U.S. INFORMATION LAW ISN'T FREE, CRITICS SAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100200007-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: September 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100200007-5
ARTICLE AP?EA ED
ON PAGE f.....
WASHINGTON TIMES
27 September 1985
J.S. information law
isn't free, critics say
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES,
The Better Government Associ-
ation used it to expose a multi-
million dollar scam by Navy
contractors who were bilking the
government on shipbuilding work.
A fami) under the gun from the
Internal Revenue Service used it to
force the tox agency to disclose its
auditing procedures and secret
instructioq manuals.
And Carl Stern of NBC News used
it to obtainthe late J. Edgar Hoover's
secret FBL directives for his G-men
to infiltrate, disrupt and expose left-
wing groups during the 1960s.
The tools they and thousands of
others us dis t e Freedom of Infor-
mation dt. It is considered one o
the most effective ways for overn-
r= outRiderg to ride shotatin on
waste fraud and abuse in tax-
funded programs - and it is qn-
scan under attack from those who
e ,eve that it makes aovernme
action, particularly in the realm of
foreign policy and intelligence,
extremely difficult.
Since its passage in 1966, busi-
nesses, individuals, public interest
groups, journalists and even repre-
sentatives of foreign governments
have unearthed mountains of data
through the FOIA. Last year alone,
the government's eight largest
departments received 247,968 FOIA
requests, of which 207,978 were
granted in full and 92 percent were
partially granted.
But the mass of material belies
the general unfriendliness in key
departments to the idea of opening
government files to the public,
according to Rep. Glenn English,
D-Okla., chairman of the House Gov-
ernment Operations subcommittee
that monitors compliance with the
law
The State Department, which is
exempt from disclosing classified
foreign documents, granted in full
only 29 percent of last year's
requests. Still, even the State
Department released 103,000 pages
of documents in full and 42,601 par-
tial pages.
As the FOIA approaches its 20th
anniversary, some government
agencies are trying to restrict the
information flow while some mem-
bers of Congress are trying to make
it more accessible. Buoyed by the
success of the CIA in obtaining
information act concessions, the FBI
is see
information gathered on or anized
crime and prohibit third-party
requests for informant recd s.
" We have learned that some clever
requesters have used or could use
the FOIA to identify confidential
sources," FBI Director William H.
Webster told Congress last year.
The administration is also seek-
ing legislation to expand FOIA's dis-
closure exemptions, charge higher
fees for providing government infor-
mation to the public and give federal
agencies more time to find and pro-
vide requested records, In response
to the administration's efforts, Reps.
Gerald D. Kleczka, D-Wis., and Eng-
lish, with the help of the Society of
Professional Journalists, Sigma
Delta Chi, have introduced a bill to
make it more difficult for federal
officials to withhold information
from the public.
The FOIA has always been unpop-
ular with government officials. The
American Civil Liberties Union, the
American Bar Association and some
legal scholars contend that federal'
agencies apply the law inconsis-
tently and use its disclosure etcemp-
tions broadly to block access to their
files, even more so since Ronald
Reagan took office.
Critics of the FOIA complain that
businesses seeking trade secrets
and criminals tend to use the law
more than do the news media and
public interest groups, who could
provide information of public bene-
fit.
lb law enforcement and intelli-
gence agencies with massiv
rmation- ermg capabilities
an a stn& -m-tra a to secrecy, thp
FOIA has been a particularly __.bad
devel men When FBI Director
ester testified before Congress
last year, he cited the release of more
than 12,000 pages of documents to
members of a known organized
crime family in Detroit.
A seemingly innocuous reference
in an FBI document to "a green
sedan;' a person's sex or the number
of people attending a meeting would
identify an informant to a mobster
obtaining the document under the
FOIA, Mr. Webster explained. "He
would know" by a process of
elimination. "Our 300 employees
who process FOIA requests do not
know the person who is requesting
the information. They do not know
what is significant about a green
sedan. So they are supposed to leave
it in under the statute."
Congressional sources say the
FBI has failed to make a convincing
case for its proposed FOIA changes.
