Federal Judge: Release Those Guantanamo Videos!

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A federal judge has ordered the Defense Department to turn over to the court three video recordings showing Guantanamo prisoners being forced out of their cells.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates’s unusual order came Wednesday in

Guantanamo jog

Guantanamo jog (Photo credit: The U.S. Army)

a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by families of Kuwaiti prisoners being held at the U.S. military-run prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Bates said the Pentagon, which is represented in the case by the Justice Department, had failed to offer detailed enough explanations to sustain the government’s position that the videos are exempt from disclosure under the law.

Bates suggested he’d lost patience with the government in the case, noting that he’d given the Defense Department three chances to explain its position but that officials repeatedly offered “inconsistent and confusing” explanations.

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FOI At Work: Documents Show Administration Coddling Filmmakers

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Charles N. Davis
Film director Kathryn Bigelow after a showing ...

Film director Kathryn Bigelow after a showing of her film The Hurt Locker, 2009 Seattle International Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This has all the makings of a TV movie…

In the months after the U.S. military mission that killed Osama bin Laden, Pentagon officials met with Hollywood filmmakers and gave them special access in an effort to influence the creation of a film about the operation, newly released documents show.

Emails and meeting transcripts obtained from the Pentagon and CIA through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that officials went out of their way to assist the filmmakers, while trying to avoid the public learning of their cooperation.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who won Oscars for their 2009 Iraq war movie, “The Hurt Locker,” were granted access to a Navy SEAL who was involved in planning the May 2011 raid, according to a transcript of a meeting that took place in July.

“The only thing we ask is that you not reveal his name in any way as a consultant because … he shouldn’t be talking out of school,” Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers told the filmmakers. Vickers later added: “This at least gives him one step removed and he knows what he can and can’t say, but this way at least he can be as open as he can with you and it ought to meet your needs.”

The name of the “planner, SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander,” was redacted from the documents that were provided to Judicial Watch. A Pentagon spokesman told Politico that the identity of “a planner, not a member of SEAL Team 6,” was provided “as a possible point of contact for additional information if the DoD determined that additional support was merited.”

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Broadcast Industry, Channeling Their Demons, Fights Transparency

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

Wow. Just wow. Recall how the great leveler in the wake of Citizens United was supposed to be the transparency of political spending? Well, not so much…

The National Association of Broadcasters is asking a federal appeals court to block a rulepassed by the Federal Communications Commission last month requiring TV stations to post political ad data on the Internet.

In a petition for review filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., the broadcast industry group argues that the rule is “arbitrary, capricious, in excess of the Commission’s statutory authority inconsistent with the First Amendment, and otherwise not in accordance with law.”

The association represents, among others, the parent companies of NBC, CBS, Fox and the broadcasting arm of the Washington Post.

TV stations have long been required to keep detailed information about who buys political ads, how much they paid, and when spots run. But the information is currently kept only on paper at stations. The FCC’s new rule, which has not yet gone into effect, would require stations to post the information to a new government website.

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In Kansas, the Cops Say “Trust Us…”

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

Not even a high-profile incident like an FBI investigation into police ticket-fixing will prompt Kansas lawmakers to let a little sunlight into police misconduct investigations. No state in the country rivals the secrecy of Kansas when it comes to the police investigating their own…

Lawrence Police Chief Tarik Khatib said the recent FBI investigation into a traffic ticket-fixing scheme and the removal of two high-ranking Lawrence police officers does not necessitate more transparency in police misconduct cases.

“We act appropriately and hold people accountable,” Khatib said.

For the past two years, the Lawrence Journal-World has requested the full reports for misconduct complaints against members of the Lawrence Police Department. The department has denied those requests, citing a personnel exemption in the Kansas open records law. However, police have furnished brief case summaries indicating which complaints were sustained.

Take our word for it, they say, and good taxpayers everywhere groan…

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Missouri AG Releases Dome Plans

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

Kudos to Missouri’s AG for doing the right thing!

Attorney General Chris Koster released the Rams’ proposal for upgrading the Edward Jones Dome in compliance with Sunshine Law requests to the state of Missouri.

Koster had announced May 7 that the state would release the documents today unless a judge said the records should remain closed. Since May 7, no representative of any party to the negotiations has attempted to articulate an exception to Missouri’s Sunshine Law, and thus the documents are being released.

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51 Years After The Fact, A National Secret

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A federal judge has ruled

Map of Cuba, showing the Bay of Pigs

Map of Cuba, showing the Bay of Pigs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

that the last volume in a CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion that was written more than 30 years ago and 51 years after the ill-fated Cuban mission should remain secret.

