Turse writes: "The Department of Defense has a lot of problems - a series of
wars in Iraq that never seem to fully end, a conflict in Afghanistan that
just won't end, quasi-wars in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia with no end in
sight; a proliferation of terror groups around the globe; and its numerous
failed, failing, and scuttled training efforts to create local proxy armies.
And then there's me."
Military office. (illustration: Matt Bors)
How a Simple Request Got Me Blacklisted by the Pentagon
By Nick Turse, The Intercept
21 April 16
The Department of Defense has a lot of problems - a series of wars in Iraq
that never seem to fully end, a conflict in Afghanistan that just won't end,
quasi-wars in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia with no end in sight; a
proliferation of terror groups around the globe; and its numerous failed,
failing, and scuttled training efforts to create local proxy armies.
And then there's me.
Last week, the Department of Defense issued its annual "Chief Freedom of
Information Act Officer Report to the Department of Justice." At a cost of
roughly $41,449, this study, according to the Defense Department's Chief
FOIA Officer, Peter Levine, found that "DoD has continued to improve its
administration of the FOIA and develop new initiatives to further streamline
our FOIA processes and promote openness and transparency." Never mind that,
at this very moment, the Defense Department is seeking to add exemptions to
the Freedom of Information Act that would allow it to deny requests for
unclassified materials pertaining to military operations. The report
suggests that sunshine is abundant at the Pentagon - even if there are some
conspicuous traces of gloom beyond their control.
The report, for instance, laments that "despite their best efforts to
provide helpful details, great customer service and efficient responses,"
some DoD components were "still overwhelmed by one or two requesters who try
to monopolize the system by filing a large number of requests or submitting
disparate requests in groups which require a great deal of administrative
time to adjudicate." The study went on to call out:
one particular requester [who] singlehandedly filed three requests with
SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], 53 requests with AFRICOM, 35 requests with
SOCOM [Special Operations Command] and 217 requests with OSD/JS [Office of
the Secretary of Defense/ Joint Staff] for a total of 308 cases this fiscal
year alone. For AFRICOM, this represents 43% of their entire incoming
requests for the year and 12% for SOCOM. This requester holds over 13% of
the currently open and pending requests with OSD/JS and over the past two
years has filed 415 initial requests and 54 appeals with this one component.
Who would do such a thing? What type of monster files this many requests?
That would be me.
The chief FOIA officer's report seems to suggest intent, that I file FOIA
requests in an attempt to "monopolize the system." That's presumably the
reason that I'm responsible for 43 percent of AFRICOM's FOIA requests.
Of course, Levine - who also serves as the DoD's Deputy Chief Management
Officer - never asked me my reasons. If he had, I would have offered a
different explanation, one that begins back in July 2012 with my request to
Colonel Tom Davis, director of U.S. Africa Command's Office of Public
Affairs, for some basic information about what AFRICOM calls "temporary
facilities" - what you and I might refer to as American bases on the African
continent.
Colonel Davis turned out to be on leave at that moment, but AFRICOM
spokesman Eric Elliott emailed the next month to say: "Let me see what I can
give you in response to your request for a complete list of facilities.
There will [be] some limits on the details we can provide because of the
scope of the request."
That, it turns out, was an understatement.
For weeks, I heard nothing. A follow-up email in late October went
unanswered. A message in early November finally elicited a reply by another
AFRICOM spokesman, Lieutenant Commander Dave Hecht, who said he was now
handling the matter and would provide an update by the end of the week. He
didn't. I sent another email. On November 16th, Hecht finally responded:
"All questions now have answers. I just need the boss to review before I can
release. I hope to have them to you by mid next week." Did he? Nope. Further
emails went unanswered. It was December before Hecht replied: "All
questions have been answered but are still being reviewed for release.
Hopefully this week I can send everything your way."
Guess what? He didn't.
In January 2013, I received answers to some other questions of mine, but
nothing in regard to U.S. bases. By now, Hecht had also vanished and I was
handed off to AFRICOM's then-chief of media engagement, Benjamin Benson.
When I asked about the ignored questions, he responded that my request
"exceed[ed] the scope of this command's activities, and of what we are
resourced to research and provide under the Public Affairs program." He
suggested that I instead file a Freedom of Information Act request. That is,
after six months of waiting for some very basic information and being led to
believe something along those lines would be provided, he recommended I
begin a new endlessly drawn-out process. I dutifully did. This January, I
finally received a partial response to that FOIA request. After three and a
half years of waiting for this information, I received one page of
unclassified but still partially redacted (not to mention relatively
useless) material about the only officially acknowledged U.S. base in
Africa.
