How Redacting 'Just 15%' Can Hide The Details Of CIA's Torture Program

from the here's-an-example dept

As the fight over the redactions on the CIA torture report continue, it's worth reminding folks how you can totally change the story with just a few well placed redactions. Director of National Intelligence has insisted that just 15% was redacted -- though, as Marcy Wheeler points out, the part that's being declassified is just the exec summary, which was written specifically to get around the redactor's ink, since the details are buried in the full report, which will likely remain classified for a while. In other words, the vast, vast majority of the report is still "redacted." Still, even a 15% redaction can do a lot of damage and hide a lot of facts. Senator Mark Udall has made it clear that the existing redactions make parts of the report "incomprehensible" in an effort to hide embarrassing information from the public.

Reed Richardson decided to do a fairly simple demonstration to show just how much a 15% redaction can bury key points. He took President Obama's statement about how "we tortured some folks" and redacted "just 15%" of it (though such that if you look closely, you can see what's covered). Notice how the key elements -- the admission of torture -- simply fade away... Richardson told me the whole exercise took less than 10 minutes, demonstrating just how easy it is to distort a report based on a few strategic redactions.

Filed Under: barack obama, cia, james clapper, redactions, senate intelligence committee, torture report

Senators Slam White House For CIA Torture Report Redactions That Make It 'Incomprehensible'

from the just-release-it dept

The fight over the redactions of the CIA's torture report continue. Last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that she and her staff were somewhat taken aback by the amount of redacted information when they received back the black ink-drenched copy of the executive summary to the $40 million, 6,300 page "devastating" report on the CIA's torture program prepared by the Senate Intelligence Committee. In response, James Clapper shot back that the redactions were "minimal" and over 85% of the document was free from black ink (it's not clear if he was counting the margins as well...).

Of course, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, this is just about the executive summary of the report -- which was specifically written to be published. In other words, the really "secret" stuff is in the rest of the report, but the 408 page exec summary was written with public disclosure in mind -- meaning that the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers certainly wrote it with the expectation that it would need few, if any, redactions. So the fact that large chunks of it were redacted immediately set off some alarms.

On Tuesday, multiple Senators on the Intelligence Committee spoke out angrily about the redactions. It kicked off with Feinstein who noted that the review her staff went through of the redactions shows that the censors are trying to hide information that should be public:

“After further review of the redacted version of the executive summary, I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions. Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.

“I am sending a letter today to the president laying out a series of changes to the redactions that we believe are necessary prior to public release. The White House and the intelligence community have committed to working through these changes in good faith. This process will take some time, and the report will not be released until I am satisfied that all redactions are appropriate.

“The bottom line is that the United States must never again make the mistakes documented in this report. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to make public our thorough documentary history of the CIA’s program. That is why I believe taking our time and getting it right is so important, and I will not rush this process.”

Senator Carl Levin then came out with a much more strongly worded condemnation of the redactions suggesting that they were clearly designed to hide embarrassing information, which is not a legitimate reason for redactions:

“The redactions that CIA has proposed to the Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogations are totally unacceptable. Classification should be used to protect sources and methods or the disclosure of information which could compromise national security, not to avoid disclosure of improper acts or embarrassing information. But in reviewing the CIA-proposed redactions, I saw multiple instances where CIA proposes to redact information that has already been publicly disclosed in the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse that was reviewed by the administration and authorized for release in 2009. The White House needs to take hold of this process and ensure that all information that should be declassified is declassified.”

Senator Mark Udall issued a statement in which he notes that the "strategic" redactions are used to distort the nature of what's in the report:

"While Director Clapper may be technically correct that the document has been 85 percent declassified, it is also true that strategically placed redactions can make a narrative incomprehensible and can certainly make it more difficult to understand the basis for the findings and conclusions reached in the report. I agree wholeheartedly that redactions are necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods, but the White House must work closely with this committee to reach this goal in a way that makes it possible for the public to understand what happened.

