Late Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice released an official copy of its White Paper on lethal targeting of Americans to Freedom of Information Act requesters, including FAS and Truthout.org, several days after it had been leaked to the press.
The official version appears to be identical to the document posted by NBC News, except that it contains a notation on the first page stating “Draft November 8, 2011.” (It also lacks the heavy-handed NBC watermark.)
“The Department has determined that the document responsive to your request is appropriate for release as a matter of agency discretion,” wrote Melanie Ann Pustay, director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice.
This is a surprising statement, because as recently as two or three weeks earlier, the Department had said exactly the opposite.
“The document is protected by the deliberative process privilege, and is not appropriate for discretionary release at this time,” wrote Paul Colborn of the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel in a January 23, 2013 denial letter to the New York Times.
What changed in the interim? Obviously, the fact that the document leaked — and had already been read by most people who cared to do so — altered DoJ’s calculation. The decision to cease withholding the document in light of its public availability displays some minimal capacity for reality-testing. To continue to insist that the document was protected and exempt from release would have been too absurd.
But the Freedom of Information Act process is supposed to meet a higher standard than “not absurd,” and in this case it failed to do so.
According to a FOIA policy statement issued by Attorney General Eric Holder in 2009, “an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally. I strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information. An agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.”
The Attorney General’s policy cited President Obama’s own statement on FOIA which declared that “The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”
The pre-leak withholding of the White Paper on targeted killing appears to have been inconsistent with both policy statements. It is now clear that only “speculative or abstract fears” were at issue, not actual hazards.
Was the release of the memo “a threat to national security”? A reporter asked that question at the White House press briefing on February 5. “No. No,” said Press Secretary Jay Carney. “It wasn’t designed for public release, but it’s an unclassified document.”
“And since it is out there,” he added, “you should read it.”
Last week, Reps. Darrell Issa and Elijah Cummings of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked the Department of Justice to explain several apparent inconsistencies between FOIA policy and actual practice.
“The Committee seeks information about a number of issues including what many term as outdated FOIA regulations, exorbitant and possibly illegal fee assessments, FOIA backlogs, the excessive use and abuse of exemptions, and dispute resolution services,” they wrote in a February 4 letter. … Read More
DoJ White Paper Released as a Matter of “Discretion”
Appendix of Darkness
In
The Red Chapel (2009), undercover Danish documentarian
Mads Brugger visited North Korea as a member of a fake theater
company. In The Ambassador (2011), now out on DVD, he ventures into
the Central African Republic (CAR) as an emissary of Liberia for a
similarly sardonic look at an appalling political situation.“Some call it a failed state,” Brugger says, “but this could
only be true if at some point there had been a functioning state
structure.” The CAR’s kleptocracy clearly fails at providing
security, but in other respects the country’s problem is too much
rather than too little government.Brugger’s odyssey, which includes buying Liberian diplomatic
credentials, meeting with various government officials, planning a
never-to-be-built match factory, striking a shady deal with a
diamond mine owner, and many, many bribes, illustrates what happens
when the state has a hand in everything. “If you can mix business
and politics,” Brugger’s corrupt alter ego observes, “wonderful
things can happen.” … Read More
Seven people killed, over 40 wounded in bomb blast near Turkish-Syrian border
Five killed, over 40 wounded in bomb blast near Turkish-Syrian borderAt least five people have been killed and more than 40 others wounded in a bomb blast near the Turkish-Syrian border.The blast occurred near the Turkish town of Reyhanli, close to the Cilvegozu border gate.A Turkish government official has confirmed that the explosion originated from a vehicle, and was not a mortar round.”It was not an air strike. The explosion came from a car but we cannot yet confirm what caused it. There are definitely dead and wounded,” the official told Reuters.The bomb reportedly went off in a car carrying a Syrian plate.Numerous paramedics have been dispatched to the scene. Both Turks and Syrians have been reported injured.MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW. … Read More
Treatment For Traumatized Kids? Best Way To Help Children Heal Is Unknown
CHICAGO — Shootings and other traumatic events involving children are not rare events, but there’s a startling lack of scientific evidence on the best ways to help young survivors and witnesses heal, a government-funded analysis found.
School-based counseling treatments showed the most promise, but there’s no hard proof that anxiety drugs or other medication work and far more research is needed to provide solid answers, say the authors who reviewed 25 studies. Their report was sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Government to Grab Disability Funds
As the law stands once the DI is gone, literally on the day it runs out, DI benefits will be cut by 30% … Read More
High School Student Issues New Warning … to His Generation: Tyranny Has Come, Will You Take Action?
What if I told you that the violent acts of state aggression in the 20th century are, in fact, seeing the light of day in America? … Read More
Obama Acts Like Bush, Liberals Suffer “Cognitive Dissonance”
Writing in Sunday’s New York Times, Peter Baker reports
on the fallout among American liberals after the
news broke last week about the Obama administration’s secret
memo justifying the use of drones to kill American citizens.
Baker writes:
Conservatives complained that if Mr. Bush had done what Mr.
Obama has done, he would have been eviscerated by liberals and the
news media. But perhaps more than ever before in Mr. Obama’s
tenure, liberals voiced sustained grievance over the president’s
choices.
“That memo coming out, I think, was a wake-up call,” said
Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel of the American
Civil Liberties Union. “These last few days, it was like being back
in the Bush days.”
“It’s causing a lot of cognitive dissonance for a lot of
people,” he added. “It’s not the President Obama they thought they
knew.”
Isn’t it a little late for a wake-up call? Obama has already
waged a
war in Libya without congressional approval, which is a pretty
good signal that he takes an expansive view of executive power. And
then there’s the fact that Obama rammed several very high-profile
government appointments past the U.S. Senate by invoking his recess
appointment power when the Senate was not actually in recess—an
executive power play that Bush
never attempted. But I suppose it’s better late than never when
it comes to criticizing presidential overreach.Unfortunately, as Baker also notes, some of the president’s
supporters remain immune to the cognitive dissonance even now, as
evidenced by this extraordinary statement from former Michigan Gov.
Jennifer Granholm, who has been rumored to be on Obama’s list of
possible Supreme Court nominees:
For four years, Mr. Obama has benefited at least in part from
the reluctance of Mr. Bush’s most virulent critics to criticize a
Democratic president. Some liberals acknowledged in recent days
that they were willing to accept policies they once would have
deplored as long as they were in Mr. Obama’s hands, not Mr.
Bush’s.
“We trust the president,” former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of
Michigan said on Current TV. “And if this was Bush, I think that we
would all be more up in arms because we wouldn’t trust that he
would strike in a very targeted way and try to minimize damage
rather than contain collateral damage.”
… Read More
