Part 1 of 2

Mar 18, 11:37 AM EDT

US gov't sets record for failures to find files when asked

By TED BRIDIS and JACK GILLUM
Associated Press

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUNSHINE_WEEK_FOIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-03-18-11-37-47/



employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn't find a single page requested under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a new Associated Press analysis of government data.

In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed last year. Such cases contributed to an alarming measurement: People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record. In the first full year after President Barack Obama's election, that figure was only 65 percent of cases.

The data represents the final figures on the subject that will be released during Obama's presidency. Obama has said his administration is the most transparent ever.

The FBI couldn't find any records in 39 percent of cases, or 5,168 times. The Environmental Protection Agency regional office that oversees New York and New Jersey couldn't find anything 58 percent of the time. U.S. Customs and Border Protection couldn't find anything in 34 percent of cases."

It's incredibly unfortunate when someone waits months, or perhaps years, to get a response to their request - only to be told that the agency can't find anything," said Adam Marshall, an attorney with the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Beverly Lumpkin, said the administration answered more records requests and reduced its backlog of leftover requests, which should be considered good work on the part of the government in fulfilling information requests.

It was impossible to know whether more requests last year involved non-existent files or whether federal workers were searching less than diligently before giving up to consider a case closed. The administration said it completed a record 769,903 requests, a 19 percent increase over the previous year despite hiring only 283 new full-time workers on the issue, or about 7 percent. The number of times the government said it couldn't find records increased 35 percent over the same period.

"It seems like they're doing the minimal amount of work they need to do," said Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter at Vice News and a leading expert on the records law. "I just don't believe them. I really question the integrity of their search."

In some high-profile instances, usually after news organizations filed expensive federal lawsuits, the Obama administration found tens of thousands of pages after it previously said it couldn't find any. The website Gawker sued the State Department last year after it said it couldn't find any emails that Philippe Reines, an aide to Hillary Clinton and former deputy assistant secretary of state, had sent to journalists. After the lawsuit, the agency said it found 90,000 documents about correspondence between Reines and reporters. In one email, Reines wrote to a reporter, "I want to avoid FOIA," although Reines' lawyer later said he was joking.

When the government says it can't find records, it rarely provides detailed descriptions about how it searched for them. Under the law, federal employees are required to make a reasonable search, and a 1991 U.S. circuit court ruling found that a worker's explanation about how he conducted a search is "accorded a presumption of good faith, which cannot be rebutted by purely speculative claims" that a better search might have turned up files.

Skepticism has led many experts increasingly to specify exactly how they want federal employees to search for files: Which offices and filing cabinets, which hard drives, whose email inboxes, even what keywords to type in search software. To do otherwise means relying on overworked government staff to figure out how best to proceed.

"They do really crappy searches," said Washington lawyer Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors Inc., which handles transparency and national security cases. He lost a federal appeals case in November on behalf of a U.S. citizen, Sharif Mobley, trying to obtain U.S. records that might show why he has been imprisoned in Yemen since 2010. The court said the FBI wasn't required to search for files in locations and ways Mobley's lawyers wanted.

Under the records law, citizens and foreigners can compel the U.S. government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

The AP's annual review covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2015. The administration released its figures ahead of Sunshine Week, which ends Sunday, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

Overall, the Obama administration censored materials it turned over or fully denied access to them in a record 596,095 cases, or 77 percent of all requests. That includes 250,024 times when the government said it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the government determined the request to be unreasonable or improper. The White House routinely excludes those cases from its own assessment. Under that calculation, the administration said it released all or parts of records in 93 percent of requests.

More than half of federal agencies took longer to answer requests last year than the previous year.

But but but....he says he runs the most transparent administration ever....and I have a mountain top view over in the swamp Ill sell ya also.

"They do really crappy searches," said Washington lawyer Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors Inc., which handles transparency and national security cases


Doesn't even know he is lying.?
Or thinks no one else will know he is lying ?
Or...Just getting paid to ?

The individual parties responsible,
for "NOT" finding the records, should be jailed.

I wish we could make government officials (state and federal) wear those police body cameras, only constantly recording, 24/7 365, when "serving" office.

Form a freaking news federal reserve where all of that footage is stored, a board is made up of private news agencies, and they decide what to release and when, having to release everything at some point.

Government employees, officials, and representatives, should be under far more public scrutiny than any private citizen.

With something like this, some detailed facts are REQUIRED if you are going to be able to make a fact based judgment.

Specifically, we need to know EXACTLY what it is that has been requested.

Is the increase in non-returns of results been because of a fall in willingness to comply, as is alleged here?

Or is it because there has been a surge in resentment based, spurious requests for "dirt" on people, which does not in fact exist at all to begin with?

Or even that the mechanism and funding for fulfilling requests has remained static, while the number of requests has risen dramatically, and therefore the system was overwhelmed?


Given the number of paranoid conspiracy nuts we have running around this country, proclaiming every day that Space Aliens are secretly running the country, or that the Red Chinese already have fully manned and operational air force bases in Kansas, I tend to be skeptical about such PARTIAL reports of alleged statistics as this.

With something like this, some detailed facts are REQUIRED if you are going to be able to make a fact based judgment.

The FBI, the lawyers & everyone else are just making it up to make Obama look like a dictator.
Yea..that must be it.

That's not what I said. Try again.

Also, if you want to blame Obama (or anyone else), you need to show the actual mechanism by which the person you want to blame has done what you say they did.

Unless you examine the details in the manner I described, you CAN'T assign blame, because you can't show that you even know what exactly happened.

are you sure that's not a Salt-Marsh?

Again, facts. Not silly photographs, or playground insults.

Do you have any factual record of Obama personally directing each agency in question to refuse to cooperate?

If not, this is just more prejudice and nonsense.

yep,would love to see a Fact or two from you!

Painful to look at ones Fallen Idol,I understand!

I never thought much of Obama myself, if that's who you are referring to. I thought he would be at best a mediocre President, due to lack of experience, and he was worse than that, especially in foreign policy decisions and speeches.

What he has not been, as people like you love to pretend, is demonic and anti-American.

Again. If you have proof of any kind, that Obama or members of his administration acting on his orders, directed other government agencies to respond poorly or not at all to FOI requests, then present such evidence.

I have SUGGESTED some alternative descriptions of how what this story claims to have happened, could have occurred, without ANYONE pulling any stunts (except of course the people here who are pretending to know for a fact that Obama personally interfered).

The way burden of proof works, is that the people making the extreme or in this case, illegal behavior claims, have the burden of providing proof. Not people like me, who are ASKING for that proof.

So unless you are opposed to the most fundamental concepts behind American justice and law, it is up to you to prove your claims. Not for me to disprove them.

Igor Frankenstein makes a good point. No evidence. No trigger. No one culpable. Guess we will never know. A lot of people don't know that during the Clinton Administration, the JFK files were sealed till 2065. Why? Because anyone who knows anything about it will be long dead. Dead people can't complain.

So you think Freedom of info is still alive? The truth is what you actually know.