Thursday, July 19, 2007

Lee Strickland 1950 - 2007

Former CIA officer and professor of information policy, Lee Strickland died recently. Mary Minow of the Library Law Blog has this tribute:

"I thought I saw Lee Strickland out of the corner of my eye last week, a couple of times at the American Library Association conference in D.C. last week.

I know he was there, smiling, saying “I told you so,” when Foreign Intelligence Court Judge Royce Lamberth blasted the administration’s use of warrantless wiretaps. Lee was the only library school professor I know who had been a long time Senior Intelligence Officer for the CIA.

I called him years ago to ask about national security letters (NSLs), and he told me that if a library came to him with one, he’d likely recommend the library challenge it. So he would have been proud to hear Peter Chase and Barbara Bailey speak at the ALA conference June 24th, as they described their journey to do just that. They were served an NSL by the FBI, and told that they couldn’t tell anyone besides their lawyer about it. Not their colleagues, their staffs, not their families. They were not willing to turn over records without a court order, and they weren’t willing to stay gagged for eternity about their experience, particularly since Patriot Act Reauthorization hearings were happening, and people were saying that the FBI did not ask for library records.

Lee taught librarians about the inner workings of intelligence orders, and hopefully his teachings and writings helped the librarians and their lawyers in this ultimately successful quest.

I learned a lot from Lee, and he graciously (thankfully!) took on the lion’s share of the work in an article I coauthored with him and Tomas Lipinski, Patriot in the Library: Management Approaches When Demands for Information are Received from Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies, 30 J. of College and Univ. Law 2004 42pp. Karen, his wife, did much of the extensive research.

Lee wrote many many other articles on intelligence information, all a great contribution to the library community. I’m sad as can be that his voice is gone, especially now when we need his inside experience and generous spirit more than ever."

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