If you can believe it, that six-month span in 2012 and 2013 may represent
the highpoint of my relationship with AFRICOM. They at least returned my
emails and phone calls, if not always in a timely manner. At some point
afterward, they mostly stopped picking up the phone. I made, for instance, a
couple hundred attempts to contact the command for information, comment, and
clarification while working on an article about criminal acts and untoward
behavior by U.S. troops in Africa - sexual assaults, the shooting of an
officer by an enlisted man, drug use, sex with prostitutes, a bar crawl that
ended in six deaths. Dozens of phone calls to public affairs personnel went
unanswered, countless email requests were ignored. At one point, I called
Benson, the AFRICOM media chief, 32 times on a single business day from a
phone line that identified me by name. He never picked up. I then placed a
call from another number so that my identity would be concealed. He answered
on the second ring. Once I identified myself, he claimed the connection was
bad and the line went dead.
With that kind of "assistance" from AFRICOM, I had to write almost that
entire piece from - you guessed it - documents obtained via the Freedom of
Information Act. In fact, it took dozens of requests and more than a year's
worth of effort to obtain the documents for that single article. Of course,
investigations like that didn't win me any friends at AFRICOM.
Today, when I write to the current AFRICOM public affairs chief, Lieutenant
Commander Anthony Falvo, I receive similar treatment. I often get a return
receipt back that tells me my email to him "was deleted without being read."
This happened to me, for example, on Thursday, September 10, 2015; Friday,
October 02, 2015, Tuesday, October 06, 2015; Thursday, November 05, 2015;
Friday, November 27, 2015; Wednesday, February 10, 2016. you get the
picture. When I wrote a piece on a shadowy African drone base for The
Intercept, not only did AFRICOM refuse to respond to me about it, they
refused to even respond to a Pentagon press officer who passed along to them
my requests for comment.
All this is to say that, there's a reason why I file so many FOIA requests
with AFRICOM and it has nothing to do with a diabolical dream of
"monopoliz[ing] the system." It instead has to do with AFRICOM's press
office not only withholding basic information, but refusing to respond to my
requests. (Or even the Pentagon's!)
Lest I give the false impression that AFRICOM is some outlier in an
otherwise open and transparent Defense Department, let me offer another
example of the Pentagon's stranglehold on information and the need to file
many FOIA requests. In his preamble to the 2016 DoD FOIA report, Levine
boasted that a "continued commitment to the principles of openness was
showcased" by the fact that "over 91% of all received requests were
processed in less than 100 days." Elsewhere the report says "the vast
majority of requesters are seeing their cases resolved in less than 20
days."
Let's just say this often hasn't been my experience.
On the very day I first read the 2016 FOIA report, I opened a freshly
delivered envelope from the Defense Department's Inspector General. It
contained 16 pages of documents, some so heavily redacted that little of
substance remained. I couldn't actually recall filing a FOIA request for the
IG report, so I took a look at the cover letter and realized the reason why.
It read: "Dear Mr. Turse, This is a response to your October 6, 2011 Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request." It had been more than four years since I
sought the documents. I guess it's a good thing I had other FOIA requests in
the pipeline and wasn't waiting on that one report for a story.
I should offer a caveat when it comes to my identity as the "one particular
requester" singled out in the DoD's 2016 report. I can't be absolutely sure
it's me. Vice's Jason Leopold thinks so, and given his expertise on anything
related to the Freedom of Information Act - a government official has
described Leopold as a "FOIA terrorist" - I wouldn't doubt him on anything
related to the subject. But, I'm really only 99.8 percent sure.