The agency's reputation for heavily
"sanitizing" or censoring documents
also has caused members of Con-
gress to look askance at the propos-
als.
Rep. English cites incredible FBI
censorship of former Director
Hoover's public testimony at a 1947
congressional hearing, before the
bureau released copies of the
printed hearing record to a Mar-
quette University historian in 1981.
The complete record was in the
Library of Congress and other
libraries throughout the country for
anyone to read.
Jon Wiener also can attest to FBI
stonewalling. In 1983, he filed suit
against the FBI after the agency
withheld records about the late John
Lennon, a member of the famed
Beatles rock-and-roll group who
was shot to death in December 1980.
"By their accounting, they with-
held about two-thirds of the pages:'
says Mr. Wiener, a professor of his-
tory at the University of California
at Irvine. What the FBI did provide
contained "pretty extensive dele-
tions as well?' The FBI cited national
security as the reason. Files about "a
dead rock star would endanger the
national security: We thought that
was an absurd claim to make:"
Despite the deletions from the 26
pounds of documents Mr. Wiener
obtained, his book, published last
year by Random House, detailed
efforts to harass and deport Mr. Len-
non for his activities in the United
States against the U.S. effort in Viet-
nam. But the book, he says, left unan-
swered some central questions, such
as White House involvement,
because of the censored material.
Critics contend another method
agencies use to block access is delay.
Mr. Wiener waited 11/2 years for his
documents. The law requires a
response within 10 days and no later
than 20 days in "unusual circum-
stances" where government offi-
cials run into problems processing a
request.
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100200007-5
 I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100200007-5
"Courts have been reluctant to
compel agencies to meet the dead-
line. It's basically how quickly you
can get around to it;" says Elaine
English, director of the FOI Service
Center of The Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press.
In the past five years, there has
been "a quantum leap in complaints
about delays,"says Sam Archibald, a
journalism professor at the Univer-
sity of Colorado. "Delay is one of the
ways to ensure secrecy," says Mr.
Archibald, who was staff director of
the House Government Operations
subcommittee that drafted the FOIA
in 1966.
In a 1983 review, the General
Accounting Office reported that Jus-
tice Department offices took an
average of 122 days to process FOIA
and Privacy Act requests and the
FBI took an average of 139 days.
The problem is illustrated by the
State Department. At the end of last
year, it had a backlog almost equal to
the 3,617 FOIA requests it processed
in 1984, Rep. English says. Busy
senior officials involved with inter-
national crises must clear informa-
tion before it can be released,
agency personnel counter. The
result is that requests related to
high-interest foreign policy matters
languish while those of less pressing
matters get processed more quickly.
As a result, journalists generally
employ other methods to obtain
files. `A lot of reporters just use it
[the FOIAI as a last resort;" says a
congressional staffer.
Not all agencies are uncooper-
ative. The Defense Department "fol-
lows the law successfully," says Mr.
Archibald. Sources also give credit
to the Department of Health and
Human Services. The pair granted
more than 95 percent of their FOIA
requests without deleting any infor-
mation - an indication that the law
"works and it works well;' says Rep.
English.
As the law is written, government
officials can refuse to disclose nine
categories of information, includ-
ing: defense and foreign policy
secrets, pre-decisional documents
and working papers, personnel and
medical files, investigatory files
compiled for law enforcement, pro-
prietary business information and
records exempted from disclosure
by other statutes.
Career bureaucrats have added
an unwritten 10th exemption to the
FOIA: "I don't want to give it to you:'
Mary Hargrove, a reporter for The
'Ililsa Tribune told the Associated
Press Managing Editors' last annual
meeting.
William M. McDonald, who runs
the Pentagon's FOIA office, says
there is no intent to evade the law. "It
is difficult for people to understand
why they have to staff for this. It's
additional work beyond their reg-
ular full-time jobs."
The English and Kleczka bill
includes tougher sanctions against
government agencies that abuse the
disclosure law - particularly by
violating its time limits or misusing
its disclosure exemptions. For
example, the government could
withhold only properly classified
information that "could reasonably
be expected to cause identifiable
damage" to national defense or for-
eign policy interests and only if "the
need to protect the information out-
weighs the public interest in disclo-
sure."
