Overview of Neither Confirm Nor Deny
This Radiolab episode explores the origin and enduring impact of the phrase “we can neither confirm nor deny”—better known as a Glomar response. What begins with a reporter’s puzzling NSA reply to a simple metadata request turns into a Cold War story about a secret CIA submarine-recovery mission, the legal limits of government transparency, and the uneasy balance between national security and the public’s right to know.
The Core Story
A strange reply from the NSA
- ProPublica’s Jeff Larson filed a request asking the NSA what phone metadata it had on him.
- The agency responded: it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of such records.
- That evasive answer led to the question: Where did this phrase come from, and why does the government use it so often?
The Cold War mission behind the phrase
- The story traces back to Project Azorian, a secret CIA operation in the 1970s.
- After the Soviet submarine K-129 sank in the Pacific, the U.S. tried to recover it from the ocean floor.
- The mission used an enormous ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, named through a cover story involving “manganese mining.”
- The recovery attempt partially succeeded, but the submarine broke apart during the lift, leaving much of what the U.S. wanted still unrecovered.
How the “Glomar response” was invented
- When the mission became public, the CIA needed a response that would:
- avoid confirming classified information,
- avoid outright lying,
- and preserve deniability.
- CIA lawyer Walt Logan devised the line:
- “We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested.”
- A court ultimately accepted that logic, and the phrase entered the government playbook.
Main Themes and Takeaways
Secrecy vs. transparency
- The episode centers on a classic democratic tension:
- the government’s duty to protect secrets,
- versus the public’s right to know under FOIA.
- The Glomar response became a way to block disclosure without directly admitting what the government knew.
The phrase became normalized
- What began as a highly specific Cold War workaround is now widely used by many agencies.
- It shows up in cases involving:
- intelligence programs,
- drone operations,
- terrorism investigations,
- and even seemingly mundane requests.
- The phrase has become boilerplate, but its logic still shapes how information is withheld.
Legal strategy as delay
- The episode argues that Glomar is often less about winning forever and more about buying time.
- FOIA challengers may spend years in court before even reaching the merits of their request.
- By the time information is released, the public debate may have moved on.
Secrets have human consequences
- The story ends with the families of the sailors who died on the K-129.
- A widow describes receiving a death certificate listing the cause of death as essentially “presumed dead,” which she found cruel and meaningless.
- The episode underscores that secrecy can protect states—but also leave families and citizens with nothing but silence.
Notable Insights
- A non-answer can be strategically precise.
- Transparency can be damaging in the moment, but secrecy can be harmful long-term.
- The government often treats the existence of information as sensitive, not just the information itself.
- A phrase invented for one covert operation ended up shaping modern public-records battles.
People and Concepts Featured
Key people
- Latif Nasser – host and narrator
- Jeff Larson – ProPublica data editor, whose request sparked the story
- David Sharp – CIA participant in Project Azorian
- Walt Logan – CIA lawyer who created the Glomar response
- Dina Temple-Raston – journalist discussing the broader use of Glomar responses
- Jamil Jaffer – ACLU lawyer on how FOIA fights play out today
Key concepts
- Glomar response
- FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
- Project Azorian
- Hughes Glomar Explorer
- Cold War secrecy
- National security vs. public accountability
Bottom Line
Neither Confirm Nor Deny is a history of a phrase that sounds like legal boilerplate but carries huge implications. The episode shows how a single Cold War deception became a lasting tool of government secrecy—and asks whether “not saying anything” can sometimes be more powerful, and more damaging, than telling the truth.