In an opinion released Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said Volume V in the CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs was a draft that was “rejected for inclusion in the final publication” and was exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Washington-based National Security Archive, a research institute and library, filed suit last year asking for declassification of all five volumes in the set after its previous FOIA requests were unsuccessful.

Volumes I, II, and IV were released last April. Volume III had actually been declassified in 1998 but researchers remained unaware of the fact until a Villanova university professor found it stashed in a box at the National Archives Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in 2005.

The National Security Archive called Kessler’s decision “a regrettable blow to the right-to-know.”

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Executive Privilege Challenge to be Heard by Washington Supreme Court

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A growing menace, this state-level claiming of executive privilege:

Does the governor have the right to to shield documents from public view simply because she’s the governor? That’s a question the state Supreme Court late last month announced it would consider.

The case is brought by the Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Olympia. The group is challenging Governor Chris Gregoire’s claim to an “executive privilege” that she says allows her to withhold documents from public disclosure. According to the foundation’s research, Gregoire claimed this privilege roughly 500 times between 2007 and 2010.

But there is no executive privilege spelled out in either the state Public Records Act, or the state constitution. So the foundation sued, citing a half-dozen examples of withheld documents.

Alan Copsey, the deputy solicitor general in the state Attorney General’s office, tells Seattle Weekly that the privilege “flows from the separation of powers.” He explains: “Each branch of government has a core function and in order to perform it property, it needs to have room to operate.” In the governor’s case, he continues, that means letting the state’s chief exec privately “consult with her advisers before making a decision.”

Freedom Foundation attorney Mike Reitz, however, says the documents withheld by Gregoire are not just communications between the governor and her advisers. He cites, for instance, a draft memorandum of agreement–along with Gregoire’s handwritten notes–between the state, King County, and city of Seattle over the viaduct replacement.

The question is, says Copsey, who were those handwritten notes for? He suggests that they may have been intended for the governor’s aides.

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E-Mails Show “Cozy” Relationship Between Maryland Guv and Chicken Titan

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

Another FOI at Work moment:

A national consumer group is alleging emails they obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal an “unnervingly close and direct” relationship between Gov. Martin O’Malley and an attorney for Perdue Farms Inc.

The topics covered in 70 pages of emails between O’Malley and Herb Frerichs, general counsel for Perdue Business Services, run the gamut from chicken waste incineration to wind energy.

Food & Water Watch highlights several exchanges of particular concern, including one from August 2010, when O’Malley is grilled regarding comments made by his press secretary to a local newspaper. The article is about an Environment Maryland petition signed by 55 farmers asking O’Malley to hold large poultry producers responsible for pollution from chickenhouses seeping into the Chesapeake Bay. The comments make it appear as though O’Malley supports the petition, and specifically names Perdue as an example of a poultry giant.

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Madison Officials To Examine Their Multitasking After State Journal Nabs ‘Em

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

Thanks to this story, which revealed that Madison City Council members are emailing or texting colleagues, lobbyists, staff and others during public meetings, led to this welcome piece of news:

Madison City Council members intend to examine rules for emailing and texting during public meetings, and others are calling for a statewide review of such communications and their impact on open government.

The response comes in the wake of a State Journal investigation last week that revealed an unseen flow of electronic communications between council members, staff, lobbyists and others — including real-time conversations on matters before the council — during meetings.

The city should consider new rules through the council’s organizational committee, which already is shaping a council job description and code of ethics, or a special work group, members said.

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FOI At Work: Columbus Dispatch Examines 30,000 Credit Report Complaints

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A great example of the power of FOI to shed light:

During a yearlong investigation, The Dispatch collected and analyzed nearly 30,000 consumer complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in 24 states that alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act by the three largest credit-reporting agencies in the United States — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Industry observers say it is among the most comprehensive reviews ever conducted of complaints against credit-reporting agencies.

The complaints document the inability of consumers to correct errors that range from minor to financially devastating. Consumers said the agencies can’t even correct the most obvious mistakes: That’s not my birth date. That’s not my name. I’m not dead.

Nearly a quarter of the complaints to the FTC and more than half of the complaints to the attorneys general involved mistakes in consumers’ financial accounts for credit cards, mortgages or car loans. Houses sold in bank-approved “short sales,” at less than the value of the mortgage, were listed as foreclosures. Car loans that had been paid off were reported as repossessions. Credit cards that had been paid off and closed years earlier showed as delinquent.

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