"I am committed to working with Chairman Feinstein to declassify the Senate Intelligence Committee's study to the fullest extent possible, correct the record on the CIA's brutal and ineffective detention and interrogation program, and ensure the CIA learns from its past mistakes. And in light of the importance of the work the Senate Intelligence Committee has undertaken, I believe that the chairman should take all necessary time to ensure that the redactions to the executive summary are appropriate — not merely made to cover up acts that could embarrass the agency.

"The CIA should not face its past with a redaction pen, and the White House must not allow it to do so."

All three of those Senators are well aware of what's in the report, and it appears they recognize that the black ink was being used not to protect national security or "sources and methods" but rather to hide or distort the facts of the CIA's torture program.

Filed Under: carl levin, cia, dianne feinstein, james clapper, mark udall, odni, redactions, senate intelligence committee, torture report, white house

President Obama Claims CIA Torture Was Okay Because People Were Scared And The CIA Is A 'Tough Job'

from the oh-really? dept

On Friday, we wrote briefly about President Obama's "admission" that "we tortured some folks." At the time I was going off of the press reports of the conference, but now that I've read the full transcript of his statement, it's much worse than just that brief comment. Here's the relevant portion:

With respect to the larger point of the RDI report itself, even before I came into office I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.

I understand why it happened. I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

It was the "we tortured some folks" that reasonably made headlines, but the following paragraph, in which he tries to brush it off, is what's really troubling. Imagine any other crime, and think about whether or not you'd have someone say it was okay because there was "enormous pressure" on the people committing the crime. Imagine any other crime, and being told "not to feel too sanctimonious" because of what a "tough job" any other criminal had. I'm sorry, but I don't care how much pressure anyone was under, plenty of people who are actually "real patriots" know that you don't torture people. Not only does it not work, it's morally reprehensible. "You don't torture" is a pretty straightforward concept -- and one that was pretty clearly known and articulated prior to all of this. Nothing that happened on 9/11 or in the aftermath magically made war crimes like torture okay.

Those aren't "patriots," and defending them because of the "pressure" they were under is an incredibly cowardly and disgusting move.

Filed Under: barack obama, cia, national security, pressure, torture, torture report

James Clapper Insists Redactions On The Torture Report Are 'Minimal'

from the the-least-untruthful-thing-he-could-say dept

On Friday, we wrote about Senator Dianne Feinstein's concern about how much of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA torture program had been redacted during the declassification process. In response, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has angrily shot back that there were only "minimal" redactions:

More than 85% of the Committee Report has been declassified, and half of the redactions are in footnotes. The redactions were the result of an extensive and unprecedented interagency process, headed up by my office, to protect sensitive classified information. We are confident that the declassified document delivered to the Committee will provide the public with a full view of the Committee’s report on the detention and interrogation program, and we look forward to a constructive dialogue with the Committee.

Compare that to Feinstein's statement, which noted:

A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification.

Reporter Jason Leopold spoke to some people knowledgeable about the redactions, who said that they were about methods of torture that hadn't been revealed... and about countries that helped the CIA. Basically, more stuff that would embarrass the CIA and certain allies, but which wouldn't actually impact national security today.

Two officials with access to the declassified executive summary told VICE News that some of the redactions allegedly pertain to the manner in which the detainees were held captive, and to certain torture techniques that were not among the 10 “approved” methods contained in a Justice Department legal memo commonly referred to as the “torture memo.” The officials said the never before–revealed methods, which in certain instances were “improvised,” are central to the report because they underscore the “cruelty” of the program. Some other redactions allegedly pertain to the origins of the program and the intelligence the CIA collected through the use of torture, which the Senate report claims was of little or no value — a claim with which the CIA disagrees.

Another US official told VICE News that the CIA “vehemently opposed” the inclusion of some of the footnotes because they allegedly revealed too many “specific” details about the CIA’s operational files, which evidently contain information about foreign intelligence sources and operations, and provide clues about the foreign governments that allowed the CIA to operate its torture program in their countries. (The National Clandestine's Service's operational files are protected from public disclosure and open records laws.) The report, according to the US official, identifies the countries where the suspected terrorists were held as “Country A, Country B, Country C.”

