the.com/glomar response
neither confirm nor deny — the classified world's favorite shrug.
means a legal answer where an agency refuses to say whether requested records even exist, because confirming or denying would itself leak sensitive information.
from named after the Glomar Explorer, the CIA ship built to secretly recover a sunk Soviet submarine in 1974; when reporters filed FOIA requests, the CIA's refusal to confirm or deny the ship's mission became the legal precedent.
legal precedentset by phillippi v. cia, 1976
nicknamecalled an nc r response internally
still usedroutinely invoked in modern foia lawsuits
for instance
cia glomar explorer — the 1974 sub-recovery mission that started it all
nsa surveillance foia — nsa glomars requests about domestic call-record programs
drone strike records — cia long glomared questions about targeted killings program