State Department on Congressional 'Crap'

At the Unredacted blog of the National Security Archive, Nate Jones has funny item (well, he ultimately doesn't think it's funny, but it's at least a little funny) about using the Freedom of Information Act appeals process to get the State Department to give up some redacted information about a particular document.

The document in question was a printout of a draft resolution "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism." When the the State Department originally agreed to release the document, it placed a small box on it to cover up an area where a department official had hand-written a comment on the resolution.

Fast-forward two years, after the National Security Archive's Barbara Elias successfully pursued an appeal of the redaction of the comment. The department re-released the document with the box removed. So what were the words that had caused such concern? A simple, straightforward commentary on the proposed resolution:

"What a load of crap!!"