Of course, if we're going to "come clean" on this black spot in our history, it would help to really come clean about it. Hiding that the torture the CIA did was much worse than originally thought means that officials still aren't willing to come to terms with what the CIA did.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, james clapper, redactions, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report

White House Finishes Review Of CIA Terror Report: Feinstein Wants To Know Why It's Basically All Blacked Out

from the let's-try-this-again dept

We've been joking the last few weeks about how everyone was waiting for the White House to dump buckets of black ink on the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report. As we'd noted, for reasons that still don't make any sense, the CIA was given first crack at redacting the 480 page declassified executive summary of the 6,300 page, $40 million Senate Intelligence report into the CIA's torture program. Once the CIA was done with it, it was handed over to the White House to exhaust reserve stores of black ink.

And that appears to be exactly what happened. Late Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein announced that the White House had returned the executive summary, but she's a bit overwhelmed by all the black ink and is holding off releasing the document until her staff can look into why there were so many redactions:

The committee this afternoon received the redacted executive summary of our study on the CIA detention and interrogation program.

A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification.

Therefore the report will be held until further notice and released when that process is completed.

At least Feinstein didn't just rubber stamp the redactions. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been pushing to release this report for over a year now, and it's been clear that the CIA/White House was going to fight them on it somewhat.

Given the most recent revelations about the CIA's attempt to spy on the Senate and to lie and mislead the Senate and the public about all of this, it seems like we shouldn't take their word for any of this. One hopes that the Senate pushes back strongly on bogus redactions. Or, better yet, that the Senate Intelligence Committee just overrides the White House and releases it themselves. Or, you know, that someone decides to just leak the damn thing already...

Filed Under: black ink, cia, dianne feinstein, redactions, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report, white house

Obama Admits 'We Tortured Some Folks' But Doesn't Seem Too Concerned

from the because-making-it-folks-makes-it-okay dept

Last May, in President Obama's big speech at the National Defense University -- where he tried to establish his legacy as being the president to "end" the US's role in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- he did admit to the fact that the US "compromised our basic values -- by using torture to interrogate our enemies." That admission got somewhat lost in the wider scope of what he was saying, and thus, to this day, many government officials still refuse to call the CIA's torture program "torture."

However, at a press conference today, President Obama appeared to more breezily admit to it by noting "we tortured some folks." That seems like a... rather informal way to talk about war crimes, committed by the US government, which Obama himself refused to do anything about. Again, we feel the need to remind people that the only person in jail concerning the CIA's torture program... is the guy who blew the whistle on the program, John Kiriakou.

And, of course, the obedient White House press corps that Obama was speaking to didn't seem to probe. As Conor Friedersdorf points out, a good question a reporter might have asked in response would have been: How many people who were involved in torturing "folks" are still employed at the CIA?

Meanwhile, the president also said that he completely stands behind CIA director John Brennan, even following the revelations of the spying scandal (and, more importantly, Brennan's lies about the scandal).

“I have full confidence in John Brennan,” Obama said in a White House press conference. “I think he has acknowledged — and directly apologized to [Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman] Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein — that CIA personnel did not properly handle an investigation into how certain documents that were not authorized to be release to the Senate staff got somehow into the hands of the Senate staff.

“It’s clear from the [inspector general] report that some very poor judgment was shown in terms of how that was handled," Obama added. "Keep in mind, though, that John Brennan was the person who called for the IG report, and he’s already stood up a task force to make sure that lessons are learned and mistakes are resolved."

Yes, but John Brennan also angrily insisted that no spying was done (multiple times) and claimed that it was the Senate staffers his CIA employees were spying on who had broken the law, and even referred them to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution -- all without any basis at all. Brennan hasn't shown that he's interested in "learning lessons" or "resolving mistakes." He took a reflexively bogus position, lying to defend the CIA. And this isn't the beginning. Much of this came about because of Brennan's earlier attempts to shred the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on how "we tortured some folks" by insisting it was inaccurate. It was only when the Senate Intelligence Committee was given (apparently by accident) an internal CIA report that confirmed their own findings, that Brennan was questioned about this, leading the CIA to start spying on the staffers.