To be absolutely certain, I tried to ask Peter Levine. I was hoping he would
confirm and maybe answer a couple more questions about the report. I went to
the website of the DoD's Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer and
found that it says "members of the press/media should directly contact the
Department of Defense Press Operations Center." So I called there asking for
Levine's number. The press officer instead said he would connect me with a
colleague best suited to field my request. Unfortunately, that gentleman
wasn't in. In his absence, it was recommended that I contact Lieutenant
Colonel Eric Badger (I kid you not). I left a message and never heard back
from him before I filed this piece. I guess that means I'm left with only
one option. It's time for this "one particular requester" to file another
FOIA request.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Military office. (illustration: Matt Bors)
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/20/how-a-simple-request-got-me-blacklisted-
by-the-pentagon/https://theintercept.com/2016/04/20/how-a-simple-request-got
-me-blacklisted-by-the-pentagon/
How a Simple Request Got Me Blacklisted by the Pentagon
By Nick Turse, The Intercept
21 April 16
he Department of Defense has a lot of problems - a series of wars in Iraq
that never seem to fully end, a conflict in Afghanistan that just won't end,
quasi-wars in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia with no end in sight; a
proliferation of terror groups around the globe; and its numerous failed,
failing, and scuttled training efforts to create local proxy armies.
And then there's me.
Last week, the Department of Defense issued its annual "Chief Freedom of
Information Act Officer Report to the Department of Justice." At a cost of
roughly $41,449, this study, according to the Defense Department's Chief
FOIA Officer, Peter Levine, found that "DoD has continued to improve its
administration of the FOIA and develop new initiatives to further streamline
our FOIA processes and promote openness and transparency." Never mind that,
at this very moment, the Defense Department is seeking to add exemptions to
the Freedom of Information Act that would allow it to deny requests for
unclassified materials pertaining to military operations. The report
suggests that sunshine is abundant at the Pentagon - even if there are some
conspicuous traces of gloom beyond their control.
The report, for instance, laments that "despite their best efforts to
provide helpful details, great customer service and efficient responses,"
some DoD components were "still overwhelmed by one or two requesters who try
to monopolize the system by filing a large number of requests or submitting
disparate requests in groups which require a great deal of administrative
time to adjudicate." The study went on to call out:
one particular requester [who] singlehandedly filed three requests with
SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], 53 requests with AFRICOM, 35 requests with
SOCOM [Special Operations Command] and 217 requests with OSD/JS [Office of
the Secretary of Defense/ Joint Staff] for a total of 308 cases this fiscal
year alone. For AFRICOM, this represents 43% of their entire incoming
requests for the year and 12% for SOCOM. This requester holds over 13% of
the currently open and pending requests with OSD/JS and over the past two
years has filed 415 initial requests and 54 appeals with this one component.
Who would do such a thing? What type of monster files this many requests?
That would be me.
The chief FOIA officer's report seems to suggest intent, that I file FOIA
requests in an attempt to "monopolize the system." That's presumably the
reason that I'm responsible for 43 percent of AFRICOM's FOIA requests.
Of course, Levine - who also serves as the DoD's Deputy Chief Management
Officer - never asked me my reasons. If he had, I would have offered a
different explanation, one that begins back in July 2012 with my request to
Colonel Tom Davis, director of U.S. Africa Command's Office of Public
Affairs, for some basic information about what AFRICOM calls "temporary
facilities" - what you and I might refer to as American bases on the African
continent.
Colonel Davis turned out to be on leave at that moment, but AFRICOM
spokesman Eric Elliott emailed the next month to say: "Let me see what I can
give you in response to your request for a complete list of facilities.
There will [be] some limits on the details we can provide because of the
scope of the request."
That, it turns out, was an understatement.
For weeks, I heard nothing. A follow-up email in late October went
unanswered. A message in early November finally elicited a reply by another
AFRICOM spokesman, Lieutenant Commander Dave Hecht, who said he was now
handling the matter and would provide an update by the end of the week. He
didn't. I sent another email. On November 16th, Hecht finally responded:
"All questions now have answers. I just need the boss to review before I can
release. I hope to have them to you by mid next week." Did he? Nope. Further
emails went unanswered. It was December before Hecht replied: "All questions
have been answered but are still being reviewed for release. Hopefully this
week I can send everything your way."
Guess what? He didn't.
In January 2013, I received answers to some other questions of mine, but
nothing in regard to U.S. bases. By now, Hecht had also vanished and I was
handed off to AFRICOM's then-chief of media engagement, Benjamin Benson.
When I asked about the ignored questions, he responded that my request
"exceed[ed] the scope of this command's activities, and of what we are
resourced to research and provide under the Public Affairs program." He
suggested that I instead file a Freedom of Information Act request. That is,
after six months of waiting for some very basic information and being led to
believe something along those lines would be provided, he recommended I
begin a new endlessly drawn-out process. I dutifully did. This January, I
finally received a partial response to that FOIA request. After three and a
half years of waiting for this information, I received one page of
unclassified but still partially redacted (not to mention relatively
useless) material about the only officially acknowledged U.S. base in
Africa.
