>but if this guy based a freedom of information request on information that he only knew about due to his access to classified information, then he did in fact

>but if this guy based a freedom of information request on information that he only knew about due to his access to classified information, then he did in fact mishandle classified information. You are only allowed to use classified information to perform your duties at work. I don't get this. Even assuming this is true (and the other reply here seems to cast some doubt on this claim), how is trying to get something released through official channels "mishandling classified information"? In fact, the fact that we don't know this stuff even exists is one of the major problems with FOIA requests. The same stuff constantly happens with the NSA - everyone gets mad about XKeyscore, so they say, "OK, we've stopped the XKeyscore project", but they just have another project, YKeyspore, where they were doing a bunch of similar stuff, and they move all the objectionable stuff into YKeyspore, so now they can say, "We shut down the XKeyscore project." and it sounds like they said, "We've stopped spying on journalists." The only way the public ever learns about these types of wordgames is when someone with classified access sacrifices their life and/or career to tell us about it. This sort of story is the exact reason why it's disingenuous to say that Edward Snowden and other national security whistleblowers have legitimate channels.