Both VA and USAF have routinely ignored our Freedom of Information Act requests for unclassified materials, much of it dealing with our own health and the government's treatment of our exposure claims.
Unsuccessfully, we have sought materials as individual citizens, as a veterans association, and as journalists (per the blog, web site and C-123 Agent Orange book.)
Not addressed in the article below from today's Associated Press is the tremendous cost citizens must bear for legal expenses to assert our rights under the FOIA. Not addressed is the solution, which is to permit citizens to recover expenses and damages if they are forced to seek relief through litigation. Right now, the government can ignore or abuse FOIA requests with abandon (which AP's article suggests is the case) without consequences.
The C-123 Veterans Association has requests for information going back to 2012 which the USAF ignored. After ignoring, USAF said it had no materials. Then it said the materials would cost over $4,000 to provide. Then it stopped dealing with the request altogether, until we filed suit in the US District Court.
Even that did little to help – both the VA and the USAF are still only slowly releasing bits and pieces, each month telling our attorneys they need more time, with much of what they do release heavily redacted.
Can you just imagine how the IRS or DOJ would tolerate us as individual citizens ignoring their demands for our records? They have tools to compel our response...but we have none to compel any department's respect for our rights under the FOIA.
US sets new record for denying, censoring government filesBy TED BRIDIS
Mar. 18, 2015 3:27 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second consecutive year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn't find documents, and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.
It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.
Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000.
