FOIAfactor’s Comments

• Aug 13th, 2015 @ 11:04pm

  Re: Re: I Wonder

  on CIA Accidentally Releases Apology Letter It Wrote, But Never Sent To The Senate For Illegally Spying On It
  No, these records were divulged to attorney Jeffrey Light, representing the name plaintiffs here, as a result of protracted litigation. There was no mid-level staffer involved at this stage of the process, not even the reporters themselves had anything to do with getting the records freed.
• Aug 13th, 2015 @ 10:59pm

  Re: I'm doubting this scenario

  on CIA Accidentally Releases Apology Letter It Wrote, But Never Sent To The Senate For Illegally Spying On It
  This is an accurate read. Another essential omitted from the story was that these documents were not obtained by the reporter but were actually secured by attorney Jeffrey Light following protracted litigation. Sometimes government attorneys handling release at the litigation level are not as mired in political drama as the agency's bureaucrats.
  
  So, they will sometimes let slip records that embarrass the agency as punishment for being needlessly obstreperous. Other times, the agency lets a document slip to take the heat off some other brewing story, here Hillary or Iran.
  
  While FOIA hacks salivate over who did or did not get an apology in the Senate a million years ago, everyone takes their eye off State Department's missed deadline for production following the Democratic presidential frontrunner's destruction and possible dissemination of classifieds records trafficked through an insecure home-based computer network.
  
  The reporting universe on both stories overlap. Sadly, this natsec/opengov subculture has proven easily and reliably distractable.