Pentagon FOIA Request Required Court Order, Barstow's story 2 yrs in the making re: Pentagon

[maddezmom]

Pentagon FOIA Request Required Court Order
According to David Barstow, who wrote Sunday's story about Pentagon propaganda, the story was two years in the making because the Pentagon ignored Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (tip): This article would have come sooner, but it took us two years to wrestle 8,000 pages of documents out of the Defense Department ... the Defense Department refused to produce many categories of documents in response to our requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act. We ultimately sued in federal court, yet even then the Pentagon failed to meet several court-ordered deadlines for producing documents. Last week, the judge overseeing our lawsuit threatened the Defense Department with sanctions if it continues to defy his deadlines for producing additional records. This is only one instance of the Bush Administration's abuse of FOIA.

FOIA, which turned 40 last year, "came of age" during the Watergate era and gives citizens access to federal government documents.

The Bush Administration has been notorious in both dragging its collective feet in response to FOIA requests and increasing secrecy (making documents inaccessible). "In October 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft revoked former Attorney General Janet Reno's 1993 Freedom of Information directive, which encouraged agencies to make 'discretionary disclosures' of information whenever possible." More from a 2007 report from OpenTheGovernment.org:

more:http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/04/22/pentagon-foia-request-required-court-order.htm