This isn't the kind of thing you just wave away. All of this -- the torture, the coverup, the lying and the spying -- are pretty big deals. And it's immensely troubling that the insider DC response seems to be "eh, a few mistakes were made, but it's okay."

Filed Under: barack obama, cia, john brennan, lying, torture, torture report

CIA Spying On The Senate Went Much Further Than Originally Reported

from the because-of-course-it-did dept

We already covered how the CIA has admitted to and apologized for its spying on the Senate, but the CIA's official "unclassified" statement on the matter shows that what the CIA did was even worse than the initial allegations. Here's the basic summary, according to the CIA's Inspector General:

Agency Access to Files on the SSCI RDINet: Five Agency employees, two attorneys and three information technology (IT) staff members, improperly accessed or caused access to the SSCI Majority staff shared drives on the RDINet.

Agency Crimes Report on Alleged Misconduct by SSCI Staff: The Agency filed a crimes report with the DOJ, as required by Executive Order 12333 and the 1995 Crimes Reporting Memorandum between the DOJ and the Intelligence Community, reporting that SSCI staff members may have improperly accessed Agency information on the RDINet. However, the factual basis for the referral was not supported, as the author of the referral had been provided inaccurate information on which the letter was based. After review, the DOJ declined to open a criminal investigation of the matter alleged in the crimes report.

Office of Security Review of SSCI Staff Activity: Subsequent to directive by the D/CIA to halt the Agency review of SSCI staff access to the RDINet, and unaware of the D/CIA’s direction, the Office of Security conducted a limited investigation of SSCI activities on the RDINet. That effort included a keyword search of all and a review of some of the emails of SSCI Majority staff members on the RDINet system.

Lack of Candor: The three IT staff members demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities during interviews by the OIG.

So, the first bit we already knew. That's what Senator Feinstein initially revealed -- and Brennan pretended to deny, while actually admitting to the facts about them accessing the Senate Intelligence Committee's private network where they were storing documents for their investigation into the CIA's torture program.

We also knew that the CIA had bogusly reported the Senate staffers to the DOJ, claiming they had "improperly accessed" CIA information. However, now the CIA is admitting that "the factual basis for the referral was not supported." In other words, for all of Brennan's blustering about how awful the Senate staffers were and how they were breaking the law, it appears that the CIA knew they were making it up. That's really bad.

But it's the next item where things get really dicey. After all of this came out and Brennan told the CIA folks to knock it off, CIA people spied on the emails of the Senate staffers. Let's repeat that. After Feinstein had already made this public and called the CIA out on its spying of intelligence committee staff members and after Brennan told them to knock if off, the CIA went and directly spied on emails. The AP is further reporting that "the CIA used classified "hacking tools" and created a fake user account in an effort to retrieve documents the CIA believed the Senate staffers had improperly accessed."

This is a major problem, and something of a Constitutional issue, given the separation of powers. No wonder Mark Udall is demanding Brennan's resignation.

Oh, and then we find out that the CIA staffers involved "demonstrated a lack of candor" about all this during the internal investigation by the CIA? Sure, it's an intelligence agency that's built on lying, but it certainly looks like the culture of professionally lying all the time is pretty deep there. Over at Foreign Policy, Shane Harris has gone through the many statements Brennan made vehemently denying the spying. It appears that all of them were false and in some cases, blatant lies.

And, remember, this is only what the CIA has deemed worthy of revealing publicly. The full Inspector General report may be even more devastating.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, emails, john brennan, senate, senate intelligence committee, separation of powers, spying, torture report

CIA Torture Report Reveals That State Department Officials Knew About Torture; Were Told Not To Tell Their Bosses

from the loose-lips-stop-war-crimes dept

We continue to wait and wait for the White House to finish pouring black ink all over the Senate's torture report, before releasing the (heavily redacted) 480-page executive summary that the Senate agreed to declassify months ago. However, every few weeks it seems that more details from the report leak out to the press anyway. The latest is that officials at the State Department were well aware of the ongoing CIA torture efforts, but were instructed not to tell their superiors, such that it's likely that the top officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, may have been kept in the dark, while others at the State Department knew of the (highly questionable) CIA actions.

