Tag: foia

College Student Slapped With $84,000 Bill for FOIA Records

How much would you pay for information? A student at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Michigan is facing an $84,000 bill for records he requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to an ongoing school investigation against him.

Carrie Uthe, the student’s mother, told local news station WZZM 13 earlier this year that the bill was surprising. “They did give us a documentation to show that breakdown, but that still made no sense,” said Uthe. “It’s been very stressful for him. It has really played on him hard. He just wants to go to school. He wants to do well. He wants to get an education.”

It’s not uncommon for FOIA requests to come with a fee, meant to compensate for employee time spent on complying with the request and redacting ineligible information. However, WZZM13 spoke with Mike Walsh, an attorney and adjunct professor at GVSU, who said that he’s never seen a FIOA bill this hefty.

“Government agencies have a right to charge for their time and service to provide records, but the whole spirit of the law is to open things up, to share records with the true owners, which is you and me,” Walsh said. “So obviously that’s daunting for anybody to get a bill for $84,000 and it prevents people from going on to the next step of litigating or whatever they’re going to do to get things worked out. So that’s, that’s why I find it troubling.” 

According to a statement from GVSU administrators, the bill was so large because the student made an overly broad request. “Grand Valley used its normal process in calculating the fee for this request. The request is very broad would [sic] involve more than 59000 emails over a specified period,” their statement reads. “Fulfilling the request would require a qualified employee to sort through each individual email and attachment to search for and redact protected and personal information. Our FOIA officer has offered potential strategies that could narrow the inquiring party’s search to help reduce costs.” 

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In Email Obtained by ICAN, a Fauci Senior Advisor Admits CDC’s Data “Shockingly Messed Up” and Leaders Have “Serious Issues”

During a recent Congressional hearing, we learned that David Morens prided himself on his ability to avoid transparency and purposefully evade FOIA. The hearing revealed emails in which Morens boasted that he “learned from our [FOIA] lady here how to make most emails disappear” and “we are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them.”

But in a recent FOIA production obtained by ICAN’s attorneys, we discovered that Morens failed to delete at least one smoking gun. In an April 2020 email to Greg Folkers, Fauci’s Chief of Staff, Morens made an astonishing admission about CDC’s long-term incompetence in handling data and NIH’s willingness to cover it up:

Greg, please keep this confidential but you should know that for over a decade the flu folks at CDC have shockingly messed up their tabulations of flu mortality. We discovered 5-10 years ago that various web page and published data were totally inconsistent and could only be explained by major uncaught errors[.]

… apparently various folks in [t]he flu division made and put up and published mutually-inconsistent figures based on differing subjective assumptions[.]

Several years ago, maybe 4-5, we reached out to the top flu people at CDC informing them that their own data were problematic, that as a sister agency we did NOT want to draw attention to it but work with them privately to fix and reconcile the problems. At first they were grateful, and set up a mechani[sm] to work with us, but then when they discovered the depths of their own mistakes … they did the usual CDC thing and circled the wagons, refused to return calls and emails, etc. [W]e didn’t pursue things but were left unsettled.

To repeat, this was at the level of cdc’s flu leadership. I think we have to accept that they have serious issues and have not fixed them.

Let’s not forget that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we were told to “trust the experts,” many of whom worked for CDC. Recommendations and edicts handed down from on high at CDC were treated as gospel. The few brave souls who had the courage to publicly question CDC’s judgment were met with derision, pejoratives, censorship, and attacks on their careers and reputations. This makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, according to Morens, the “usual CDC thing” to do when its mistakes are discovered is to ignore the problem and refuse to discuss it—even when the mistake is discovered by another government agency!

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Project Cyclops: Efforts in Hurricane Modification Showed Promising Results in 1961

In 1961, the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) conducted a groundbreaking experiment aimed at modifying hurricanes, a project known as “Project Cyclops.” This initiative involved an attempt to influence the behavior of hurricanes through cloud seeding, using a specially developed silver iodide dispersal system. The project’s most notable test took place on Hurricane Esther in September 1961.

The primary objective of Project Cyclops was to disrupt the structure of hurricanes by releasing silver iodide into their cloud systems. Silver iodide acts as a nucleating agent, encouraging the formation of ice crystals from supercooled water droplets within storm clouds. In theory, this process could alter the thermodynamics of a storm, potentially reducing its intensity.

The experiment was a joint effort between NOTS scientists and the Weather Bureau (now known as the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]). A critical component of the experiment was the Cyclops device, designed to disperse silver iodide into the clouds from an aircraft. The first test was conducted over Hurricane Esther from a U.S. Naval Station in Puerto Rico. Eight Cyclops units were dropped into the northeast quadrant of the hurricane’s wall cloud.