If you can believe it, that six-month span in 2012 and 2013 may represent
the highpoint of my relationship with AFRICOM. They at least returned my
emails and phone calls, if not always in a timely manner. At some point
afterward, they mostly stopped picking up the phone. I made, for instance, a
couple hundred attempts to contact the command for information, comment, and
clarification while working on an article about criminal acts and untoward
behavior by U.S. troops in Africa - sexual assaults, the shooting of an
officer by an enlisted man, drug use, sex with prostitutes, a bar crawl that
ended in six deaths. Dozens of phone calls to public affairs personnel went
unanswered, countless email requests were ignored. At one point, I called
Benson, the AFRICOM media chief, 32 times on a single business day from a
phone line that identified me by name. He never picked up. I then placed a
call from another number so that my identity would be concealed. He answered
on the second ring. Once I identified myself, he claimed the connection was
bad and the line went dead.
With that kind of "assistance" from AFRICOM, I had to write almost that
entire piece from - you guessed it - documents obtained via the Freedom of
Information Act. In fact, it took dozens of requests and more than a year's
worth of effort to obtain the documents for that single article. Of course,
investigations like that didn't win me any friends at AFRICOM.
Today, when I write to the current AFRICOM public affairs chief, Lieutenant
Commander Anthony Falvo, I receive similar treatment. I often get a return
receipt back that tells me my email to him "was deleted without being read."
This happened to me, for example, on Thursday, September 10, 2015; Friday,
October 02, 2015, Tuesday, October 06, 2015; Thursday, November 05, 2015;
Friday, November 27, 2015; Wednesday, February 10, 2016. you get the
picture. When I wrote a piece on a shadowy African drone base for The
Intercept, not only did AFRICOM refuse to respond to me about it, they
refused to even respond to a Pentagon press officer who passed along to them
my requests for comment.
All this is to say that, there's a reason why I file so many FOIA requests
with AFRICOM and it has nothing to do with a diabolical dream of
"monopoliz[ing] the system." It instead has to do with AFRICOM's press
office not only withholding basic information, but refusing to respond to my
requests. (Or even the Pentagon's!)
Lest I give the false impression that AFRICOM is some outlier in an
otherwise open and transparent Defense Department, let me offer another
example of the Pentagon's stranglehold on information and the need to file
many FOIA requests. In his preamble to the 2016 DoD FOIA report, Levine
boasted that a "continued commitment to the principles of openness was
showcased" by the fact that "over 91% of all received requests were
processed in less than 100 days." Elsewhere the report says "the vast
majority of requesters are seeing their cases resolved in less than 20
days."
Let's just say this often hasn't been my experience.
On the very day I first read the 2016 FOIA report, I opened a freshly
delivered envelope from the Defense Department's Inspector General. It
contained 16 pages of documents, some so heavily redacted that little of
substance remained. I couldn't actually recall filing a FOIA request for the
IG report, so I took a look at the cover letter and realized the reason why.
It read: "Dear Mr. Turse, This is a response to your October 6, 2011 Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request." It had been more than four years since I
sought the documents. I guess it's a good thing I had other FOIA requests in
the pipeline and wasn't waiting on that one report for a story.
I should offer a caveat when it comes to my identity as the "one particular
requester" singled out in the DoD's 2016 report. I can't be absolutely sure
it's me. Vice's Jason Leopold thinks so, and given his expertise on anything
related to the Freedom of Information Act - a government official has
described Leopold as a "FOIA terrorist" - I wouldn't doubt him on anything
related to the subject. But, I'm really only 99.8 percent sure.
To be absolutely certain, I tried to ask Peter Levine. I was hoping he would
confirm and maybe answer a couple more questions about the report. I went to
the website of the DoD's Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer and
found that it says "members of the press/media should directly contact the
Department of Defense Press Operations Center." So I called there asking for
Levine's number. The press officer instead said he would connect me with a
colleague best suited to field my request. Unfortunately, that gentleman
wasn't in. In his absence, it was recommended that I contact Lieutenant
Colonel Eric Badger (I kid you not). I left a message and never heard back
from him before I filed this piece. I guess that means I'm left with only
one option. It's time for this "one particular requester" to file another
FOIA request.
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize