Tag: foia

NIH adviser David Morens can’t recall if he deleted COVID records, laughs off Fauci FOIA evasions

A top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19 — and used a “secret back channel” to help Dr. Anthony Fauci and a federal grantee that funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, evade transparency.

NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday.

“[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d [sic] but before the search starts,” Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail [sic].”

“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],” he emphasized again in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization was suspended this month from receiving federal funds for the next three years and who was himself proposed for debarment on Wednesday.

In the most shocking exchange, on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 “[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

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The Proof of Censorship Is… Censored

It’s not been a good week for the Censorship Industrial Complex.

The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others. The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind.

And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition. It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society.

Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line. Three years ago, the proof started to arrive. Two years ago, it became a flood. With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective. But even then, we only knew a fraction of it.

Thanks to discovery from court cases, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, Congressional inquiries thanks to the very narrow Republican control, and some industrial upheavals such as what happened at Twitter, we are overwhelmed with tens of thousands of pages all pointing to the same reality.

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Biden administration put PRESSURE on fact-checkers to change the rating on claims it was going to ban gas stoves, damning internal emails reveal

Biden administration officials put pressure on the fact-checking website Snopes to change claims that the government was going to ban gas stoves over climate change concerns.

Fox News Channel reported Thursday on internal emails unearthed in a Freedom of Information Act request by the GOP-leaning watchdog group Functional Government Initiative.

In January 2023, Snopes initially rated claims that the Biden administration was going to ban gas stoves over climate change concerns as a ‘mixture’ of fact and fiction. 

Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden-appointed member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, had told Bloomberg News in an interview on January 9, 2023, that a gas stove ban was ‘on the table’ – setting off a firestorm of criticism. 

Behind-the-scenes, CPSC communications director Pamela Rucker Springs told White House assistant press secretary Michael Kikukawa that she had approached Snopes and asked that their fact-checking assessment be changed. 

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Federal Reserve Refuses To Provide Records Of Foreign Gold Holdings

Weeks after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell evaded a sitting congressman’s questions about the central bank’s foreign gold holdings, the Fed has also declined to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records about such holdings.

The Federal Reserve’s lack of transparency comes amidst reports that countries are removing their gold and other assets from the U.S. in the wake of the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. According to a 2023 Invesco survey, a “substantial percentage” of central banks expressed concern about how the U.S. and its allies froze nearly half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and forex reserves.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., asked Powell about the matter in a December letter, only to have the Fed chair respond last month with evasive non-answers, telling him that the Federal Reserve does not own gold but holds it as a custodian for other entities—a fact that the congressman presumably already knew.

Following Powell’s evasive response, Headline USA filed a FOIA request with the Fed for records reflecting how much gold the Federal Reserve Bank of New York currently holds in its vault, as well as records reflecting the ownership stake that each of FRBNY’s central bank/government clients have in that gold. The FOIA request also sought records about the Fed’s gold holdings prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

However, the Federal Reserve denied the FOIA request on Wednesday.

“Board staff consulted with staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (‘Reserve Bank’) and have been advised that such records, if they exist, would be Reserve Bank records, and consequently, not subject to the Board’s Rules Regarding Availability of Information,” the Fed said.

The Federal Reserve said that this publication could take its request to the New York Fed. However, that institution isn’t subject to FOIA.

Headline USA is working on an appeal.

Meanwhile, sound-money advocates are blasting the Fed’s lack of transparency.

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Whoops! FOIA response from Santa Clara County reveals that the COVID shots INCREASED your risk of getting COVID!

Based on new data I just got from a FOIA request, it appears that the public health epidemiologists in Santa Clara County knew in January 2022 that the vaccines made people more likely to get COVID, but they remained silent.

I predict that there will be further silence on this matter: no accountability and no opportunity for public challenges. They will continue to push the shots as if nothing had happened and the mainstream media will ignore this important data.

Here is the data for you to download yourself

Download it here. When you click the link, it will silently download the Excel file to your Downloads folder.

Summary of the data

The data in the spreadsheet is from January 2022 and contains a line for each person who was diagnosed with COVID in that month.

N means unvaccinated. Y means vaccinated. U means unknown. Blank means unknown.

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Growing secrecy limits government accountability

When I started covering crime as a reporter for small newspapers in the 1980s, I was assigned to walk to the police department lobby each morning and look through all of the previous day’s police reports, clipped to a board on the counter, containing all the details laid out for anyone to see. We were able to report to the community each day on the major events in town – to explain why people heard sirens, or saw a smoke plume.

By the 1990s, the clipboards were moved out of the lobby, so we asked at the counter to see them. Then we were told we had to review them with the sergeant on duty. Then we were told we couldn’t see them – we had to ask the police what they felt was newsworthy. Then we were told to submit a public records request, and wait for days or weeks – if we got them at all.

