Army Officials Withheld FOIA Documents To Push Out Its Spin On Head Injuries

from the information-wants-to-be-subservient dept

Thu, Oct 1st 2015 4:00pm — Tim Cushing

The Freedom of Information Act does open up the government to closer examination by taxpayers. The ideals of the law are rarely achieved, though. It requires agencies to respond in a reasonable amount of time, but far too often it takes a successful lawsuit to force an agency to give up the documents requested.

FOIA requesters are at the mercy of government agencies. If an agency wishes to punish a particularly tenacious FOIA requester, it can do so by unceremoniously dumping requested documents into the public domain, robbing him of any exclusivity. If an agency wants to wait until media heat dies before releasing incriminating/embarrassing documents, it can string along the requester for months or years without fear of reprisal. It's not that there aren't FOIA staffers who truly want to assist requesters, it's that there are far too many reasons agencies might want to stall the release of documents, if not withhold them altogether.

For instance, FOIAed documents can be withheld to allow government agencies to get out ahead of a negative story.

Two top Army generals recently discussed trying to kill an article in The New York Times on concussions at West Point by withholding information so the Army could encourage competing news organizations to publish a more favorable story, according to an Army document.

[...]

During a Sept. 16 meeting at the Pentagon, the Army surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, recommended to the superintendent at West Point, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., that the Army delay responding to The Times’s request, according to the document. General Horoho then suggested trying to get The Wall Street Journal or USA Today to publish an article about a more favorable Army study on concussions.

“I recommend you let us publish this article BEFORE you release the FOIA to the NYT reporter,” General Horoho is quoted as saying in the summary, using an acronym for the Freedom of Information Act.

There's not much out there that's uglier than the government burying facts to control a narrative. And, of course, we'd know nothing about it if it weren't for another FOIA request. The biggest problem with how the Army handled this is that the FOIA side of agencies is supposed to be wholly divorced from its other goals. It should be a politically-agnostic process, with the only considerations being whether or not the requested information can actually be requested. The point of the law is to make the government accountable to the public. The process is never supposed to be subservient to the political/PR desires of government officials.

And yet it is. The officials quoted in the released document are claiming the things they said don't represent the things they meant.

Both generals acknowledged the authenticity of the summary, but said it misrepresented their discussion.

Well, OK then. But accountability is better served by putting the incriminating information in the public's hands and dealing with the consequences, not burying it until after the advance force spin team has had a chance to work its narrative magic.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: army, foia, government, journalism, politics, transparency, withholding

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

conroy, 1 Oct 2015 @ 5:18pm

So the FOIA does NOT work. Old News.

Your government rulers operate above & outside laws and constitutions, in practice. Naive citizens cannot see the core problem despite moutains of evidence.

Any Congress or President could fix this FOIA problem, but they don't lift a finger -- because they really, really do not like "transparency" in their government operations and want to conceal substantive information from public. scrutiny.

This FOIA stuff is just a small symptom of a MUCH larger problem with your alleged representative form of government.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 1 Oct 2015 @ 5:19pm

I've worked with and around veterans who've suffered from TBIs.
They're super-common in our theaters lousy with IEDs. Our armed services have quite a bit they they'd really rather not discuss with the public.

Far worse than heroes getting shipped home in pine boxes is having heroes getting shipped home with pieces missing. And worse than that are our guys (and gals) getting shipped home looking intact, but not having all their marbles anymore. Most of our troopers who end up having a close encounter with an IED fall into the last category.

This is a bit of an inconvenience for the US Army, who then rather than simply dumping the remains into a serene plot of land, has a living, breathing remainder of a person that needs to be cared for for the remainder of his days.

That can get expensive fast.

But rather than seeking out new treatments for TBI victims in order to help them recover back to even a modicum of functionality, they've swept most of these victims under a rug, often throwing them out the back door (e.g. arbitrarily terminating treatment at all) to run their families into bankruptcy.

