Dr. Richelson passed away on Saturday, November 11, 2017, at his home in Los Angeles after a months-long battle against cancer, according to his brother, Charles. He was 67.

Jeff Richelson ranks among the founders of the National Security Archive vision – that systematic Freedom of Information Act requests could force the government to open files that otherwise would remain secret indefinitely, and once open, these files could enrich scholarship and journalism and the public debate on issues like nuclear weapons and spying that very much needed public attention and skepticism.

As a member of the early 1980s informal SI-TK-Byeman group in Washington D.C., Jeff contributed documents and variable declassifications to the dynamic that led first Raymond Bonner of The New York Times, and then, most importantly, Scott Armstrong (ofthe Washington Post) to create the National Security Archive in 1985 as an institutional memory and permanent pressure group for open government.

As a Senior Fellow of the Archive since the 1990s, Jeff was the founding director of the Cyber Vault project, supported by the Hewlett Foundation, to publish the primary sources of cyber security policy, many of them previously classified and only opened as the result of his FOIA requests. The Cyber Vault remains a permanent tribute to the Richelson legacy.

Dr. Richelson authored an extraordinary series of essential reference books published by trade and academic presses. His volume on The U.S. Intelligence Community (Westview Press) entered its 7th edition in 2016, with encomiums ranging from Bob Woodward (“the authoritative bible on the modern American intelligence establishment”) to Professor