Blacklisted for filing too many FOIA requests? Sounds crazy, absolutely absurd! It happened, however, to Nick Turse, a journalist for theintercept.com. Mid-April, the Department of Defense issued its annual "Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer Report to the Department of Justice." Included in said report was the following statement:
"DoD has continued to improve its administration of the FOIA and develop new initiatives to further streamline our FOIA processes and promote opens and transparency. . . Despite their best efforts to provide helpful details, great customer service and efficient responses [components] still overwhelmed by one or two requests who try to monopolize the system by filing a large number of requests or submitting disparate requests in groups which require a great deal of administrative time to adjudicate."
According to Turse, one of the persons aforementioned is him. The report concluded that his requests made up 308 cases for the fiscal year. "Who would do such a thing?" Turse remarks. "What type of monster files this many requests?" He goes on to insinuate the DoD never inquired his reasons for doing so.
Turse filed 53 of those requests with AFRICOM, inquiring about their "temporary facilities. . . what you and I might refer to as American bases on the African continent." Eric Elliot, a spokesperson for AFRICOM, emailed back to say:
"Let me see what I can give you in response to your request for a complete list of facilities. There will [be] some limits on the details we can provide because of the scope of the request."
Turse alleges he was given the run around time and time again. After filing the initial request in 2012, and pestering for "answers", he received some feedback in 2013. It wasn't to his satisfaction, and he was told to file again. "After three and a half years of waiting for this information, I received one page of unclassified but still partially redacted (not to mention relatively useless) material about the only official acknowledged U.S. base in Africa."
His relationship with AFRICOM somehow worsened. When attempting to write a piece on U.S. troops concerning criminality and bad behavior, Turse claims to have been pretty well ignored. "I called Benson, the AFRICOM media chief, 32 times on a single business day from a phone line that identified me by name. He never picked up." Benson obviously, mistakenly answered when Turse mischievously called with a different number immediately after. Because of this behavior, Turse was forced to put the piece together by issuing FOIA request after FOIA request.
"That didn't win me any friends at AFRICOM." claimed Turse.
Nick Turse is one of many journalists who go out of their way to get information from the government only to be given the run-around, or receive documents that are often times redacted and classified. It's good to have the FOIA, but unfortunately it doesn't totally insure transparency.
Original Testimony by Nick Turse here
A story about black mold may have led to the termination of a campus newspaper adviser in West Virginia. Fairmont State University's campus paper The Columns was headed by Michael Kelley in 2014, but that changed shortly after he and his staff made the university's nonchalant response to the campus's black mold a public controversy.
Kelley filed a grievance against FSU after the university claimed his termination had nothing to do with the story, but instead because his contract had ended. Tyler Wilson, the paper's managing editor, and editor in chief Jacob Buckland, published a series of stories which entailed student's concerns about the mold problem. "We didn't expect [the university] to [terminate Kelley] because that's insanely unintelligent on their end," said Wilson.
Said stories included the test results of swabbed areas that "looked disgusting", and the testimony of a student who alleged her hospitalization was "a result of mold exposure from living on campus." After the publications, one department head "became hostile," notes Buckland, and also allegedly threatened to withdraw funding. Kelley said the same individual would only allow the paper to continue if it "contained nothing controversial."
Kelley received an email shortly after the publications which entailed the end of his one-year appointment, which contradicted his belief that his appointment was three-times as long. However, "according to a contract signed by Kelley on October 21, 2014 confirming his hire as a temporary assistant professor of journalism, Kelley's position was a temporary, full-time, 9-month position beginning August 11, 2014 and ending May 17, 2015. Kelley apparently misunderstood the terms of his hire, which he thought would come in three, separate 9-month contracts. Such contracts he never received.
Donna Long, a member of the selection committee, stated her misunderstanding as well, saying "that the job posting specified a three-year appointment." The university has offered up more reasons that may have affected Kelley's termination: budget cuts, loss of students, program success, and so on. Because Kelley wasn't promised three years in his initial contract, the university is safe in implying that it is the cause of his termination and not the stories they may have desired to censor.
"Really, anything that has the truth in it has been attempted to be muzzled and stifled by senior-level administration on campus." - Tyler Wilson
Original Story by Trisha LeBoeuf here
"It is not legal to sell human body parts whether they're adult or fetal at any age." said David Daleiden during an interview with Bill O'Reilly.
Daleiden recently came under heavy scrutiny for his work in The Center for Medical Progress. During 2015, CMP released controversial videos that allegedly depicted persons who work for Planned Parenthood attempting to sale the body parts of aborted fetuses. The videos are from a series titled, "Human Capital." One undercover sting concerned Doctor Deborah Nucatola (Senior Director of Medical Services for Planned Parenthood.)
During his interview in July of 2015 on the O'Reilly Factor, Daleiden was asked about said sting:
O'Reilly: "What did you tell her about why you wanted to speak with her?"
Daleiden: "Our investigators from CMP were posing as representatives of a middle-man biotech company that was wanting to partner with Planned Parenthood clinics in order to purchase the body parts of the babies they abort, and in doing that, we were modeling ourselves after real life middle-man biotech companies, multiple ones that are partnered with Planned Parenthood clinics across the country."
O'Reilly goes on to ask if Nucatola actually said she (or Planned Parenthood) would sell the body parts, to which Daleiden gives an extensive denial, insisting that she detailed how the clinic she worked for in LA was indeed partnered with a biotech company and had been supplying aborted fetal parts to said company.
An article published by Huffington Post yesterday says, "Eleven agents [from the California Department of Justice] seized four computers and hundreds of hours of video footage from David Daleiden's apartment." Because of the controversial nature of the videos released in 2015, a "political uproar" has ensued. "Several Republican-controlled states as well as Republicans in the U.S. Congress [are trying] to halt funding for the women's health organization. They also renewed debate over abortion rights."
The undercover videos are currently under review, and Daleiden is under criminal investigation in Texas. In February, "he was indicted for tampering with a government record and violating prohibition on the purchase and sale of human body parts."
Charles LiMandri, a civil attorney in California, insisted the seizure came "out of nowhere." Until now, Daleiden had apparently been cooperative with authorities during civil investigations. Daleiden and the CMP believe Planned Parenthood are breaking the law. They have been working on the expose for three years and had plans to take their findings to law enforcement. The videos they posted, however, brought the controversy down on their heads a little premature to that plan.
"Under federal law, donated human fetal tissue may be used for research, but profiting from its sale is prohibited." -Huffington Post
To date, Planned Parenthood have denied the accusations by the CMP, and have labeled the investigation "politically motivated."
Huffington Post Article
