门对记者进入五角大楼的权限和活动范围施加了新限制，要求持证记者在原本可自行进入的区域必须有官方陪同。
《纽约时报》已提起诉讼，质疑五角大楼要求进入五角大楼的记者签署可能限制信息获取的协议，以及五角大楼的记者陪同政策。联邦法官以《第一修正案》为由作出有利于《纽约时报》的裁决，但五角大楼已就两起案件提起上诉。
五角大楼官员将这项立法提议描述为努力更好地保护敏感军事信息免受外国对手的攻击。该措施将显著扩大国防部将非机密记录置于公众视野之外的能力。它还将允许国防部阻止州和地方政府依据自身的公开记录法律披露相关记录，即便相关信息脱离联邦管控，也能扩大五角大楼对信息的控制权。
代理五角大楼新闻发言人乔·瓦尔迪兹在一份声明中表示：“这项立法提案旨在为某些涉及国家安全利益的CUI创设法定的《信息自由法》豁免，为这类信息提供更统一的保护和更一致的扣留决定。”
五角大楼的提案并未解释现有《信息自由法》豁免为何不足，并称现有法律在保护敏感文件方面存在空白。
但五角大楼表示其试图保护的大部分信息，已经受到现有法律的保护。受出口管制的技术、受保护的关键基础设施信息、某些核记录、采购敏感数据和情报相关信息，都已受到法规或条例的保护，机构可依据这些规定在《信息自由法》下扣留记录。
每年美国行政管理和预算局提交预算请求后，国会都会收到多项立法提案，但目前尚不清楚这项提案能否被纳入，因为众议院和参议院都已完成年度国防政策法案的 markup 程序。
这并非五角大楼首次寻求调整《信息自由法》的条款。例如，2017年年度国防政策法案的草案版本就包含了扣留“军事战术、技术和程序以及军事交战规则”相关信息的条款，这引发了监督组织联盟致信国会反对该条款。
《内部防务》最先报道了这项最新的立法提议。如果获得通过，该法案将纳入长期以来饱受长期延误困扰的《信息自由法》体系。国防部的《信息自由法》申请积压情况一直在加剧。五角大楼最新的年度《信息自由法》报告显示，截至2025财年末，积压申请达30476份，较2024年增长42%。
日益增长的积压案件反映出《信息自由法》体系难以跟上现代联邦政府的规模和复杂性。尽管《信息自由法》要求大多数情况下机构需在20个工作日内作出回应，但申请可能会被搁置数月甚至数年，迫使申请人提起代价高昂的诉讼以迫使机构采取行动。等到最终公开记录时，公众讨论往往已经结束，这破坏了《信息自由法》为政府决策提供及时公共监督的核心宗旨。
威廉姆斯告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，从表面上看，这项提议是不必要的，因为已经存在一套对敏感国家安全信息进行分类的制度。
“你不妨想一想，如果你出于国家安全担忧将某件东西标记为‘受控非机密信息’，那为什么不直接将其列为机密呢？”威廉姆斯说。
Pentagon proposes new secrecy power to withhold unclassified records from public-access laws
July 15, 2026 / 7:06 PM EDT / CBS News
Washington — The Pentagon is asking Congress for broad new authority to withhold unclassified records from the public, a proposal that transparency advocates say could significantly reduce the public’s ability to scrutinize the nation’s largest federal agency and understand how billions of taxpayer dollars are spent.
The legislative proposal seeks to create a new section of federal law allowing the defense secretary to exempt certain “controlled unclassified information,” or CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act if the U.S. military determines the records concern national defense vulnerabilities and concludes that the harm from disclosure outweighs the public interest.
Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy, told CBS News in an email that for decades, there has been “a massive overclassification problem throughout the executive branch.”
“The last thing the government needs is a new power to withhold information under the FOIA,” Kaufman wrote.
Controlled Unclassified Information was established under an executive order during the Obama administration to replace dozens of inconsistent “For Official Use Only” markings that agencies had developed over decades.
The CUI system was designed to standardize how agencies safeguard sensitive but unclassified information. Importantly, CUI itself does not create authority to withhold records from the public.
