The office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests at U.S. Central Command has failed to respond to numerous queries by The Anniston Star seeking information on intelligence and security lapses at the base.
The officer handling the FOIA requests said he hopes to have them resolved by the end of the month.
The information was for a four-part series published from July 27-30 that reported the existence of the problems at the Tampa, Fla., headquarters and on the alleged retaliation against the group of whistleblowers who brought them to light.
These whistleblowers and other intelligence officers there now believe the failures may help explain why the United States has been unable to find and track weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The whistleblowers, Navy Reserve Capt. Chris Koury, of Weaver, Navy Cmdr. Rita Szymanski, and former Army Sgt. First Class Doraine Dorman, found in 1998 and 1999 that about half the key positions in satellite imagery and about two-thirds of the Army Reserve spots in intelligence had gone unfilled.
They also found that from 50-100 answering machines throughout the top-secret areas of the intelligence center served as remote-room monitors, allowing worldwide access with no more than a simple phone call.
But when the three reported their findings to the command leadership, they claim they were punished with removal or reassignment in an attempt by senior leaders to keep the deficiencies hidden.
The leaders involved with the officers’ removal include the former director of intelligence, Army Gen. Keith Alexander and two subordinates, former Air Force Col. Stanley Silverman and a division chief, John Ward. They have refused to comment on the officers’ allegations.
Bill Felber, executive editor of the Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury and chair of the Associate Press Managing Editors FOIA committee, said freedom of information laws serve a critical purpose in the modern, democratic society.
“The important point that I try to underscore is that FOI laws exist for he benefit of the general public,” Felber said. “When it’s doing its work well, the press is an extension of that and serves that purpose and keeps it at the forefront.”
Felber’s committee has compiled numerous case studies illustrating the relevance of FOI laws to the daily lives of ordinary Americans, which it plans to publish soon on the Internet, he said. Highlights include the use of FOI laws to examine the performance records of doctors, disciplinary records of police on the beat, arrest records of daycare center employees, and the performance of the state in overseeing parolees.
“All of those things have one thing in common,” he said. “They all have a direct pertinence to the way everyday individuals live their lives.”
The Star submitted 13 FOIA requests on the intelligence problems CentCom in October 2002. By law, the base’s FOIA office had 20 days to respond. For most, it didn’t meet the legal deadline.
Today, the requests are some of the oldest that remain unanswered at CentCom, according to FOIA officials there. The Star requested information on the following:
? CentCom investigations of or actions against the three whistleblowers who discovered and reported the intelligence and security problems.
? Freedom of Information Act requests by members of Alabama’s congressional delegation over CentCom’s handling of these whistleblowers.
? Any information on CentCom personnel who filed for whistleblower protection.
? CentCom investigations of or actions against the manager in charge of Army reserves on base, Army Maj. Janice Palmer.
? CentCom investigations of or actions against the base’s former director of intelligence, Army Col. Kirk Davidson.
? Money spent on the renovation and expansion of CentCom’s Joint Intelligence Center.
? E-mail to and from CentCom division chief John Ward, who helped supervise the Joint Intelligence Center improvements.
? Any command investigations of Ward.
? Any CentCom investigation into missing laptops on base.
? Any inquiries by the Department of Defense or Congress on the leak of alleged U.S. plans for war with Iraq.
? Any inquiries into any security breaches at CentCom.
? Information on the number of active duty personnel and reservists working at CentCom.
The Star received five responses so far, most of them denials.
Only one provided an answer, on the number of active-duty and Reserve personnel at CentCom. As of Feb. 3, that number was 2,200, according to the May 28 response. Twenty-nine of these were born in Alabama.
The manager of CentCom’s FOIA office, Master Sgt. Gregory McCullough, said the rest of the answers are nearly ready to be mailed. Most are more denials, he said.
One of The Star’s requests, however, for John Ward’s e-mail, has garnered two contradictory responses from CentCom, McCullough said.
In one, a CentCom administrator approves The Star’s request. However, McCullough said, to get that information, a CentCom employee would have to sift through 1,200 pages of e-mail a day for six years, for a fee a $300,000.
The second answer came from CentCom’s judge advocate general’s office. It said the e-mail is private property and cannot be released, McCullough said.
McCullough, who said he’s a newly installed reservist without much training, is the fourth FOIA manager The Star has dealt with on its requests.
He said he hopes to complete the requests by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, when the report on his office’s activity for the year is due the Department of Defense. The report tells Pentagon officials what FOIA requests, if any, are still pending, and why.
“By law, it has to say something’s been done,” McCullough said. “It can’t just say ‘open,’ and, when I look at the log, that’s what I see, ‘open.’ ”
McCullough is swimming in a backlog of unanswered requests, he said. He has received 85 over the last four months alone.
“It’s a mess,” he said.
Some, he said, are the frivolous queries of prisoners and the like; others are complicated. He has taken to pairing two new ones with one old for daily processing to even things out.
Dennis Bailey, an attorney for the Alabama Press Association, said long delays on FOIA requests are “very common.”
Most branches of federal government know that there is little recourse in expediting a request, except a potentially costly court battle, Bailey said.
For a FOIA lawsuit to be successful, a judge must find the defending government agency was “arbitrary and capricious” in withholding information, which is difficult to prove, he said.
“It means, ‘We don’t like the newspaper, we don’t like the press, we’re going to make it as hard as we can for you,’ ” he said.
“ ‘We dropped the ball, it fell through the cracks,’ is not going to cut it for arbitrary or capricious … if it’s true.”
Typically, a federal agency will stall on the release of information until the situation gets to the point of litigation, then release the desired responses, making the lawsuit and any legal fees moot, he said:
“If they say, ‘mea culpa,’ the court’s not going to award attorney’s fees.”