For decades, journalists and civic activists have lamented the increasing secrecy of government – the times, they were denied government information, particularly from public records requests. Reports have shown secrecy getting worse at the federal, state and local government levels.

But those were usually anecdotal reports of problems. Now, there is data that brings those refusals into focus and which provides a fuller picture of government agencies hiding their work from the public they ostensibly serve.

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The Government Doesn’t Want You To See the Unused Space Force Logos

As Sunshine Week 2024 draws to a close, the Air Force has marked the occasion by hiding the draft designs of logos and uniforms for the Space Force.

Reason filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Air Force in January 2020 for drafts or alternate designs for the logo of the nascent Space Force, one of the Trump administration’s more expensive and whimsical farces.

A quick four years later, the Air Force released 122 pages of communications between the public servants who designed the uniforms, logo, and seal for Star Fleet—excuse me, Space Force.

Unfortunately for everyone who was looking forward to seeing Project Runway: Department of Defense Edition, the Air Force redacted all images of the draft versions, citing Exemption (b)(5) of the FOIA.

Exemption (b)(5) is also known as the “deliberative process” exemption. It protects discussions between bureaucrats about policy decisions, under the reasoning that bureaucrats wouldn’t be as frank if everything they said got dragged into the public eye (by annoying reporters like myself). 

Congress amended the FOIA in 2016 to state that agencies should operate with a “presumption of openness” and only withhold documents when there is a “foreseeable harm,” not out of fear of embarrassment. Despite that, federal agencies still regularly abuse exemptions, especially (b)(5). In this case, the Air Force seems to be claiming that its staff would be afraid to design uniforms if their mock-ups were public. Sorry, but fashion’s a tough business.

All is not lost, though. Some tidbits slipped by the censors.

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Unveiling the Departure of Saudi Nationals Post 9/11: A Puzzling Chapter

In the aftermath of the devastating terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a perplexing episode unfolded as numerous Saudi Arabian nationals, including members of the elite, were allowed to leave the United States on flights despite a nationwide grounding of air traffic. This enigmatic episode has sparked curiosity and debate over the years.

According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), several flights chartered by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., facilitated the expedited departure of various Saudi students and elites from the U.S. The most notable among these was Ryan International Airlines flight 441, which made multiple stops across the country to pick up passengers before leaving for Geneva, Switzerland, on September 20, 2001.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted extensive investigations, including interviews and security checks, to ensure that none of the passengers aboard these flights posed a threat to national security. Records indicate that the passengers included members of the Saudi royal family and individuals affiliated with prominent Saudi families. Despite the thorough scrutiny, none of the passengers were found to have connections to the 9/11 hijackers or to be of investigative interest in relation to the attacks.

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CIA Document Talks About “Flying Saucers” Traveling 7,400+MPH in 1955; More Information Discovered Yet Withheld By Agency

The Black Vault attempted to get a CIA document that has been shrouded in secrecy for decades further declassified. Although no redactions were lifted in the process, it revealed that even more information by the CIA is withheld on a UFO case that suggests a technology beyond known human capability at the time.

Originally disclosed in 1978, the “Information Report” originally classified “Confidential” has a subject header of “Unusual Flying Object Sightings and Attendant Scientific Activity”. It had multiple, but relatively minimal, redactions when the single page was originally released. In January 2020, The Black Vault filed a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) case, seeking to uncover more details and get those redactions lifted.

The document, identified as REPORT NO. 00-B-93674, details an intriguing account from a source in Hungary, who in the winter of 1955 received a letter mentioning the mysterious “flying saucers”. These objects, described as “very fast speeding flyers,” were estimated to be traveling at a speed of “12,000 kilometers per hour,” or in excess of 7,400 miles per hour.

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FOIA Request Sheds Light on DIA’s Records Pertaining to ‘Havana Syndrome’

On February 22, 2024, The Black Vault received a long-awaited response from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on August 25, 2021. The request sought all records related to the “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious condition that has affected U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers since 2016.

Havana Syndrome first came to light when U.S. Embassy staff in Havana, Cuba, reported experiencing unexplained health issues, including headaches, dizziness, and hearing loss. Similar incidents have since been reported by American personnel in various countries, leading to speculation about the cause, ranging from sonic attacks to microwave weapons.

The Black Vault’s request aimed to uncover DIA reports, memos, assessments, and intelligence records pertaining to Havana Syndrome from 2016 to the date of processing. After a lengthy delay, the DIA located one document, consisting of six pages, responsive to the request. However, portions of the document were withheld under FOIA Exemptions 1, 3, and 6, citing reasons related to national security, protection of intelligence sources and methods, and privacy concerns.

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