A Senate report on the CIA's interrogation and detention practices after the 9/11 attacks concludes that the agency initially kept the secretary of state and some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about harsh techniques and secret prisons, according to a document circulating among White House staff.

The still-classified report also says some ambassadors who were informed about interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites in their countries were instructed not to tell their superiors at the State Department, the document says.

Powell was eventually told about the program, but not until it was well underway apparently. And, of course, the CIA says that this was all perfectly normal:

The former CIA official said it would be standard practice for ambassadors informed about a covert operation to be instructed not to share it with others who did not have a "need to know," as determined by the National Security Agency. Ambassadors in countries in which the CIA set up black sites to interrogate prisoners were usually told about it, said the official....

The other interesting tidbit is that this report came from leaked "talking points" at the State Department, as they prepare for the release of the report. As we noted recently, the State Department had been making some noises about how angry this report would make lots of people -- but it appears that the latest strategy is for the State Department to "embrace" the findings and pull a "that was then, this is now" card:

The State Department wants to embrace the conclusions of the Senate report and blast the CIA's past practices, according to the document.

"This report tells a story of which no American is proud," the document says in a section entitled "Topline Messages (as proposed by State)."

"But it is also part of another story of which we can be proud," the document adds. "America's democratic system worked just as it was designed to work in bringing an end to actions inconsistent with our democratic values."

Frankly, this is probably the most sensible strategy -- and one many people have been advocating for. Everyone knows the report is damning. The best way to deal with it is to come clean, admit how wrong things were, and be much more transparent. There are, of course, a few problems with this plan, though. First, the US has never done anything to actually punish those who were responsible for the program. In fact, the only person in jail for his association with the program is the guy who blew the whistle on it. Second, the intelligence community would have to become a hell of a lot more transparent. While it has actually become marginally more transparent thanks to Ed Snowden, the intelligence community has a long way to go to build back up trust. Releasing this report is the right thing to do. But actually getting people to trust the US intelligence community again is going to take a lot more work.

Filed Under: ambassadors, cia, colin powell, state department, torture, torture report

After CIA Angrily Denied Spying On Senate, CIA Admits It Did And Apologizes

from the incredible dept

Here's a surprise. An internal investigation by the CIA has determined -- just as Senator Dianne Feinstein charged -- that the CIA illegally hacked into the network of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in order to spy on what they were doing with regards to a report on the CIA's torture program. They did this despite an earlier instance of a similar problem after which the CIA promised it would not touch the Senate Intelligence Committee network any more.

Of course, as you may recall after Feinstein angrily denounced the CIA's actions, and explained them in detail, CIA director John Brennan angrily denied it -- though as we noted, his angry denial really confirmed nearly all of the pertinent details. Still, he specifically stated:

"When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong."

He also told reporters:

"Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the Senate Intelligence Committee] or the Senate."

Things got even more acrimonious when both sides reported each other to the Justice Department for possible criminal investigation. The CIA insisted that the Senate staffers mishandled classified information, while the Senate claimed that the CIA illegally hacked into their network. Once again, the Senate side of the story made the most sense -- because it had happened before. As you may recall from Feinstein's original explanation:

After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions, CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or pages of documents that were removed in February 2010, and secondly roughly another 50 were removed in mid-May 2010.

This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset.

After that, the CIA agreed that it would not touch the network in any way. But it did. As Brennan himself explained:

CIA maintains a log of all materials provided to the Committee through established protocols, and these documents do not appear in that log, nor were they found in an audit of CIA's side of the system for all materials provided to SSCI through established protocols. Because we were concerned that there may be a breach or vulnerability in the system for housing highly classified documents, CIA conducted a limited review to determine whether these files were located on the SSCI side of the CIA network and reviewed audit data to determine whether anyone had accessed the files, which would have been unauthorized.

Either way, the DOJ just recently decided to pursue neither claim, but the CIA's moves today more or less admit guilt:

Findings of the investigation by the CIA Inspector General’s Office “include a judgment that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) and the CIA in 2009,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement.

