Tag: foia

Tapes confirm The Dossier’s reporting on President Biden’s Las Vegas medical emergency that preceded his departure from Dem nomination

Thanks to the great FOIA work of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, we now have the audio tapes that confirm The Dossier’s exclusive reporting on President Biden’s undisclosed medical emergency that took place during his July 15-17 trip to Las Vegas, Nevada.

The audio from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s protective detail for President Biden on July 17 provides stunning detail about the mystery incident, which occurred that afternoon following a campaign stop at a Mexican restaurant.

Jennifer Van Laar, who also reported on the incident, verifying with independent police sources (shortly after The Dossier published our report), published the tapes over at Red State.

“For everyone on the radio, right now POTUS is 421 . He's being seen so we're just kinda waiting to see how this is shaping out,” one of the dispatchers said over police radio. “So, for everybody's knowledge, he's 421 right now. We're just trying to figure out what's going on, and we're gonna go from there.”

Another dispatcher announced over the police radio that “Secret Service is requesting a code 3 response.”

In emergency response terminology, code 3 indicates a critical and urgent situation requiring an immediate response and the use of lights and sirens.

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Unreleased FBI Documents Shed Light on Lt. Col. Philip Corso’s Controversial Claims

The FBI has released a collection of documents pertaining to Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso, a prominent figure in the UFO community known for his claims about recovered alien technology. These documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Black Vault in 2019, reveal Corso’s interactions with the FBI and other government entities, many of which appear to be previously unreleased.

Corso, who served in the U.S. Army for over twenty years primarily in intelligence roles, gained notoriety with the publication of his book, The Day After Roswell. In it, Corso claimed he had direct knowledge about the recovery and analysis of extraterrestrial technology from the Roswell incident, which he alleged was reverse-engineered to advance American technology. Despite his fame in the UFO community, the newly released FBI files focus on his broader interactions with the government but make no mention of his UFO stories.

What a portion of these documents do deal with is a 1964-1965 request to perform a name check on Corso. A name check is a thorough search conducted by the FBI to investigate an individual’s background, ensuring there are no red flags or derogatory information that might affect their suitability for certain roles or positions. This process is particularly crucial for individuals being considered for sensitive government positions or committee memberships.

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Utah Attorney Catches FBI Deception In OKC Bomb Records Case

Last month, the Justice Department asked a judge to pause a lawsuit seeking records about the FBI’s involvement with the Oklahoma City bombing. But in doing so, the DOJ and the FBI made statements so misleading they merit sanctions, according to the plaintiff in that case, Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue.

The deception spotted by Trentadue stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit he filed against the FBI in February, seeking records about Roger Edwin Moore, who was a CIA asset, an FBI informant and a business associate to OKC bomber Tim McVeigh; as well as for records about the Aryan Republican Army, a neo-Nazi bank-robbery gang also involved in the attack.

Trentadue filed the lawsuit after waiting nine years for the FBI to process his FOIA request for those records. Despite that long wait, the FBI then asked a federal judge for another nearly 12 years to release the records he seeks.

Then, last month the bureau represented to a federal judge that many of the records Trentadue wants are already on the FBI’s website. But according to Trentadue, that’s a lie.

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ODNI Issues Rare GLOMAR Response to FOIA Request on Five Eyes Alliance UAP-Related Emails

In a recent FOIA release profiled on The Black Vault, researcher Grant Lavac discovered an email referencing the UAP Caucus Working Group. Within this email, a long list of redactions hid every recipient of the message, except one: Brian D. Fishpaugh. This revelation prompted a targeted FOIA request by The Black Vault aimed at uncovering any potential communication related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) within Fishpaugh’s email records.

Fishpaugh, who serves as the Deputy National Intelligence Manager for Aviation (NIM-A) within the ODNI, became the focal point of FOIA case DF-2024-00285. The request, filed on June 18, 2024, by The Black Vault, sought emails from Fishpaugh’s inbox that contained various UAP and UFO related keywords, along with those mentioning named individuals (which included alleged “UFO whistleblowers”) connected to the topic.

The objective was to uncover any communication that could shed light on the collaboration and research efforts within the Five Eyes alliance regarding UAPs, or the UAP issue as a whole.

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FBI File: Bacteriological Warfare

This FBI file relates to bacteriological warfare. It contains investigative information gathered over several decades. Significant portions of the file have been redacted or entirely withheld due to security or privacy concerns, using exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Reports detail the use of bacteriological weapons in the Korean War, allegedly by U.S. forces, as claimed by various organizations in China and North Korea. Chinese trade unions and women’s organizations made appeals to international bodies to denounce and act against these actions .

Some sections include accounts of individuals suspected of being involved in subversive activities or espionage. For instance, John T. Brady alleged bacteriological warfare conducted in Illinois, raising concerns about potential German agents during World War II. Further investigation found Brady had a neurotic obsession with disease and that his claims were largely unfounded .

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Watchdog sues Treasury Dept. for records on foreign purchases of US farmland

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit has been filed by the watchdog Judicial Watch against the Department of Treasury for records of communication between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding the purchase of US farmland by foreign entities.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the Treasury Department failed to respond to an April 10, 2024, FOIA request for:

  • Any and all records of communications between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture concerning, regarding, or relating to the purchase of U.S. agricultural real estate by foreign entities.  

