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~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.

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Tag Archives: FOIA

New documents show the Obama admin aggressively lobbied to kill transparency reform in Congress

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Department of Justice, FOIA, Lack of Transparency, Obama Administration


 

Freedom of the Press Foundation by Trevor Timm

barack obama clay shooting flickr white house photo public domain Obama blowing holes in FOIA requests and transparency

 

New documents obtained through Freedom of the Press Foundation’s lawsuit against the Justice Department reveal that the Obama administration – the self described “most transparent administration ever” – aggressively lobbied behind the scenes in 2014 to kill modest Freedom of Information Act reform that had virtually unanimous support in Congress.

Three months ago, we sued the Justice Department (DOJ) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for communications between the DOJ and Congress, since there were vague reports that the DOJ may have opposed the bill – despite much of it being based word-for-word based on the Justice Department’s own policies.

Today, we are publishing a detailed memo authored by the Justice Department that strongly objected to almost every aspect of FOIA reform put forth by the House of Representatives at the time.

The bill in question – known as the FOIA Act – was unanimously passed by the House in early 2014. The Senate passed a similar bill – known as the FOIA Improvement Act – in December of 2014, but a final vote in the House to merge the two bills was held up at the last minute by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner and the session of Congress ended before it could become law. It was unclear at the time why the bill did not come up for a final vote, but the Washington Post later reported that a few federal agencies—including the Justice Department—had “warned” lawmakers about some provisions in the bill.

But these new documents show it went well beyond that: the Justice Department vehemently objected to both House and Senate members on nearly all aspects of the bill from the very start, and made clear: “The Administration strongly opposes passage of [the FOIA Act].”Notably, the Justice Department indicates that this policy memo (published in full below) is not just the agency’s individual opinion, but that it is speaking for the entire Obama administration.

 

The Obama administration’s specious objections to FOIA reform were manifold. They were against codifying the Obama administration’s “presumption of openness” policy that Obama declared upon his first month in office, they were against Congress mandating that the federal government create a unified online portal to process FOIA requests, they were against mandating discipline for FOIA redactors who break any of rules or regulations for processing FOIA requests, and they were against providing more reporting and oversight to Congress to make sure FOIA was being complied with.

The administration tried to couch some of its opposition in concern that the bill would “cause delays” in the FOIA process, despite the fact that many of the provisions were written to speed up the process, modernize the system with an online portal, and encourage proactive disclosure by making more information available to the public without even having to file a request. Concerning other provisions, the DOJ claimed the administration is not opposed in principle, but its is against seeing them codified into law — which allows the Executive Branch to delay implementation indefinitely and gives the next administration carte blanche power to rescind any good policies the Obama administration did put in place.

Most importantly, the administration was vehemently opposed to the “foreseeable harm” provision, also known as the “presumption of openness” standard. During President Obama’s first few weeks in office, Attorney General Holder made clear that the Justice Department would defend an agency’s decision to withhold information from the public “only if (1) the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions [in the FOIA], or (2) disclosure is prohibited by law.” The FOIA Act would have simply made this policy the law:

An agency may not withhold information under this subsection unless such agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would cause specific identifiable harm to an interest protected by an exemption [in the FOIA], or if disclosure is prohibited by law.

Doesn’t sound controversial at all, right? While, the DOJ noted it was “seemingly analogous to the Attorney General’s ‘foreseeable harm’ standard contained in his 2009 FOIA Guidelines,” it referred to this language as “particularly pernicious.” They claimed a slight word change from the DOJ’s own policy would dramatically expand current policy; yet critically, they stated that they would be against it even if the language was exactly the same as their own stated policy. From the memo:

To be clear, we do not believe that this is fixable by amending the language, because any codification of a foreseeable-harm standard would undermine proper FOIA administration by requiring judges to determine on a document-by-document, subjective basis whether withholding is proper.

Imagine that: giving judges the power to be able to determine whether the government was lying!

While the Freedom of Information Act remains a valuable tool (this lawsuit can attest to that), any reporter who has filed a FOIA request can corroborate the fact that the law is badly broken. Multiple investigations have shown that the Obama administration has been the most secretive ever when it comes to FOIA. Requests can often take years to be fulfilled if at all, and the only way to get results is to sue, like we were forced to. (We did not receive any documents for over a year from our first requests, and only received these documents after filing a lawsuit).

This summer is the 50th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, and Congress is yet again debating a FOIA reform bill, this time with even more holes in it than last time. We hope that Congress will amend the proposed reform in the strongest possible way and send it to the president’s desk with the same message they did fifty years ago when the Johnson administration opposed it, yet was forced to sign it anyways: transparency is vital to democracy.