Mr. Wiener, who received help,
from the American Civil Liberties.
Union of Southern California,
believes the law can be improved.
"It's extremely time-consuming.
The individual trying to use the act
is virtually powerless if he or she
faces deletions. The only recourse
you have is if you have some big insti-
tution to support you."
The legislation also would require
the government to establish a uni-
form fee schedule for processing
requests. Agencies charge as little
as $3 an hour if a clerical worker
does the search or as much as $18 an
hour for professionals conducting
the search. The government can cur-
rently charge fees to recoup its
search and copying costs, but not for
the manhours devoted to the review-
ing process. As a result, FOIA fees
now pay only about 5 percent of the
yearly cost of FOIA, conservatively
estimated by the General
Accounting Office to be $61 million.
The law also provides for fee
waivers when disclosure primarily
benefits the general public, says the
FOI Service Center's Elaine English.
As an established historian and
writer, Mr- Wiener had his fees-
waived. He nonetheless had to file an'
appeal for one FBI file that would
have cost him "in the hundreds of
dollars."
The bill also would transfer
governmentwide authority to
administer FOIA from the Justice
Department to the newly created
office of the U.S. archivist. Justice,
says Rep. Kleczka, has exercised
"poor, almost nonexistent oversight."
Congress has not refused all
administration requests. Last year,
the CIA convinced Congress to
exempt its operational t es from
public disclosure with the un
est of allies - the ACLU. The ACLU's
support was not without a price -.q
guarantee from the CIA to speed up
its notorious v sow response to
OIA re uests.
Staff writer Karen Diegmueller
contributed to this report.
.r..ww=th.rw.
1* lip"
rr r/J.??r. I.1 .W W~,INrrwr~4 w.0r
WN,iMw..~,~4. YY-.1... hdYdr1~
..Yb13i 3RL d.? r.n..t..r 4....?4
I...Y i r-ra .-'...4.a.ab.-
V .?. w/..WryL .y.wNi rw/rr.l=
130 ,.,,a te.....m .....qY... ,,. ~.,.
.tin? b.nry. Mr` (l.,r, . .?.3113, , I.i..
01
~I?b .t.,4, 414 w .4i.ti. w .3..r.n .L. .
nY ...0r ..J ww.r
.. i.- .s .. .rw..r... iiw..r. r.~..db
Yw. ?..t u .1.r. M~ .ill.Yl auw w ...b. M..Ir~ Y?.
Yn W i. fw es.~
/ .twat 1 neJ Y?t ..y _. ._ . M
..'Y YO?.W -a ?M hr.Wb
I~.?.Y IY...- r't`ibr `isre'~i.. I SSt i w
:.......s..wrr N wbb. Nw1?i N
I?..~..lit.._nt_ b w,W. 8.?. r to. U ,..r.d
-...i.?.r.. th.. d..3..n th au ..a...
et.,... W..i., w . wY.
I...0.!?..s,.d.. .? W"ht..r?.~Yw Ni..
p.... t...A. MI w taq,..3 ..1.p?.. Wi.ir .. r
.[Y.....Y, r l Yb0Yy ry.rbl.~r,...
II.,_nd $..Y r0,0fw I.ta 00.. whit f.
wb/r-
dw.44.0,.,Wtww,.wd?atwy30.y. I.i
rdJwwy ., i 50 .* W UJU.w. w 3trw .4.W
w+... the,.?? d?Ibt..e,w w,w ur,.,..p ..r.
..Y4w W. a. Y. Y.r.?r r..?...
1 ..dd Y. r
-w rp.4d4i~M1.b1 .....- .....h, h?
a..i?. 791
r.
.,.... I!?. M 4....4.003..., N.t 34.0?..
r l~..,nr...an. w,.. w..43.ds1?.3 w4? p.b3
_i_w???.a./.r..r.s .Wh .fbwd,r?r
Comparisons of a page of public testimony given 28 years ago by then-FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover and the same document censored by the FBI in 1981
when responding to an FOI regyest.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100200007-5