The National Archives, which oversees the government’s CUI program, has repeatedly emphasized that designation as CUI does not affect whether records may be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Agencies like the Defense Department must still rely on one of FOIA’s nine statutory exemptions to prevent the public disclosure of documents.
The Pentagon proposal would fundamentally change that relationship. Instead of treating CUI as an administrative marking, it would allow the Defense Department to use it as one of the central predicates for withholding records altogether.
Greg Williams, the director of the Center for Defense Information at the D.C. watchdog Project on Government Oversight, called the proposal “a significant concern” in an interview with CBS News. He said it would make receiving information through the FOIA process “a lot more difficult.”
“Controlled unclassified information is already very problematic because it’s not very carefully defined and it’s used to protect lots of different kinds of information,” Williams said, adding that when he was a contractor, the general guidance was, “when in doubt, mark it as CUI.”
The Freedom of Information Act, enacted in 1966, was designed to reverse the presumption of government secrecy by requiring federal agencies to disclose records unless they fall within one of the nine narrowly drawn exemptions. Congress has repeatedly amended the law to reinforce that principle, most recently through the FOIA Improvement Act of 2026, which strengthened the presumption of openness by requiring agencies to demonstrate a concrete — not speculative — foreseeable harm before withholding many records.
The Pentagon’s proposal, which was sent to Congress in late June for potential inclusion in legislation this year, comes amid a broader shift in how it has managed information under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Over the past year, the department has imposed new restrictions on reporters’ access and movement inside the Pentagon, requiring official escorts for areas that credentialed journalists had long accessed on their own.
The New York Times has filed lawsuits challenging the Pentagon policy that required reporters accessing the Pentagon to sign an agreement that could restrict information-seeking and the Pentagon’s journalist-escort policy. Federal judges ruled in favor of the New York Times, citing the First Amendment, but the Pentagon has appealed in both cases.
Pentagon officials describe the legislative proposal as an effort to better protect sensitive military information from foreign adversaries. The measure would mark a notable expansion of the department’s ability to keep unclassified records from public view. It would also allow the Defense Department to block state and local governments from releasing covered records under their own open records laws, extending the Pentagon’s control over information even after it leaves federal custody.
In a statement, acting Pentagon press secretary Joe Valdez said, “The legislative proposal seeks a statutory FOIA exemption for certain CUI that implicates national security interests to provide more uniform protection and more consistent withholding decisions for such information.”
The Pentagon’s proposal does not explain why existing FOIA exemptions are insufficient and claims there’s a gap in existing law to protect sensitive documents.
But much of the information the Pentagon says it is trying to protect is already shielded under existing law. Export-controlled technologies, protected critical infrastructure information, certain nuclear records, procurement-sensitive data and intelligence-related information are all covered by statutes or regulations that agencies already rely on to withhold records under FOIA.
Congress receives several legislative proposals each year after the Office of Management and Budget submits a budget request, but it’s unclear if this one will be included, since both the House and the Senate have already done their markups of the annual defense policy bill.
This is not the first time the Pentagon has sought language to adjust FOIA. For instance, a draft version of the annual defense policy bill in 2017 included language to withhold information “on military tactics, techniques, and procedures, and of military rules of engagements.” It prompted a coalition of oversight organizations to write to Congress opposing it.
Inside Defense first reported on the latest legislative proposal. If adopted, the legislation would become part of a FOIA system that has long suffered from chronic delays. The Defense Department’s backlog of FOIA requests has been growing. The most recent annual Pentagon FOIA report said that at the end of the 2025 fiscal year, there were 30,476 backlogged requests, a 42% increase from 2024.
The growing backlog reflects a FOIA system that has struggled to keep pace with the size and complexity of the modern federal government. Although FOIA requires agencies to respond within 20 working days in most cases, requests can remain pending for months or years, forcing petitioners to enter into costly litigation to compel agencies to act. By the time records are ultimately released, the public debate has often passed, undermining FOIA’s central purpose of providing timely public oversight of government decision-making.
Williams told CBS News the proposal on its face is unnecessary because there’s already a system for classifying sensitive national security information.
“Ask yourself, you know, if you’re going to mark something as ‘controlled unclassified information’ for national security concerns, why wouldn’t you classify it?” Williams said.