—

Special thanks to our amazing pro-bono legal counsel working on this case, Marcia Hofmann and D. Victoria Baranetsky, who did all the hard work to make this lawsuit possible.

Justice Department’s opposition to FOIA reform

All 114 pages obtained from our lawsuit

The documents referenced in the article can be viewed at the links directly above.

 

The above article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License — Freedom of the Press Foundation.

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Judicial Watch: New HHS Documents Reveal Security Concerns, Healthcare.gov Had No ‘Authorization to Operate’

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ATO, Authorization to Operate, Barack Obama, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), department of health and human services, FOIA, Healthcare.gov, illegal, Judicial Watch, Kathleen Sebelius


healthcare.gov site

 

Judicial Watch

Lack of ‘ATO’ Was ‘High Risk to Agency’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released over 1,000 pages of new documents that show federal health care officials knew that the Obamacare website, when it launched in 2013, did not have the required “authorization to operate” (ATO) from agency information security officials. These documents, obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), come in two productions of records: a 143-page production and an 886-page production. The email records reveal that HHS officials had significant concerns about the security of the Healthcare.gov site leading up to its October 1, 2013, launch[…]

Continue Reading — Judicial Watch: New HHS Documents Reveal Security Concerns, Healthcare.gov Had No ‘Authorization to Operate’

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IG Report: Hillary Clinton’s private email account exploits FOIA loophole

07 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Corruption, Department of State, dereliction of duty, email server, FOIA, goverment coverups, Hillary Clinton, IG Report, Lack of Transparency


hillary clinton prison

 

Fox News by Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton’s unorthodox use of a private email account and personal server for government business exploited a loophole in the State Department’s FOIA, or Freedom of Information Act, process, according to the findings of the first Inspector General report to stem from her email scandal.

Congress asked the Office of Inspector General, the State Department’s independent watchdog, to investigate the issue following the revelation that Mrs. Clinton did not use a government email account while secretary of state.

Fox News reviewed the 25-page report and its findings before they were made publicly available.

The report reads in part:

‘FOIA neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for Federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers (for example Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.) Furthermore, the FOIA Analyst has no way to independently locate Federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in Department record keeping systems.’

The report strongly suggests that it relies on employees at all levels to follow the regulations, and when personal email is used, to forward copies to a State Department account so that it can be captured….

Read full article

can-of-worms

 

Rules to which Hillary Clinton along with her minions in the State Department felt she was the exception, which explains failure or refusal to respond in a timely fashion, to FOIA requests.

They knew. They ALL knew and were party to the lack of transparency/cover up.

Washington Times by Stephen Dinan

The top leadership of the State Department regularly botched open-records requests such as those for former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails, the department’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday that portrayed a staff who gave short shrift to its legal obligation to be transparent.

Department leaders ignored one request for Mrs. Clinton’s schedules “for several years,” and in another instance insisted it couldn’t find any records relating to Mrs. Clinton’s other emails — even though at the time, “dozens of senior officials” were aware of her unique email arrangement….

Continue Reading – State Department misled on Hillary Clinton emails, investigation concludes

 

The bottom of page 9 – 10 (below) reports the lack of effort on the State Department part under various Secretaries of State to meet FOIA deadlines with Clinton’s State Department proving to be the most derelict in their duties.

 

BEFUNKY IGStateDepartmentReportbottomofPage9handlingofFOIA

 

BEFUNKY IGStateDepartmentReporttopofPage10handlingofFOIA

 

The IG’S report entitled, “Evaluation of the Department of State’s FOIA Process for Requests Involving the Office of the Secretary” is available for viewing in its entirety here in pdf format.

H/t The Gateway Pundit.

 

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Army Fires 120,000 Soldiers Amid Budget Cuts

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Budget Cuts, Congress, Department of Army, FOIA, Reduction in Forces, U S Military


"Show me a man who will jump out of an airplane, and I'll show you a man who'll fight." - Gen. James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin (Arctic airborne delivery**)

“Show me a man who will jump out of an airplane, and I’ll show you a man who’ll fight.” – Gen. James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin (Arctic airborne delivery**)

 

Pursuant to a report obtained by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), from the U. S. Army, since 2010, the Army has reduced the size of its force by 80,000. Another 40,000 of our men and women in service will be terminated by 2017, translating to “a 21% cut across the board.”

Washington Examiner by Adam Kredo

‘Nearly every Army installation will experience reductions of some size,’ according to the report, which was obtained and released by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)….

