Minutes of the Predecessor to the Congressional Research Service

http://www.thememoryhole.org/crs/lrs_minutes.htm

The Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress, has
for decades produced thousands of fact-rich, unbiased, nontechnical reports
to members of Congress regarding a variety of issues. The CRS itself does
not distribute these reports to the public in any way. You can't order paper
copies from the CRS, read them in the Library of Congress, or officially get
them online (although copies of some reports are posted without CRS
approval). Nor can you get an index of reports that they have produced in
the past. CRS publishes a website only for members of Congress that contains
some, but not all, of its recent reports and briefings.

As an arm of Congress, CRS is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
The Service has stated that it works for Congress, and that it is not
responsible for making its reports available to the public. The CRS has
actively opposed dissemination of its reports on congressional member
websites, and has terminated one or two such experiments during the last few
years.

Unlike almost every other government agency or establishment, the CRS has
neither opened for historical research nor deposited in the National
Archives and Records Administration its permanent historical records,
including decades of analytical reports, reports that are primarily factual
in nature.

The CRS has recently become embroiled in controversy when one of its reports
suggested that the President's warrantless electronic surveillance of
Americans appears to be illegal.

Last year, researcher Michael Ravnitzky reviewed and obtained copies of
selected minutes from staff meetings of the CRS's predecessor, the
Legislative Reference Service, from 1947 to 1953. Interestingly, these
meeting notes show the organization wrestling with the same problems over 50
years ago - distribution of the reports; avoidance of controversy; whether
the reports should contain analysis and recommendations or simply state
facts; whether reports should arrive at conclusions; etc. We also see issues
that likely are still cropping up behind the scenes at the tightlipped
agency - whether other governmental bodies should be allowed to clear
reports before they're presented; how to handle classified material; and so
on.

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