Government reasons for silence grow

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Mon, 21 Mar 2005 07:16:15 -0800 (PST)

Government reasons for silence grow

 

 

Government reasons for silence grow

 

 

The ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

WASHINGTON - The government argues that a health official's required

public financial disclosure reports should not become public. Some of

President Bush's military records were not released because officials

did not want to search boxes filled with rat excrement. Homeland

Security Secretary Tom Ridge's public schedules were withheld until he

left office.

 

Those roadblocks to obtaining government data arose in response to

requests during the past year by The Associated Press. In recent

years, the AP and other regular users of the Freedom of Information

Act have been presented with a growing list of never-before-seen

excuses for denying the public release of government documents.

 

" It's become much, much harder to get responses to FOIA requests, and

it's taking much, much longer, " said David A. Schulz, the attorney who

helps the AP with FOIA requests. " Agencies seem to view their role as

coming up with techniques to keep information secret rather than the

other way around. That's completely contrary to the goal of the act. "

 

It had taken administrative appeals or lawsuits to overcome some

obstacles, but not before requesters had to wait - sometimes until the

information sought was no longer useful - and often had to spend

hundreds or thousands of dollars for lawyers.

 

Other times, citizens were thwarted because they lacked time or money.

 

Whether journalists, advocacy groups, or private citizens make the

requests, the ultimate loser is the public, which learns less about

its government, say those who have fought the fights.

 

Bush administration officials acknowledge reining in the policies of

earlier administrations to protect privacy and national security,

particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

 

" We were more attuned to privacy concerns, as well as the security

matters, than prior to this administration coming in, " said Mark

Corallo, who just retired as the Justice Department's spokesman.

 

Corallo said the department relied on recommendations of career

experts to handle information release requests. He said that elsewhere

" perhaps the bureaucracy took advantage of the national security

imperative at times to withhold non-national security stuff. "

 

Whatever the case, some new roadblocks are novel.

 

During last year's presidential campaign, the AP filed federal and

state suits that uncovered new, long-sought military records of Bush's

service.

 

Weeks after Texas National Guard officials swore under oath they had

released everything, two retired Army lawyers searched again under an

agreement between the AP and the Guard and found 31 unreleased pages.

These included orders for high-altitude training in 1972, less than

three months before Bush abruptly quit flying.

 

Defending the failure to find the documents, Guard spokesman Lt. Col.

John Stanford said searching the old, disorganized boxes was tough.

" These boxes are full of dirt and rat ... [excrement] and dead bugs. "

 

The AP's general counsel, David Tomlin, said the company spent almost

$100,000 litigating the case. The government was ordered to pay the

AP's legal costs, but disputed the amount. The AP settled for a

fraction of what it spent, Tomlin said.

 

AP lawyers still are appealing for copies of the 2001-2003 financial

disclosure reports, required under the Ethics in Government Act, from

Dr. Edmund Tramont, director of the National Institutes of Health's

AIDS division.

 

Such reports are released every year for all the government's top

executives so the public can look for conflicts of interest. The NIH

released Tramont's 2004 report but claimed release of the three prior

years would be an " unwarranted invasion of his privacy. "

 

" This is outrageous, " Schulz said. " They are convincing themselves

there might be privacy grounds for withholding documents that are

specifically required to be created for public dissemination. "

 

In December 2003, the AP requested copies of Homeland Security

Secretary Ridge's daily appointment calendar. The government resisted

expedited release because the department's Web site had a " significant

amount of information about the activities of Secretary Ridge. "

 

The documents were released in February 2005, several days after Ridge

left office.

 

Two public-interest groups, People for the American Way and Public

Employees for Environmental Responsibility, requested National Park

Service records on revisions ordered for the video played in the

museum at the Lincoln Memorial.

 

The conservative CNSNews.com wrote in 2003 that the video implies

Lincoln would have endorsed homosexual and abortion rights because the

video contains images of rallies for those causes held at the

memorial. Complaints flowed into the Park Service, which announced

plans to revise the video.

 

" We wanted to see what these letter-writers were saying and what

response they got, " said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for

the American Way.

 

The government released some budget pages and newspaper clippings but

withheld all other documents as interagency or intra-agency memos or

letters. Stunned that citizen letters might be called interagency

memos, the two groups sued.

 

Two years later, the government has agreed to review its exemptions

for 1,000 pages. " They issue blanket denials and don't seriously look

at their records until someone files a lawsuit, " Mincberg said.

 

In February 2004, the Center for Public Integrity, a private ethics

watchdog, requested an electronic copy of the Justice Department's

public registry of foreign agents - the lawyers, lobbyists and

consultants who represent overseas interests before the U.S. government.

 

The group wanted to see what agents were paid by foreign clients and

spend on their behalf. Its request was denied because copying the

database " risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a

major loss of data. "

 

The center sued and more than a year later has gotten most of the

data. The government, though, tried to release a copy after deleting

all the financial information.

 

" Unless we'd been on our toes, we might not have discovered it until

after dropping our suit, " the center's Bob Williams said.

 

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