On January 19, 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report which found significant gaps in information collection and timely information sharing between the Committee on Foreign Investment and other government agencies, including the USDA, concerning foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land.

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CARNIVORE (DCS1000): FBI Files on Their Email and Electronic Communication Monitoring Software

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the FBI’s Carnivore system drew considerable attention and debate. Unveiled during this period, Carnivore was a sophisticated email wiretapping system designed to intercept and analyze digital communications. The system’s capabilities and the implications for privacy and civil liberties were subjects of intense scrutiny and concern among privacy advocates, Internet service providers (ISPs), and the public at large.

Carnivore, officially known as DCS1000, was a network diagnostic tool utilized by the FBI to monitor and intercept email and other online communications. The system was installed at an ISP’s premises and was capable of scanning vast amounts of digital data passing through the ISP’s network. Carnivore specifically targeted communications of suspects under investigation, allowing the FBI to capture emails, chat sessions, and other forms of online interactions.

The Carnivore system operated by tapping into the ISP’s network and filtering the data packets that flowed through it. According to an internal FBI document, the system was designed to “ensure that only the exact communications authorized by the court to be intercepted are what is intercepted”​​. This meant that Carnivore could be configured to capture only the communications of a specific target while excluding all other traffic.

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“It Needs to Get Out As Soon As Possible” – New FOIA Emails Reveal CIA Panicking as They Rushed Approval of Hunter Laptop Letter

New FOIA emails obtained by Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch show the CIA panicking and making sure all hands were on deck to stop the Hunter Biden laptop from hell spreading like wildfire shortly before the 2020 election.

In October of 2020 – just days before the presidential election – 51 former intelligence officials signed and published a letter that baselessly decried the contents of Hunter’s ‘laptop from hell’ had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

This was a lie.  They all knew it was a lie. The fake news media ran with the story anyway.

Mike Morell, former CIA acting director under Obama immediately sent out an email making sure the infamous Hunter laptop letter by the 51 spies who lied was approved.

“This is a rush job, as it needs to get out as soon as possible,” Morell wrote in an email on Monday, October 19, 2020, at 6:36 a.m., to the CIA’s Publications Classification Review Board (PCRB) with a copy to Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA senior intelligence officer.

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FBI Wants 20 Years To Produce Records On Its Involvement W/ OKC Bombing

It’s been about nine years since Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records about a CIA asset and FBI informant who helped fund the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as for records about a neo-Nazi bank-robbery gang also involved in the attack.

Tired of waiting, Trentaudue sued the FBI over the matter in February, demanding the bureau to produce the 69,375 pages of documents that it’s holding. But now, the FBI wants to take another nearly 12 years to fork over those documents to him, which means that it would take at least 20 years for the bureau to comply with his initial FOIA request.

Such a slow production rate is unacceptable, Trentadue said in a Tuesday court filing.

“The FBI proposes to process these records/documents for release to Plaintiff in monthly increments of 500 pages over a period of 11.5 years!” he said.

“If the Court accepts the FBI’s proposed snail-pace processing of these materials, Plaintiff will be close to 90-years of age when he finally receives all of them,” he said.

“He has already waited almost a decade for these documents/records, with the FBI having made no effort during the interim to produce them, and should not have to wait another 11.5 years to receive them.”

Trentadue has been suing the U.S. government for OKC bomb-related records for nearly 30 years, ever since his brother was murdered in a federal penitentiary. The complex story of how the death of Trentadue’s brother relates to the OKC bombing can be read in this Mother Jones article.

Trentadue’s latest lawsuit seeks records on FBI informant and CIA asset Roger Moore (not the James Bond actor), and the bank-robbery gang, the Aryan Republican Army, which he says was an FBI front group.

According to Trentadue’s lawsuit, Moore was an FBI informant as part of the bureau’s 1980s- and early 90s-era Operation Punchout, which was designed to identify and apprehend surplus dealers that bought and sold government property stolen from Department of Defense facilities in Utah.

Furthermore, Moore build patrol boats for use by the US Navy in the Vietnam War, as well as speedboats for the CIA, according to Aberration in the Heartland of the Real—historian Wendy Painting’s PhD thesis-turned-book about OKC bomber Tim McVeigh.

As for the Aryan Republican Army, Trentadue believes that was an FBI front group that also helped fund the bombing.

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What Can You Do While Waiting for a FOIA Response?

The government is slow, especially at answering questions about itself. In theory, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lets Americans ask any federal agency for any public record and get a response back within 20 days. All 50 states have similar records laws. After all, government documents are the property of the taxpayer.

In practice, almost no government agency meets its own deadlines. FOIA requests can take weeks, months, or even years longer than the legal deadline. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are notorious for sitting on requests for ages before handing back pages that are almost entirely censored with a black highlighter.

Using data from the public records site MuckRock, Reason calculated the average response times for several agencies. It turns out that you can do a lot of fun (and not so fun) things while waiting for bureaucrats to give you the documents that your taxes paid for.

The averages only include cases where the agency actually managed to turn up documents. It doesn’t count requests that are still pending or cases where an agency straight-up ghosted the requester.

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