ACLU Prepares For Legal Battle

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been known for years as an organization which stands up for the little guy against big government and big business. It has prided itself on integrity and has generally advocated for strong policies on record retention, from which it has benefited. For example, the ACLU has been able to obtain records from the Pentagon about activities at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ACLU routinely uses records it obtains, against the organization from which it obtains the records.

It was clear therefore, that when a lawsuit was threatened against the ACLU itself, that the organization should immediately take steps to begin shredding it's own documents. Janet Linde, who oversaw the ACLU's archives for over a decade until she resigned last month, had raised concerns in e-mail messages and memorandums that the use of shredders to destroy documents without supervision violated the spirit and the intent of ACLU policy. Hence, the reason for Ms. Linde's resignation.

"It takes one to know one", said an ACLU insider who wished to remain anonymous. "We won't let those steenkin' conservatives do to us what we've done to them. We're smarter than that."