A federal judge has awarded almost $52,000 in attorney fees to The New York Times for its successful Freedom of Information Act suit against the CIA to force the production of records related to abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq that sickened U.S. soldiers.

Beginning in 2014, the Times ran a series of stories uncovering that the U.S. government had concealed evidence that hundreds of soldiers had potentially been exposed to aging chemical weapons stockpiles handled by the Iraqi military.

In the course of its reporting, the Times submitted FOIA requests to the CIA for records related to chemical weapons found in Iraq and the dangers they posed, but the agency replied with the so-called “Glomar response”—it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested records.

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