Here in San Francisco, most of the TBI treatment programs are managed through non-profits or charity programs connected to hospitals. There is nothing coming from the US Army even though many, many of the patients are veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that they'd rather not talk about it and give their spin-control allies a head start, if the conversation is imminent.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2015 @ 7:02pm

But it's corporations that are evil. Government is good. More government is better!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2015 @ 7:27pm

Re:
How about the government living up to commitments made, like veterans, social security, the rule of law, protecting and defending the constitution, to name a few.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DocGerbil100 (profile), 1 Oct 2015 @ 8:31pm

What, them again?
What is it with the Wall Street Journal? It's beginning to seem like organisations such as the US government, Comcast and the MPAA all spend more time writing for the paper than their own employees.

At this point, they might as well lay off most of their writers and outsource every article directly as paid advertisements. It's not as if anyone would notice the difference.

Why they expect anyone to pay to read it is beyond me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Padpaw (profile), 2 Oct 2015 @ 1:53am

Who do you believe, your lying eyes and ears or your trusty government. "We are from the government we are here to help (mostly ourselves at your expense)"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2015 @ 4:18am

But did the Wall Street Journal or USA Today actually bend to their wishes. Seems like a moot point if those who report the news are more willing to sacrifice integrity than report the truth.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mason Wheeler (profile), 2 Oct 2015 @ 6:49am

If an agency wishes to punish a particularly tenacious FOIA requester, it can do so by unceremoniously dumping requested documents into the public domain, robbing him of any exclusivity.

...

The point of the law is to make the government accountable to the public.

In light of the latter point, what's the problem with the former? Exclusivity is counterproductive whether it's a government agency or a third party exclusively holding the data...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wendy Cockcroft, 2 Oct 2015 @ 7:42am

Re:
Government by whom? Bashing whole groups on principles is unwise as you may find you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wendy Cockcroft, 2 Oct 2015 @ 7:44am

Re:
Padpaw, this IS "less government."

That's EXACTLY what it means; less help, less information, less willingness to engage with the public. Why does that not make you happy?

I don't care how big the government is as long as I have a say in how it is run.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 2 Oct 2015 @ 9:01am

Re:
The problem is if that discourages journalists from even bothering with it. If they learn that there is no benefit to their career from using the FOIA process, they'll stop using it. That doesn't seem like the most likely outcome to me, but that's the concern.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2015 @ 10:39am

Don't worry about public domain dumps
If an agency wishes to punish a particularly tenacious FOIA requester, it can do so by unceremoniously dumping requested documents into the public domain, robbing him of any exclusivity

I don't think this will be common practice. In the recent case ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150923/18151132352/doj-insists-that-there-is-no-proof-verizon-wi reless-shared-phone-data-with-nsa.shtml ), the government questioned the authenticity of a FOIA document they gave to Charlie Savage. They won't be able to do that if they release it to the public domain themselves.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 2 Oct 2015 @ 12:05pm

Recent history has shown exactly that.
We've seen a number of news agencies reporting the official story as truth and putting pro-establishment op-ed pieces in the forefront.

essentially Terrorists will eat our children if we don't give them unlimited power to override our rights. Emergency! Emergency! Emergency!

That may be exaggerated hyperbole. I think they only said Emergency! as in State of... once.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 2 Oct 2015 @ 12:10pm

Re: Re:
Mason Wheeler raises a good point when FOIAs are responded to with tall reams of documentation.

Huge piles are lots of fun for the press as giant treasure hunts, and sifting through them is actually augmented by competition to find the tasty dirty bits first.

While not FOIA releases per se, data dumps from hacks such as the Ashley Madison debacle have shown how that works.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
GEMont, 2 Oct 2015 @ 2:58pm

The New POTUS will kill this beastie for ye.
"The point of the law is to make the government accountable to the public.
The process is never supposed to be subservient to the political/PR desires of government officials."

Silly hoomun.

The point of the law, is to make it appear as though the government is accountable to the public.

The process is absolutely subservient to the political/PR desires of government officials, corporate demigods and many other members of the Ownership Society, but was designed to appear otherwise.

The Freedom Of Information Act was intended to be a Public Relations Scam, designed to give the impression that the government was being accountable to the public, but which was never meant to allow the disclosure of sensitive or embarrassing information to the general public.

It has failed utterly and will be shut down, once the Hillary, Dillary and Donald pave the way for the next Ringer to take Office.

---
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 10 Nov 2015 @ 8:54am

I spent more than one decade in the military and tried to my own detriment to change the lying, cheating, stealing and deception in leadership. It simply can't be done. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[ link to this | view in thread ]