The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed Feinstein and the committee’s vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, on the CIA inspector general’s findings and apologized to them during a meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boyd said.

“The director . . . apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the OIG (Office of Inspector General Report),” he said.

That's a pretty different tune than "When the facts come out" all those people "will be proved wrong," huh?

What's incredible about this is that it comes very soon before the redacted version of the CIA torture report that the staffers were working on is expected to be released. Brennan has been the leading voice criticizing the report, but his credibility is sliding increasingly downhill. The news today shows that he appears to have directly lied to the press and the Senate concerning this situation. The more cynical among you will claim that you just assume he's always lying, but that's unfair. For whatever it's worth, the intelligence community is very good about not technically lying, but just misleading people. Here, he was strongly making claims that were clearly just flat out not true.

Others in the Senate are calling for a thorough investigation of Brennan, and it's entirely possible this could result in Brennan being forced to resign. At this point, especially with the report coming out, it seems like the CIA could use a fresh start.

Either way, given that the CIA is now effectively admitting to the charges, it does seem noteworthy to highlight the DOJ's decision not to do anything. After all, as Chris Soghoian points out, if this same bit of hacking were done by a 19 year old hactivist, he'd be rotting in jail, and there would be all sorts of condemnations about what a horrible person he was.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, john brennan, senate, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture report

CIA Tells FOIA Requester That He Needs To Know Everything About The Emails He's Requesting Before He Can Request Them

from the using-the-rarely-seen-tautology-exemption dept

More FOIA-related nonsense, this time from the CIA. Michael Morisy, co-founder of MuckRock, sent a request for internal emails discussing (rather ironically) the fact that the CIA's "FOIA Portal" seems to suffer from extended periods of downtime.

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

A copy of emails sent to or from the CIA's FOIA office regarding the FOIA Portal's Technical Issues.

According to the CIA's current FOIA website: "FOIA requests cannot currently be made online due to technical issues. Requests can still be submitted via the US Postal Service and facsimile."

http://www.foia.cia.gov/

Please also include any attachments to these emails.

Given the agency's disdain for the FOIA process (second only to the NYPD), I'm sure this sort of outage is viewed as a feature, not a bug. But whatever internal musings the CIA had about its FOIA portal issues will apparently be staying internal for the time being.

The CIA rejected Morisy's request in full, basically stating that searching for emails is hard work and that the requester could have at least bothered to know exactly who was talking about the portal issues and exactly when they were doing it before making the request.

The FOIA requires requesters to "reasonably describe" the information they seek so that professional employees familiar with the subject matter can locate responsive information with a reasonable amount of effort. Commonly this equates to a requirement that the documents must be locatable through the indexing of our various systems. Extremely broad or vague requests or requests requiring research do not satisfy this requirement. We require requesters seeking any form of "electronic communications" such as emails, to provide the specific "to" and "from" recipients, time frame and subject. We note that you have provided the subject only. Therefore, we must decline your request.

Obviously, a FOIA requester isn't going to know these sorts of specifics beforehand, hence THE REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. As MuckRock's JPat Brown points out, Twitter user Mythosopher had perhaps the best response to this refusal...

You can't see any emails or know who sent or received them. But you must request the exact email and who sent and received it.

... along with this graphic:


The CIA has pretty much ensured many requests will be found too cumbersome to comply with. It used 2013's brief sequester as an excuse to shut down its office in charge of declassifying historical documents and fold it in with the FOIA department's steady stream of extension requests and denials. And the CIA joins an ever-lengthening list of federal agencies completely mystified by internal email systems. Oddly, this same government expects the US public to trust that agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA and countless law enforcement entities will be able to find the needles in your personal email haystacks -- obtained in bulk with FISA court orders, NSLs or old-fashioned open-ended, non-specific warrants.

The CIA itself has already raided internal networks to root out Senate staffers and whistleblowers, but no one heard anyone complain about the lack of specifics making the job too tough to do. It's only when the public asks to dip into the government's business that these agencies suddenly start acting like the impossible is being demanded.

Filed Under: cia, foia, secrecy, transparency