Naomi Wolf, a blogger for the Huffington Post, has been denied information on the autopsy of a representative of a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The Defense Department denied the request pursuant to exemptions 2, 7(A) and 7(C). She writes about it here.
This illustrates problems from both sides of the issue: While its fun for writers, on all sides of the political spectrum, to bash the government for denying records pursuant to a FOIA request, the government is allowed to withhold certain records provided they have a legal reason for doing so. Here, it is largely the fact that there is an investigation into the death of the gentleman Ms. Wolf seeks records on--and Ms. Wolf is not familiar with the FOIA axiom, that a release to one is a release to all. So even if she couldn't do anything with the records, someone else could do something to harm the investigation. She was properly given her appeal rights and I would suggest she hire a capable attorney to appeal the finding -- the government often overstates pending investigations and therefore, overreaches on the use of exemption 7(A). But an article is not the same as an appeal.
The government is not free from blame either, even if the records can be kept private. Its use of form letters doesn't help its cause when denying requests. If you understand FOIA, you know what it means, but the general public has no idea what they are talking about half the time. A well written letter stating that they were using three exemptions to withhold the information, and then describing the exemptions in plain English would help.
Ah the joys of FOIA!
Comments