The results were significant, with a “dramatic and radical change in the thermodynamics of the hurricane” observed for approximately one and a half hours following the seeding. The project report noted that the seeded area of the storm experienced a rapid conversion of supercooled water droplets into ice crystals. This led to the formation of a “cup-like” shape in the hurricane’s eye, with the wall cloud appearing to spread outwards. In the words of the report, “the changes in the form of the eye continued for at least an hour and a half,” during which time the eye’s shape oscillated and even resembled a figure 9 before returning to its original circular structure.

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NASA Denies Existence of Classified Briefings on James Webb Telescope Discoveries

In recent weeks, rumors spread rapidly on social media suggesting that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had made an extraordinary discovery—potentially alien life—and that members of Congress had been briefed about it.

The rumors intensified after U.S. Representative Andre Carson, who had previously chaired a congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), declined to answer a question about classified briefings when asked by @AskaPol_UAPs run by journalist Matt Laslo on X.

The speculation prompted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed by The Black Vault on September 22, 2024, seeking any records—classified or unclassified—about JWST briefings provided to Congress, particularly related to the telescope’s findings. The request aimed to clarify whether any congressional briefings had been held about significant discoveries made by JWST, which has been in operation since 2021.

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The FOIA Lady Pleads the Fifth

Arelatively unknown public records officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now at the centre of a burgeoning scandal involving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The saga unfolded after subpoenaed emails belonging to David Morens, a former top advisor to Anthony Fauci, revealed that someone had taught him to game the system and avoid emails being captured by FOIA requests.

“i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Morens wrote in a Feb 24, 2021, email. “Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”

Morens implicated Margaret (Marg) Moore, known colloquially as “The FOIA lady” in trying to hide information from the American people, particularly that related to the origins of Covid-19, which is a felony.

It sparked an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to expose what Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) called a “cover-up.”

A letter to NIH director Monica Bertagnolli in May suggested “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of these once trusted public health institutions.

“If what appears in these documents is true, this is an apparent attack on public trust and must be met with swift enforcement and consequences for those involved,” Wenstrup wrote.

Wenstrup said there was evidence that a former chief of staff of Fauci’s might have used intentional misspellings — such as “Ec~Health” instead of “EcoHealth” — to prevent emails from being captured in keyword searches by FOIA officials.

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Facebook Gave CDC ‘Backdoor’ Access to Help Remove Millions of Social Media Posts

Facebook provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “backdoor” access to its platform so the CDC could submit requests to remove COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to an internal Facebook document made public for the first time as part of an ongoing legal case.

America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021, after then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the Biden administration was flagging purported “disinformation” on social media platforms, including content posted by members of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen.”

When the Biden administration didn’t comply with the FOIA request, America First Legal sued, leading to the release of the documents as part of the discovery process.

According to Reclaim the Net, in 2021, Facebook developed a “Content Request System” (see pages 54-72) — also called a “Government Reporting System” — accessible to CDC staff. The documents show Facebook “was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative.”

The Facebook-CDC partnership helped Facebook remove millions of posts, the documents show.

Gene Hamilton, executive director of America First Legal, told The Defender, “These documents show precisely how one of the social media platforms facilitated the federal government’s engagement in unconstitutional censorship activities.”

“The federal government cannot violate the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to the private sector, yet these documents clearly show that Facebook and the Biden-Harris administration collaborated and colluded on removing speech that did not comport with the federal government’s preferences,” Hamilton said.

Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, told The Defender that following the release of the “Twitter Files,” it should not come as a surprise “that the government has been actively trying to censor citizens through back doors and loopholes.”

“This censorship effort is yet another example of a public-private collaboration that fuses corporation and state,” Hinchliffe said. “Where the government can’t legally censor, it has the private sector to do its bidding. The question here is how much coercion was needed for Facebook to provide the backdoor?”

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Federal Judge Rules Inmate Death Records Can Remain Secret Because They Could Embarrass Prison Officials

In response to a public records lawsuit filed by the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason, a federal judge has ruled the U.S. government can hide findings about whether people who died in federal prison received adequate medical care, partly out of fear that those records could be used to criticize prison officials.

U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Christopher R. Cooper issued an opinion in August that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was largely not required to disclose redacted information from mortality reviews of in-custody deaths in two federal women’s prisons that have been the subject of numerous accusations of medical neglect.

In addition to finding that the mortality reviews were part of the BOP’s decision-making process, Cooper wrote that the BOP had successfully demonstrated that releasing the records would result in foreseeable harm to the agency. The judge wrote that a declaration from a BOP official credibly established that the mortality reviews could be used to “criticize” or “ridicule” the agency. 

“And, as described above, she notes that the members of the Mortality Review Committee would be ‘deter[red] . . . from acknowledging mistakes’ if they feared those mistakes would be publicized,” Cooper continued.

Reason Foundation, represented by the law office of Deborah Golden, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year against the BOP seeking mortality reviews of in-custody deaths at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama, and FMC Carswell, a federal prison in Texas that is the only medical center for incarcerated women in the BOP system.

