Freedom of Information? Fifteen Months Waiting for Four Blank Pages
Back in December 2009, my colleague and — I flatter myself — friend Richard Pollock, PJM Washington bureau chief, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Air Force asking for some fairly routine information.
It was just after the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. He wanted to know who was on the Air Force flights to Copenhagen — including Air Force One. And he wanted to know how much taxpayer money was spent flying these people back and forth, how much baggage, etc.
There was a bit more to it than that, of course, but it was still pretty innocuous stuff. The volume of fuel used in the flights and how much the baggage weighed, as well as who was on all the flights, is information kept by the Air Force as a matter of course. This request should have taken about 20 minutes with a file cabinet to fill. Additionally, while this information would be classified (also as a matter of course), none of it was national security information. We all know the president went to Copenhagen and came back empty-handed.
Fast forward 15 months.
Richard finally got a response — four blank pages.
Well, not completely blank. They had departure and arrival times for four airplanes, but everything else was redacted and referred to the Secret Service.
This was the culmination of 15 months of slapstick back-and-forth which would have done credit to a Buster Keaton movie.
The first response Richard got was an extension letter. (Legally, agencies are supposed to act on a FOIA request within 20 days. That almost never actually happens, of course, unless they’re doing what FDIC did to us — telling you to pound sand.) Candice Velasquez, a civilian employee of the Air Force, wrote in an email dated Feb. 5, 2010, that this very simple request was too broad:
This message is in response to you 23 December 2009 Freedom of Information Act request for information related to recent transportation of USG officials to and from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. We are unable to process your request, because it is too broad. The records desired is the responsibility of the member of the public who requests the records. The requester must provide a description of the desired records to enable the Air Force to locate the record with a reasonable amount of effort. We are holding your request in abeyance until we receive your clarification.
Richard, who it must be said is pretty good at his job, sent back a clarification letter as requested, basically telling them they’d best pony up or our lawyers would be in touch.
Velasquez then decided delay was the best tactic and sent Richard a letter on March 15, 2010, telling him they needed an extension:
To process your request properly, we find a time extension is necessary because the amount of records we have to review. We will respond to you by 29 March 2010.
All well and good, except March 29, 2010, came and went and there was no response — until April 9, 2010, when Velasquez sent another extension letter:
We find we are unable to meet the time limits of the FOIA because of the sustanial [sic] amount of records to be reviewed. We’ll continue to keep you informed on the status of your request.
By June 2010 this routine request had been kicked all the way up to the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s office and the White House.
Richard, who got the four blank pages during the first part of March of this year, was understandably upset that the response to his very simple request was essentially: “screw you.” He asked me to make a couple phone calls to see if I could get some answers as to why it had taken 15 months to come up with four blank pages.
The most transparent administration ever? Right, and I also have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Tell them to look in the drawer where he keeps his birth certificate.
…. Tell them to look in the drawer where he keeps his birth certificate ….
Is that in the filing cabinet in which he keeps his kindergarten records and his grade-school records and his Jakarta madrassa records and his Indonesian passport records and his high-school records and his foreign-student college application and records and his SATs scores and his university records and his LSAT scores and his law school records and his transcripts and his catechism and baptismal records and stuff like that?
Probably.
I don’t believe he ever studied catechism – if you recall he became a born-again liberation theology guy, under the tutelage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
This goes a long way to explaining why he gets Christianity wrong so often. He really doesn’t know any better. I wonder if he can even name the Ten Commandments. He certainly doesn’t live them.
Don’t forget the EEOC records of all the jobs on Wall Street he turned down in order be a community organizer for $13,000 a year. This Administration does have some credibility issues. I think he is proven to be dishonest the question remains to what extent.
“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display …”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”
Bravo, sir, bravo!
Ah good old Hitchhiker’s Guide. That’s so funny yet too close to the truth.
Ahh! Obama transparency at its best!
I bet among the non-government employees on board there were no registered Republicans.
And it’s clear the Hawaiian — or is it Luo — word for “opaque” is “obama.”
In the small part of the Dept of Commerce where I worked for a few years in the 90′s FOIA requests were viewed as “must answer in time”. We were expected to get the answer out in the initial allotted time and not ask for an extension. In fact, if it was information we were permitted to give, I would tell people to not make a FOIA request because that would slow my ability to send them the info (legal had to review all responses to FOIA and that extra step could add a week or so). I only remember a couple cases where we turned down FOIA requests – usually cases in which companies were trying to get confidential information on competitors.
The should change the name to FREEDOM OF DISINFORMATION ACT…
Or perhaps the FREEDOM OF UNINFORMATION… FU for short.
Here’s what we REALLY need to know…. Were there ANY such Airforce One requests to the BUSH ADMINISTRATION and how where they handled?
That way we can see whether this is endemic for those in power all the time, or is SPECIFIC to the Reich-president.
I’ve had some dealings with agencies like the State Department. To me, this sounds like bureaucratic business as usual. Nobody knows anything, nobody knows how to find out anything, nobody knows why something happened the way it did…but they’ll look into it and get right back to you. Typical.
And yet ALL those State Dept. weenies who claim to no nothing about anything, also all believe that they are MUCH smarter than all of us.
I’ve learned via frustration that anyone who says to you…”I’ll get back to you on that…” is actually saying “….forget about that…, because I have just now.”
Good job, Pay. Keep at them.
ARRG. PAT. Good job PAT.
Where is Deep Throat when we need him ?
How _would_ they respond to a leak; Invoke the Patriot Act ?
Sorry — Deep Throat is currently busy with Slick Willy.
Patrick Richardson thanks for the interesting reporting.
It is sad when the representatives of the people can snub the people with impunity.
watching the attacks on some representatives of congress by others. the hate and foul way the unions have been turned into thugs to do the evil bidding of other evil elected representatives.
the fraud and lies of the executive …you would think that you were witnessing a third world dictatorship in AFRICA.
