When his first term began in 2009, President Barack Obama issued a directive to federal agencies to treat requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with “a presumption of openness.” But his White House counsel followed with a memorandum to agencies saying they should consult the White House anytime a request involved what he called executive-branch “equities.”
The result has been an administration that has set records for denying and censoring government information requested under the FOIA. Though the White House hailed the most recent report on FOIA activities as “a lot to brag about” for allegedly improving government transparency, The Associated Press reported that the data instead showed that “the government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.”
And: “It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged. Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.” Continue>>>
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