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Memorandum from. b6 b7C Re: INFORMATION SECURITY OVERSIGHT OFFICE (ISOO) REGARDING FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) REQUESTED BY PROFESSOR ATHAN THEOHARIS ADDENDUM: RECORDS MANAGEMENT DIVISION, 10/25/83 Professor Theoharis noted in his letter tnat. a lengthy period of time transpired between his request and the release of information from the Official and Confidential File of former FBI Assistant Director Louis Nichols. It is unfortunate that a more expeditious handling of the request could not have been afforded, but the request was processed at a time when the Document Classification Unit was burdened with a significant backlog. As the Professor acknowledged, this was a lengthy file and it must be taken into consideration that the FBi receives many requests, some concurrently, and the reviews must be distributed as equitably as possible. With respect to the wiretapping relating to Harry Bridges, the legal brief should not have had the entry "Wiretapping" nor the page number "28" deleted in the Table of Contents, particularly when the entire page 28 was released unclassified and there was no evident harm to the national security. It is a regretable inconsistency and an obvious oversight on the part of the reviewing official. It is not the policy of the FBI to allow classifying. authorities to make arbitrary or capricious classification decisions. This is not to say that these qualities may not appear to be present in our work, but not maliciously so. The classifying authorities doing this work endeavor to reach classification decisions through research and careful analysis and the reasons for their decisions may not always be readily apparent to the requestor..