DoD updates Open Government plan

The Department of Defense has expanded a website outlining its Open Government plan as well as the plan itself, it said Tuesday.

The move is in response to feedback that the agency did not provide a detailed enough version of the plan when it was released in April, according to the agency. On its Open Government website, the DoD has added a "Link Library" to better enable people to find information about its plan to use technology to be more transparent in its activities and engage with U.S. citizens.

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ACLU Urges Gates to Release Photos of Prisoner Abuse, Despite New Exemption Under FOIA

The ACLU is urging Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates not to exercise the authority granted him under a Homeland Security appropriations bill signed by President Obama to continue suppressing photos of prisoner abuse. The amendment allows the DOD to exempt photos from the Freedom of Information Act.

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Congress Expected to Pass Bill Permitting Defense Department to Suppress Evidence of its Misconduct

Congress is expected to pass an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill this week that will allow the Defense Department to suppress evidence of its own misconduct.  The amendment has passed the House and is headed to the Senate floor for a final vote.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) proposed the amendment in response to an appellate court decision requiring the Defense Department to release photos of Afghan and Iraqi prisoner abuse, stemming from a 2003 FOIA request filed by the ACLU.  

More from the LA Times here.

Air Force One flyover photos released

In response to an FOIA request, the Department of Defense released 146 photos of the controversial Air Force One flyover on April 27.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Defense has released 146 photographs that were taken during the photo-op involving Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty on April 27. President Obama was not on the plane when the photos were taken.

The low-flying plane caused panic among New Yorkers because it was a reminder of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The controversial flight resulted in the May resignation of White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera.

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Registration for FOIA/Privacy Act training now open

The American Society of Access Professionals will hold its 2009 FOIA/Privacy Act training workshop from Sept. 21-23 in Chicago. The program is designed for those "who are new
to working with the FOI or Privacy Acts; those who have limited experience; those who deal with the Acts as an adjunct responsibility; or those who would benefit from an in-depth refresher course." Special sessions will be held on records management and Department of Defense procedures.

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Release Defense documents still redacted

Although the Department of Defense released 12 documents related to detainee abuse, the redaction of key details is still pretty heavy, The Public Record reported. Some of what the Obama administration redacted had been previously released under Bush. One page is fully redacted. What wasn't redacted, however, suggests that Bush player a larger role in prisoner interrogation than he has admitted to. "I got my marching orders from the president," Maj. Gen. Mike Dunlavey said.

The Department of Defense released redacted documents Thursday related to abuse and torture of detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas prisons.

The 12 documents were released as part of the American Civil Liberties Union's long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the government.

The Obama administration agreed to reprocess the documents, but it continues to withhold many key details related to the Defense Department's use of torture methods. In some documents, the Obama administration has withheld details that were previously disclosed by the Bush administration.

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Air Force One photo shoot cost taxpayers $328,835

Sen. John McCain has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to provide an explanation for who approved the photo mission and how much it cost, Bloomberg reported. An Air Force spokeswoman quoted the $328,835 cost, which includes fuel and maintenance. President Barack Obama has directed Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to review "how the decision was made to conduct the flight."

President Barack Obama ordered a review of a publicity-photo shoot with one of the planes that serves as Air Force One that cost taxpayers $328,835 and caused a furor in New York City.

Obama said he wasn’t informed in advance of yesterday’s low-altitude flight over New York Harbor, which rattled windows in New York’s financial district and prompted some office workers to flee buildings in fear it was a terrorist attack.

“It was a mistake,” Obama said today before a meeting at FBI headquarters in Washington. “It will not happen again.”

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The story behind the 2009 Pultizer Prize for Investigative Reporting

In the recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, David McCraw recounts the lawsuit behind The New York Times's story on retired military officers working as TV war analysts. McCraw and reporter David Barstow filed suit to get the Department of Defense to respond to an FOIA request for data from the Pentagon on the "dozens of retired military officers who had been deployed by Defense to sell the war in Iraq." He also describes how he used reporting to shape the litigation strategy.

Six years and a day after 9/11, I filed a complaint in federal court asking a federal judge to do what New York Times reporter David Barstow and I had failed to do in countless phone calls and letters for nearly a year and a half: get the Department of Defense to respond fully to David’s freedom-of-information request. The request was gargantuan—basically, David wanted every piece of paper the Pentagon had about dozens of retired military officers who had been deployed by Defense to sell the war in Iraq—and our hopes were modest. Freedom of Information Act cases often move slowly, and Defense had little interest in shining any light on how the retired officers—now rechristened “analysts” on TV—had been given special access to Pentagon briefings even as some of them pitched business for military contractors. There was also this: Our judge was a former government prosecutor, freshly appointed to the bench by President Bush.

