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Justice Department Proposes Letting Government Deny Existence of Sensitive Documents
[Fox News] A longtime internal policy that allowed Justice Department officials to deny the existence of sensitive information could become the law of the land -- in effect a license to lie -- if a newly proposed rule becomes federal regulation in the coming weeks.Why have a "freedom of information" act if you're allowed to lie and say the information that's supposed to be free doesn't exists? Doesn't that negate the whole idea? The proposed rule directs federal law enforcement agencies, after personnel have determined that documents are too delicate to be released, to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests "as if the excluded records did not exist." Rather than as if the excluded records are classified. Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, says the move appears to be in direct conflict with the administration's promise to be more open. Duhhhh... Reeeeeally? "Despite all the talk of transparency, I can't think of what's less transparent than saying a document does not exist, when in fact, it does," Sekulow told Fox News. Yeah. Lying through your teeth doesn't sound real transparent. Justice Department officials say the practice has been in effect for decades, dating back to a 1987 memo from then-Attorney General Edwin Meese. Didn't the party presently in power want Attorney General Meese to be gutted and quartered way back when? In that memo, and subsequent similar internal documents, Justice Department staffers were advised that they could reply to certain FOIA requests as if the documents had never been created. That policy never became part of the law -- or even codified as a federal regulation -- and it was recently challenged in court. Betcha it lost, too. Unless the judge was some kind of B.O. appointee. Posted by: Fred 2011-10-27 |
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