Anti-Gag Statute
American legal statute regarding state secrets
The anti-gag statute is a legal boundary in the long struggle in the United States between Executive Branch secrecy and the United States Congress and the public's right to know. Since 1988, the statute has been an annual appropriations restriction drawing the line on Executive branch efforts to limit whistleblowing disclosures to information that is specifically identified in advance as classified. The anti-gag statute requires a mandatory, specifically worded addendum on any nondisclosure policy, form or agreement to legally spend money to implement or enforce the gag order.
The addendum states that the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (protecting public disclosures) and the Lloyd–La Follette Act of 1912 (protecting congressional communications) supersede any restrictive language in the gag order. The addendum even incorporates by reference the language of those and other related good government and national security laws into every federally enforced gag order, as a prerequisite to be legally enforceable. It has been unanimously renewed every year since 1988.
Background
The anti-gag statute was first passed in response to Reagan administration nondisclosure agreements, primarily known as SF 189 and SF 312, which employees had to sign as a prerequisite to keep or obtain their security clearances. The forms were gag orders that would have effectively created a back door Official Secrets Act for 2.4 million clearance holders if implemented as planned. The agreements were to be enforced through loss of clearance and felony prosecution for releasing any “classifiable” information without advance approval.
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“Anti-Gag Statute” enters the record as american legal statute regarding state secrets. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Anti-Gag, Statute and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Anti-Gag Statute” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Anti-Gag, Statute and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4774177. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1989 and 1912.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anti-Gag Statute” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.