Nothing quite prepared us for what followed. Over the next six months, Judge Richard J. Sullivan’s orders drove the release of thousands of pages of documents, and when the Pentagon stalled, he took no prisoners. The last time we appeared in his courtroom, he made himself clear: “The Executive Branch doesn’t get to just thumb its nose at a separate branch of government.”

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Defense Dept. releases first FOIA documents about secret prisons

The U.S. Defense Department and U.S. Department of State released the first batch of records in response to a 2007 FOIA-based lawsuit, MSNBC reported.

The Department of Defense’s involvement in the CIA’s “ghost” detention program is certain, according to three human rights groups -- Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

They released documents today from the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of State that, they said, prove the existence of secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq as well as the Department of Defense cooperation with the CIA ghost detention program. They also said the documents show one case where the Defense sought to delay the release of Guantanamo prisoners.

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AP president urges government to improve journalists' access on battlefield

Tom Curley's comments stemmed from a recent report that revealed how the Department of Defense spends nearly $4.7 billion each year on "influence operations."

The president and CEO of The Associated Press called Friday for the government to increase access to journalists on the battlefield.

“No government will give us our rights if we are not willing to stand up and fight for them,” said Tom Curley, who received the William Allen White National Citation at Kansas University on Friday.

He received the award given by the William Allen White Foundation at the Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

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Abu Ghraib photos not exempt from FOIA, court rules after five years

It's been a long battle, but a federal appeal court has ruled that photos of torture at Abu Ghraib are not exempt from FOIA and dismissed arguments that the images could "lead to the endangerment of the life or safety of any individual." Although, the images were public long before now, the victory for the public's right to know is nonetheless an important one.

After nearly five years of fighting between the federal government and the American Civil Liberties Union over images of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, a federal appeals court ruled today that the photos must be made available to the public.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan (2nd Cir.) affirmed a 2006 district court order that dismissed the government's arguments that privacy rights of the soldiers and detainees in the images would be violated -- noting the redactions in the form of black bars over the subjects' faces -- and agreed that any potential damage caused by the release of the photos was "far too speculative" to justify their withholding.

The Department of Defense had initially only argued the privacy implications warranted withholding the 29 images under the Freedom of Information Act. Months after oral arguments, the defendants asserted a second rationale for non-disclosure -- essentially that the images were so incendiary that the government "reasonably believed" their release could lead to endangerment of "the life or safety of any individual."

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Defense Department's information systems remain unreliable

Journalists aren't the only ones struggling for accurate information from the Defense Department. According to a column on govexec.com, Air Force leaders have struggled to obtain up-to-date information reports needed to make crucial decisions on determining risks and assessing readiness. The column goes on to describe the Air Force's Transparency Integrated Product Team:

Like nearly all responsibilities of government, defending the nation's citizens and interests is driven by knowledge. National defense not only requires knowledge of an adversary's intent and capability, but also of the U.S. military's resources and readiness to deter, dissuade, disrupt or defeat the unwanted action by the enemy.

During the past six decades, the Defense Department has developed thousands of information systems to support decision-making. Interconnectivity at the machine-to-machine level of these systems is uneven. As a result, leaders at every level of the Air Force must often rely on manual, labor-intensive processes to obtain information that should be readily available.

At units worldwide, for example, commanders and directors routinely must know their "burn rates," or how quickly they are spending allocated funds, particularly compared with similar units. They must determine variables ranging from whether their people and equipment are ready for deployment to whether discrepancies noted in workplace and housing inspections have been resolved. Yet obtaining routine information reports can be challenging and time-consuming.

The root causes are many. In large organizations, critical data are scattered across components, time zones and information systems. As these pockets of data are connected machine to machine, meaningful information can be extracted across the entire organization. Otherwise, the data assist only a limited few.

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Federal Judge on Overseas Prisoners: Lemme See Those Records

A federal judge today ordered the CIA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to provide him with documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York ordered the government to make the documents available to him so he can determine for himself whether they should be made public pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations.

"Given the evidence of widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners, it is entirely appropriate for the judge to view these documents for himself instead of taking the government's word for why they should be kept secret," said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU. "The right of the American public to know whether its own government respects the laws against torture is central to democracy. The Freedom of Information Act was designed to disclose precisely this kind of information and we are hopeful that the documents will be made public."

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