Read the full story: National Review

At the Treasury Department, the memo came down from the deputy executive secretary, Wally Adeyemo, in December of 2009. Going forward, the memo stated, “sensitive information” requested under the Freedom of Information Act was to be reviewed not only by career FOIA officials but also by a committee of political appointees, including Adeyemo and representatives from the public-affairs, legislative-affairs, and general counsel’s office, before release. What followed was an unusual review of Treasury FOIA requests by high-ranking political officials. And it didn’t just happen at Treasury, but at the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security, too. Current and former FOIA attorneys at these agencies say documents requested by the media have come in for special scrutiny, called “sensitive review,” often holding up release for weeks or months. At times, these officials say, political officials delayed the production of documents for political convenience. The policy runs counter not just to the spirit and the letter of the Obama administration’s pledge to unprecedented transparency, but also to the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act itself….

The Treasury Department is not alone in its use of the sensitive-review process. Internal documents suggest that the IRS (part of Treasury, but with its own policies), the Department of Homeland Security, and a number of other agencies have, to varying degrees, implemented similar procedures. At the IRS, for instance, when the legal watchdog group Cause of Action sued in 2012 to secure the release of documents under FOIA, it set off a spate of e-mails within the agency about whether the request had been subject to sensitive review. On October 12, John Davis, the agency’s chief of disclosure, wrote to Valerie Barta, a tax-law specialist, of Cause of Action’s original FOIA request: “This case we closed out in May of this year is coming back to haunt us. Gary wants to know why this was not on a sensitive case report. Can you pull this case and if you can tell why Susan didn’t put this on a sensitive case report?”

Read the full story: Washington Examiner

Internal State Department documents from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state have slowly made their way to the public through the Freedom of Information Act as Congress fights to reform what many see as a broken transparency law.  A high-profile lawsuit between Vice News and the State Department over the agency’s failure to respond adequately to a FOIA request prompted the court ruling last week that will force the agency to release batches of Clinton’s private emails every 30 days….

Daniel Epstein, executive director of nonpartisan watchdog Cause of Action, said the Benghazi Committee has likely obtained scores of documents it has decided not to release to the public.  “They don’t want the media to adjudicate these issues,” Epstein said. “You may leak certain documents at opportune times because getting the media to talk about an issue is helpful to put pressure on a target,” Epstein said. “But you don’t want your target to know all the information you may be aware of.”  Epstein said FOIA requesters often have “different incentives” than congressional investigators. He said the barrage of FOIA lawsuits against the State Department often fail to produce documents “when you have an agency whose incentive is to obfuscate the truth.”

Read the full story: Washington Examiner

The Washington Examiner’s editors and reporters have identified the intellectuals, policymakers, think tank leaders, campaign operatives, candidates, pols, pundits, wonks and others who are pushing our thinking and testing the limits of political possibility.

 

Some names on this list are already familiar to many; others will be virtual unknowns. This is as it should be. We set out to find people who are not yet fully in plain view above the horizon, which is why you won’t find party leaders or presidential hopefuls on this list. Instead, we sought out talented iconoclasts whose ideas on politics and policy are likely to be heard and should be listened to — but who may not earn the attention of the national media on a regular basis…

 

Dan Epstein’s organization, Cause of Action, is a leader in the world of government transparency and accountability. It advocates for FOIA reform laws, files lawsuits and conducts its own research and investigations. Called the “most active nonprofit you’ve never heard of,” Cause of Action has investigated everything from Hillary Clinton’s violations of the Federal Records Act, to possible fraud in a visa-for-cash program administered by the DHS, to overbilling by the Chicago Transit Authority. Epstein is no newcomer to the accountability game: Before his work at Cause of Action, he served on the Counsel for Oversight and Investigations at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Expect Epstein and Cause of Action to stay in the headlines as they work to hold the powerful accountable.

Read the full story: The Hill 

The federal agency charged decades ago with policing excessive government secrecy has never taken a single action against a federal official.

 

Transparency advocates fear the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) inability to carry out a prosecution points to problems in the underlying law and represents a lost opportunity by Congress to hold federal officials accountable for cover-ups.

 

“There is a risk that there is a lot of arbitrary and capricious withholding, and DOJ [the Department of Justice] is just not doing its job in making sure these individuals are held to account,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of the right-leaning Cause of Action.

 

“It appears that process isn’t happening, which provides incentives to employees to withhold documents.”

Read the full report: CQ Researcher 

Dan Epstein, executive director of the civic watchdog group Cause of Action, says Obama has “politicized the bureaucracy” by dictating agency actions. In August 2014, the group sued the Obama administration, alleging that white House attorneys interfere with the release of public documents in violation of the freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The practice is based on an April 15, 2009, white House memo directing general counsels at all executive agencies and departments to consult with white House counsel before complying with FOIA requests.

 

Epstein says the memo “allowed the white House to assert more control over the ways agencies control docu- ments that let the public know what the government is up to. It has chilled democracy, and done so in ways that have gone unchecked by Congress and the courts.” As a result, he says, agencies “are following laws dictated by the president rather than laws dictated by the people.”