[Infowarrior] - CRS to restrict public distro of its reports

[Richard Forno]

You'd Know if You Were Congressional

Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102
043.html

All non-congressionals, or those who think they may be, please take note.

This week, Congressional Research Service chief Daniel P. Mulhollan issued a
memo to all staffers in the service, known as Congress's think tank. From
now on, he wrote, CRS researchers will require a supervisor's approval
before giving any CRS report to a "non-congressional."

Non-congressionals are, said CRS spokeswoman Janine D'Addario, usually
fellow researchers in "U.S. government entities and nongovernmental
entities, the media and foreign governments, like embassies."

The CRS works exclusively for Congress and is legendarily closefisted with
its reports. For years, open-government groups and some members of Congress
have fought unsuccessfully to put the reports online. Now it comes out that
CRS researchers have been trading reports like baseball cards with these
special non-congressionals, sharing knowledge on North Korean
counterfeiting, wheat subsidies and other topics commissioned by Congress.

That can continue, according to Mulhollan's memo, but "prior approval should
now be requested at the division or office level."

However: "Product requests can also originate from other non-congressional
sources including individual researchers, corporations, law offices, private
associations, libraries, law firms and publishers. The Inquiry Section
typically declines these requests, and most often refers the caller to his
or her congressional representative's office," Mulhollan wrote.

So let's review. All governmental, nongovernmental, foreign-governmental,
media researcher-type non-congressionals -- and you know who you are -- can
still have CRS reports, if a CRS supervisor approves.

For the rest of you non-congressionals, the rules have not changed. The
answer is no -- go ask Congress.

-- Elizabeth Williamson