These documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by EFF Board member John Gilmore, through his lawyer, Lee Tien. Each document was scanned in, then proofread for obvious mistakes. Anything not in the original text is bracketed. An excerpt from the transcript of hearings before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, as part of a general investigation into ways that the government can take control of privately developed ideas.
Export controls on cryptography are one such way.
One memo shows that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that ITAR was unconstitutional. Testimony shows that the State Department and the President may have ignored possibly binding legal advice from the Office of Legal Counsel. This is a draft letter from Robert McConnell, Assistant Attorney General for Legal and Intergovernmental affairs to Jake Garn, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Clement Zablocki was the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is particularly good in that it makes a compelling argument for why the ITAR establishes a system of prior restraint.