Whenever a federal inmate dies, a committee reviews the circumstances and whether BOP policies were violated. The committee then gives recommendations on how care could have been improved. That information could reveal whether the BOP is aware of medical neglect within its walls and how bad the problem is.

Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside FCI Aliceville. Numerous current and former inmates, as well as their families, said in interviews, desperate letters, and lawsuits that women inside FCI Aliceville faced disastrous delays in health care. They described monthslong waits for doctor appointments and routine procedures, skepticism and retaliation from staff, and terrible pain and fear.

Seeking to learn more, Reason filed a FOIA request in May 2020 for inmate mortality reviews at FCI Aliceville, as well as FMC Carswell. 

When the BOP finally released mortality reviews from FMC Carswell three years later, it redacted any information that would indicate if there was substandard care, such as the review committee’s findings on the timeliness and appropriateness of care; problems encountered during the medical emergency; whether there was adequate documentation in the patient’s medical files; and whether the patient received appropriate care per the BOP’s policies.

The BOP withheld that information under exemption b(5) of the FOIA, which protects “predecisional” or deliberative communications between officials. The National Security Archive dubbed it the “withhold it because you want to” exemption.

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FOIA Files: How Academics Identified “Misinformation” Around COVID-19

Last month, Racket received a new series of disclosures from the University of Washington. This latest production clocks in at 836 pages, and it’s almost too dense to adequately summarize here. For that reason, we’ve divided the revelations into three categories: (1) communications that broadly concern UW’s crusade against “misinformation” and “disinformation,” (2) communications that concern UW’s relationships with government actors, and (3) communications that concern UW’s analysis of data from social media platforms. The most pertinent communications are summarized in this article. As usual, you can read the unabridged documents in the Racket FOIA Library.

Most of the emails regarding “misinformation” and “disinformation” pertain to COVID-19. On March 20, 2020, just days after states had started implementing lockdown orders, UW professor Jevin West emailed his peers an update on the school’s Center for an Informed Public. According to West, the CIP had put together a collection of 100 million COVID-related tweets, with much of the Center’s research centered around social media companies’ efforts to combat COVID “misinformation.” West credits co-author and biology professor Carl Bergstrom with popularizing the “flattening the curve” strategy in venues like the World Economic Forum.

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The Military Tried To Hide Evidence of a Massacre. A Lawsuit Just Exposed It.

The Haditha massacre was one of the worst U.S. actions during the Iraq War. After a roadside bomb killed a Marine in the town of Haditha in November 2005, the rest of his squad shot dead 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children, many of them inside their own homes. The Marine Corps then lied about it, claiming that the victims were all killed by the bomb or by running gun battles with insurgents.

Only dogged reporting by Time Magazine forced the military to open an investigation. No one was ever jailed for the killings or the coverup. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the commander of the squad, pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty and was demoted.

The military avoided a public relations disaster, Gen. Michael Hagee would later brag, because graphic photos of the massacre were never published. Until now.

In the Dark, a true crime podcast published by The New Yorker, dedicated its latest season to re-investigating the Haditha massacre. The producers filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the U.S. military’s files on the incident, then sued when the military refused to hand them over.

Officials claimed they were withholding photos of the massacre out of respect for the victims’ families. Two survivors, Khalid Salman Raseef and Khalid Jamal, then went around Haditha collecting signatures for a petition to release the photos. They won the support of 17 relatives of the victims.

The military gave in. On Tuesday, with permission from the survivors, The New Yorker published several unredacted crime scene photos taken by investigators and by Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones and Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, two Marines who arrived shortly after the massacre.

The FOIA files also included a recording of a 2014 interview between Hagee and a Marine Corps historian, meant for internal use. The massacre “could have been horrific for the Marine Corps if we did not handle that correctly. Another My Lai. Or another Abu Ghraib,” Hagee claims, referring to the My Lai massacre, which helped turn American opinion against the Vietnam War, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers and CIA officers were photographed torturing and sexually assaulting inmates.

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FBI Will “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” The Existence Of Bitcoin-Creator Satoshi’s Records

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a journalist implying that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto was a “third party individual” for whom it could neither confirm nor deny it had records.

According to an Aug. 13 X post by investigative journalist Dave Troy, the FBI issued a “Glomar response” to his request for information on Satoshi —- neither confirming nor denying the law enforcement agency had records identifying the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator.

Troy said he intended to appeal the FOIA response but claimed the FBI had made an “interesting assertion” by implying Satoshi was a “third party individual.”

“I submitted as a broad general subject request, with full context, so it is the bureau and not me that is asserting that this is an individual,” said Troy. “[M]y intent is not to establish the identity behind the pseudonym, but rather to get what info the bureau may have on the subject. If that helps establish identity somehow, fine, but that’s not my primary question.”

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