Today’s Must ReadWe’ve noted before this administration’s extraordinary talent for secrecy. A growing number of agency reports, fact sheets, databases, and records have been re-classified, discontinued, or simply withheld.
And it seems that sometimes the administration surprises even itself. On the White House website, a trip to the Freedom of Information Act page about the Executive Office of the President gives you a list of the agencies subject to FOIA:
Right there, you can see that the Office of Administration is listed as an agency subject to FOIA. But apparently that’s because the administration never gave it much thought.
In a motion filed yesterday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Office of Administration is not subject to FOIA. Their reasoning: the office is not an “agency,” by the definition of FOIA.
The motion was triggered by a suit from the D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking documents relating to the disappearance of at least 5 million missing White House emails between 2003 and 2005. The White House has suggested that the problem stemmed from a move from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook.
But the Office of Administration’s non-agency status hasn’t stopped the office from processing plenty of FOIA requests up until now — as many as 65 last year alone, the AP reports.
The Department lawyers admit as much in their motion, but say that doesn’t matter. “To be sure,” they write, “OA currently has regulations implementing FOIA and has not taken the position in prior litigation that it is not subject to FOIA.” But every day is a new (secret) day in the Bush White House.