Career
He is a critic of United States. government secrecy, generally favoring more openness. He directs the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy and is the author of the Federation blog/newsletter Secrecy News. Aftergood has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (1977) and has published research in solid-state physics.
He joined the Fetal alcohol syndrome staff in 1989.
He spent years advocating against an operating research nuclear reactor at University of California, Los Angeles with the Committee to Bridge the Gap. Public protests led to its shut-down.
In 1991, Aftergood exposed the highly classified Project Timberwind, an unacknowledged United States. Department of Defense special access program to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. In 1997 he was the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Acting lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency which led to the declassification and publication of the United States. government"s total intelligence budget ($266 billion in 1997) for the first time in fifty years.
In 2009, his article "Reducing Government Secrecy: Finding What Works" appeared in the Yale Law & Policy Review.
WikiLeaks The scandal around WikiLeaks was a challenge for Aftergood"s work. Although he has published thousands of leaked documents on the Secrecy News blog he runs for the Fetal alcohol syndrome, he turned down an invitation to join WikiLeaks" board of advisers. Instead he strongly criticized WikiLeaks and its leader, Julian Assange.
"I would say also that WikiLeaks is a response to a genuine problem, namely the over control of information of public policy significance," Aftergood said in an article he wrote for The Guardian.