My guess? Bunga-bunga parties. You’re welcome.
Anyone who thinks FOIA is useful hasn’t tried it much. The reflexive response is to obscure and delay. I went a few rounds with the FAA trying to get aircraft information they are collecting. First response- military information they would have to redact that would cost a fortune. When I pointed out that military aircraft aren’t registered with the FAA, they said well, law enforcement then. It’s a bureaucratic shell game and anyone who thinks they’re going to get information from the government is a fool or better have a great deal of time and or money to have the lawyers go after it.
Most corrupt and dishonest regime in US history.
“…no reason to kick a routine request from a reporter all the way up to the secretary of Defense …” You have to realize, that would require someone ummm MAKING A DECISION, that of course they could be held accountable for. Face it, no bureaucrat will do that. Bottom line, the fewer of these types of positions exist, the better off we all are.
At least its still called “FREEDOM OF INFORMATION”. In Canada, and what was in past times GREAT Britain and the (dis)United Kingdom its called a “PRIVACY ACT”.
It’s not just the federal government. At every level the first line of defense is to take the extension and delay. It almost always gets referred to a lawyer for legal review — even if all that is requested is something like an invoice for copy paper. What’s to review?
The more laws that are passed to make records open, the harder they are to get. And its getting worse.
While you’re wasting your time, why don’t you submit FOIA requests for the Obama’s past history, as well as how many of their extended family have taken up residence in the White House.
Yep, I recall Charlie ‘AGW is a settled science(?)’ Rangel going to this soiree.
For, you know, ol’ Rangel is a science guru and was a much needed person at the ’09 summit.
To paraphrase and kink a line from Bill Murray’s character in Rushmore, ‘Never in my wildest imagination did I envision having POLITICIANS like these’.
You simply do not understand. The king…..er…..the president….is not to be constrained by laws written by mere mortals.
where a friendly female airman looked up our request and told me their initial search generated 150 total documents, not four, but once they’d transferred the case to Andrews Air Force Base and Candice Velasquez… Back to the Air Force, where I tried to contact Candice — only to find out she no longer works there.
Sounds like she was canned for speaking truth to a politically incorrect enemy in the non-MSM press.
I’d like to say that’s the case but our dear friend Candice didn’t actually speak any truth, she just obstructed and obfuscated.
Patrick
Ahh, then she was promoted.
Any politician who is going to debate President Obama in the future should have the core issue surrounding this article written down, memorized and kept in a breast pocket 24/7.
Multiply it by many more stories, also memorized and kept on hand, about lobbies meeting outside of the White House grounds, DOJ racist lawsuits, Guantanamo and you can short circuit a Presidency.
Take the most important and most hypocritical stories and hammer them home, day after day. The simple truth, not JournOlist tactics. And stay away from nuanced arguments like Libya, keep it simple and true.
“Indeed the Associated Press found the Obama administration has the worst FOIA response record of any presidency.”
I’m inclined to believe that claim, but the AP article you linked doesn’t say that. I would LOVE it if did.
One thing to note: above you said Candice originally told you the initial search generated 150 “documents.” Having some experience with FOI requests, I can tell you that the word “document” can mean 1 page, or it can mean 100. You may want to include a request for further specificity regarding the response.
Candice didn’t tell us anything. The friendly female airman told us there were 150 pages of documents generated by our initial request.
Patrick
This IS a candidate for a mockumentary film. Someone (PJM?) should do that.
The opaqueness of govt “transparency” is so completely predictable you’d have all the shots/sound bytes you’d need for a feel-good, wildly entertaining and infuriating romp through the byzantine bureaucrat/federal complex which would document the hijinx that would ensue and highlight the cost to the tax payer that would accrue in denying said tax payer access to the information that said tax payer paid for and owns.
A sure fire hit!
Funny. When citizens fly commercial at our own expense, our information gets sent to the Government. When citizens fly on our dime w/the Government, we don’t get to know about it.
Right, whoever mentioned this, whoever runs against Sock Puppet should have this as one of a half-dozen similar quirks to hammer on at every opportunity, in other words, continuously. And we know Trump isn’t afraid of raising a touchy topic…
Honestly, I haven’t read all the comments. I’m just mentioning how I can easily see how this is an issue of National Security as details of the Secret Service detail would be included and that info could, in some way, be used to compromise the President’s safety in the future.
So redact the Protective Detail information, not the entire passenger manifest. My personal theory is that this was a huge first-class vacation for friends and family members of the USG officials who went to the conference all on the taxpayer dime a’la the United Nations. But that’s just me.
Patrick
Mr. Richardson, since the FOIA is a matter of law and you are being purposely snubbed, you should file a complaint with the agency that enforces the…uh,…law, ummm…”The DoJ”……nevermind.
Seriously though, do you have any inclination as to which person/dept that is responsible for the obfuscation on your request? It really angers me that there is an active and ongoing deliberate “Snow-job” when it comes to information that involves this administration. Look at the “Stone-walling” tactics that J. Christian Adams is facing with the DOJ and the NBPP voter case. These instances should not be the way that they are.
“why was everything redacted?”
Are you kidding me? This is top secret info, pal, absolutely vital to national security.
Why, if our enemies ever found out who was taking vacations (at tax-payer expense) in Denmark, it could mean the end of western civilization as we know it.
Bill Clinton promised us the most ethical administration in history.
Barack Obama promised us his administration would be the most transparent.
Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?
Why the surprise like everything else, his BC, his school and college records, his Illinois Bar records, his senate records, his Medical records, his passport records, his name change details etc. etc. etc. connected with this “TRANSPARENT LOL” President it is being HIDDEN.