Audit: Bush Barely Trims FOIA Backlog

[tpsbmam]

Source: Washington Post

Despite ordering improvements more than two years ago, President Bush has barely made a dent in the huge backlog of unanswered requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

At the same time, an audit by the National Security Archive found that Bush has provided citizens someone to talk to about how long it is going to take to get the government records they want or to be turned down.

The archive, a private research group at The George Washington University, released its seventh audit Sunday of the 1967 law that gives people the power to request information from federal government files. The audit of 90 government agencies found mixed results from Bush's executive order on Dec. 14, 2005, to agencies to clear the backlog and be more responsive to requesters.

"Behind its ambitious facade, the order lacked both carrot and stick," the audit said, because it provided no additional money to do the job and no way to force agencies to set substantial goals or step up their efforts if they fell short.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/16/AR2008031601968_pf.html

[Robb]

1. I got a phone call

...on a FOIA request I'd filed in, gosh, 2000?

It was with the CIA, and the material I'd requested had largely become public domain through other means by last year when I got the call. It was a staffer who was "clearing out his files," he said he'd "inherited" a good-sized stack.

Nothing ground-breaking, but I had the feeling he had a lot of phone calls to make, and was happy when I told him he could put my request in the "never mind" pile.

[PSPS]

2. Gee, imagine that. Another bush lie.

[Malidictus Maximus]

3. How about this:

Declassify EVERYTHING, Give the CIA and the Pentagon 24 hours to specify in writing and by name each document they want to keep secret. Give the same to the current president. After that it goes n the web.
Of course I think congress and courts should have the power to seal records stripped entirely. If it doesn't revel the name of a covert agent or *CURRENT* secret program it should be available to all. All records of every elected or appointed politician to be made available the day they leave office.

Secrecy sucks. It should be as hard to keep a document away from us, the public, as it is to get a first degree murder conviction from the most sympathetic jury imaginable.

[Supersedeas]

4. surely someone will blame the Dem Congress for that too.