‘Significant structure cuts at overseas installations have already occurred,’ according to the report.

The Army will be forced to further cut its budget in 2018 and beyond, according to the report

‘These force structure reductions and the resulting impacts on installation populations could be significant to both military communities and to the defense posture of our nation’ […]

Continue Reading, click here… Army Fires 120,000 Soldiers Amid Budget Cuts

According to the report, Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Hood in Texas, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, and Schofield Barracks in Hawaii are among the installations who will suffer a reduction in force. (See screenshots of excerpts below followed by the report in its entirety.)

economic consequences of troop reduction - SCHOFIELD BARRACKS

 

economic consequences of troop reduction - JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD

 

economic consequences of troop reduction - JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON

 

economic consequences of troop reduction - FORT HOOD

 

economic consequences of troop reduction - FORT BLISS

 

economic consequences of troop reduction - FORT BENNING

View this document on Scribd

View report from Army dated October 15, 2015 in response to Federation American Scientists’ FOIA request here in pdf format.

It seems to me that with the world going to hell in a hand basket and the fact that Barack Obama has weakened the United States globally and nationally, the reduction of our Armed Forces and cuts to defense would be construed by our enemies as the perfect opportunity to pounce, i.e., take advantage of an American crisis.

IMAGE SOURCE: Arctic airborne delivery Source: US Army, Flickr

**#USArmy paratroopers assigned to 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, finish boarding an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft loaded with a heavy-drop-rigged Humvee for a night jump onto Malemute Drop Zone, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Dec. 9, 2014.

LINKS:
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/army-fires-120000-soldiers-amid-budget-cuts/
http://fas.org/man/eprint/reduction.pdf
https://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/15380143543/
https://www.scribd.com/doc/286666044/Notification-to-Congress-on-Permanent-Reduction-of-Sizable-Numbers-of-Members-of-the-Armed-Forces-2015

 

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The Kelly File has filed FOIA request seeking Hillary’s OF-109

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Election 2016, email gate, FOIA, Hillary Clinton, OF-109, Secretary of State, State Department, violation of federal guidelines


BeFunky_Hillary from Watergate firing to Whitewater to Benghazi what difference does it make to Email Controvery 2015.jpg
Earlier this week, Judicial Watch filed six FOIA requests, “with the Department of State seeking information about Hillary Clinton’s and other State Department employees’ uses of secret email accounts to conduct government business.”

At the same time, after repeated requests for access to Clinton emails and documents under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to the Department of State went unanswered, the Associated Press filed a FOIA request.

Fox News – The Kelly File has requested more than once this week a copy of Form OF-109 (Separation Agreement) which Clinton should have signed upon leaving her position[i]. (See Sara Noble of Independent Sentinel’s article entitled, “Hillary Is Being Investigated for a Possible Felony”)

Again, repeated requests to the State Department went unanswered which prompted The Kelly File on Friday to file a FOIA request.

Déjà vu, America as we witness the continuation of an ongoing trend?

 

LINKS:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sends-new-foias-to-probe-clinton-secret-email-system-lawsuits-could-follow-in-20-days/
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5f35e25c77194546822769b2f9672fe3/ap-sues-state-department-seeking-access-clinton-records
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1629274983954027&set=vb.1413426908872170&type=2&theater
http://www.independentsentinel.com/hillary-is-being-investigated-for-committing-a-possible-felony/
http://www.independentsentinel.com/

 
[i] The State Department has thirty (30) days to respond. If Clinton signed the OF-109, the signed document must be produced. Should the State Department refuse to do so, then they will be compelled by a federal judge to produce the Separation Agreement.

Moreover, if Clinton did, in fact, sign form OF-109, she could (should) be indicted on a felony. (Would love to say that Clinton “will be indicted” on a felony but the Clintons and their legal counsel are more slippery than grease; and I suspect have made a quick study of the past several years as the Obama administration repeatedly slips through the knots.)

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New Docs Reveal How DOJ Kowtows to Muslim Brotherhood (via American Thinker)

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by bydesign001 in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

DOJ, Eric Holder, FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, Government corruption, Government coverups, Govt War on Constitution, Govt's War on America, Islamic Extremism, Islamic Fundamentalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Extremists, obama, Obama Administration, Obama Appointees, Obama doctrine, Obama's legacy, Radical Islam


VIA AMERICAN THINKER 

VIA MY BLOG

“This is a major breakdown in the American Justice system and a betrayal of the American people. It also raises questions on how far the Obama administration is going to cooperate with Muslims. What else are they sharing? Are they sharing secrets that they have no right to share? …”

CONTINUE READING

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