Opinion from the Citizen Media Law Project:
Give the Obama Administration credit for trying. The President promised the country transparency and open government, so rather than just let FOIA requesters assume they are being lied to, the Department of Justice recently proposed coming clean and making such lies official policy. Freedom of information advocates could rejoice knowing that their government is transparent about not being transparent.
In actuality, the intent behind the now-abandoned proposal was much more manipulative, if no less ironic.
Here's how it's supposed to work: The Freedom of Information Act allows access to records of all departments, agencies, and offices of the Executive Branch of the federal government, including the Executive Office of the President, unless those records fall under one of several exemptions. When asked to produce certain documents pertaining to law enforcement or national security, the federal government can withhold those documents under one of the exemptions, or it could issue a "Glomar" response “neither conforming nor denying the existence” of those records.
But …