Word.ws English Dictionary

Glomar response

Glomar response noun: a response by a US government agency (etc) that it can "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of (secret) information which has been asked for.

Noun

Glomar response (plural Glomar responses)

  1. A response by a US government agency (etc) that it can "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of (secret) information which has been asked for.
    • Another legal basis for a "Glomar response" frequently available to the CIA is the provision in the current Executive Order 12356 allowing an agency to "... refuse to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of requested information ..."1985, United States House Committee on Government Operations; Government Information, Justice, and Agriculture Subcommittee, The Freedom of Information Reform Act: Hearings Before [...the]...
    • If a requester knows that the CIA may use the Glomar response only for requests about covert operations, then a Glomar response to a FOIA [amounts to revealing that something exists as a covert operation].1993, University of California, Davis. School of Law, U.C. Davis Law Review

Examples of Glomar response in a sentence

  • As an alternative basis for its holding, the District Court held that the CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C. § 431, permits a Glomar response only when the FOIA request relates to a covert activity.1993, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law:
  • For example, with a "Glomar response," the agency neither confirms nor denies the existence of the requested records.2006, P. Stephen Gidiere (III), The Federal Information Manual: How the Government Collects, Manages, and Discloses Information Under FOIA...
  • A federal court in New York has ruled that the National Security Agency properly provided a Glomar response to attorneys ' requests for confirmation of whether their ...2008, Access Reports/freedom of Information:

Forms of Glomar response

pluralGlomar responses

Origin of Glomar response

So named because it was used in response to a request for records about the Glomar Explorer submarine-retrieval ship.

Questions about Glomar response

What does Glomar response mean?
Glomar response means a response by a US government agency (etc) that it can "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of (secret) information which has been asked for.
How do you use Glomar response in a sentence?
As an alternative basis for its holding, the District Court held that the CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C. § 431, permits a Glomar response only when the FOIA request relates to a covert activity.
What part of speech is Glomar response?
Glomar response is a noun.
What is the plural of Glomar response?
The plural of Glomar response is Glomar responses.

Words near Glomar response in the dictionary

  1. glomangiosarcomas
  2. Glomar
  3. Glomar Beach
  4. Glomar denial
  5. Glomar denials
  6. Glomar response
  7. Glomar responses
  8. Glomarization
  9. glomb
  10. glomb on
  11. glomb onto

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Glomar response (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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