Newspaper fights Naval Academy for records

The Capital has spent three years fighting for Naval Academy records, and the battle is not close to being finished. In March 2006, the Maryland newspaper asked for documents on how the Naval Academy handled sexual misconduct cases and filed an FOIA request. After the academy said no such documents existed, the paper filed another FOIA request for which the academy used a privacy-concern excuse. The Capital hired an attorney, and the navy judge advocate general granted the newspaper's appeal in September 2008. However, The Capital has only received partial documents and none involving the sex abuse cases from 2007 and 2008. The newspaper has filed another request for these documents.

A seemingly simple question about whether the Naval Academy treated men and women fairly in sexual misconduct cases took three years and 3,000 pages of documents to only partially answer.

Getting these documents was not easy even though the Naval Academy is a publicly funded institution. It receives between $200 million and $300 million each year in taxpayer dollars, and applications from between 9,000 and 15,000 of the nation's young people annually.

The Capital became interested in the sex abuse cases after some midshipmen and academy graduates alleged in 2006 that there was a double standard of justice being meted out to male and female mids.

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Navy decides to close inspection reports

Inspection reports on the Navy's ships, aircraft carriers and submarines are now classified information, the Navy Times reported. The reason for the change is not yet known.

The Navy has classified regular reports about the material condition of its fleet, an about-face from when the reports were accessible as public documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

The reports, filed by the Board of Inspection and Survey, or InSurv, contain the findings of meticulous, days-long inspections that cover every detail of the workings of surface ships, aircraft carriers and submarines.

In December, InSurv president Rear Adm. Raymond Klein decided the reports were to be classified, said Linda Alvers, the FOIA coordinator for Fleet Forces Command. She said she did not know why. Also unclear was whether the classification order applied only to InSurvs performed after December, or whether it included reports from before then.

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ACLU FOIA Request Yields Thousands of Pages

From the ACLU...

The American Civil Liberties Union today released thousands of pages of documents related to Navy investigations of civilians killed by Coalition Forces in Iraq, including the cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. Released today in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU filed in June 2006, these records provide a vivid snapshot of the circumstances surrounding civilian deaths in Iraq.

"At every step of the way, the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Our democracy depends on an informed public and that is why it is so important that the American people see these documents. These documents will help to fill the information void around the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq and will lead to a more complete understanding of the prosecution of the war."

The ACLU obtained documents from eight Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigations. One of the files documents the investigation of the death of Mohammed al-Sumaidaie, a cousin of the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S, Samir al-Sumaidaie. In 2006, the ambassador accused Marines of "intentionally" killing his cousin and today's records shed light on al-Sumaidaie's NCIS investigation for the first time. Among the findings uncovered in this file are conflicting accounts of events, questions of credibility, possible command influence issues and cover-ups.

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