Freedom of Information Act Quotes
The main reason that the English or American Freedom of Information Act is not used so much by individuals is that the executive agencies make the process of obtaining documents very difficult and then when the government stonewalls, the requestor has to spend a great deal of time and often engage an attorney. The result is that few individuals can spend the time or money and the field consists mostly of media and non profit organizations which have staff and resources.
The executive order to which this statement referred was the then new President’s first—Executive Order 13489. It was enthusiastically received by the public, historians, researchers and the media. However at the end of Obama’s two administrations, the system was a little better than when George W. Bush, blocked much of the Freedom of Information Act from being implemented. However, the agencies who want to operate in secrecy without having to deal with public criticism, had developed even more sophisticated techniques of avoiding transparency and when they must disclose, they have developed techniques to delay the process, sometimes even for years, while they study whether the material should be disclosed. The president personally declassified a few CIA files from decades ago that the agency maintained should be secret, but he did nothing else systemic so solve the problem of declassifying and material and nothing to control the over classification which virtually everyone agrees is a major problem. More material is being classified than ever.
The response to the newspaper was required by law to be made promptly to the Journal’s Freedom of Information Act Letter Request. The failure to find the documents was not that unusual. However the legal request was properly made by the newspaper almost 15 years earlier. The original letter was send in October 1989. It took the CIA 15 years to say that they had not found any relevant documents. Incredibly enough this was not the oldest outstanding pending Freedom of Information Request. One had been submitted to the FBI in 1987 that had not then been responded to yet.
The Bush presidency was the most secret presidency in history up to its time with less information available to the public than other administrations in modern times.
