Rep. Henry Waxman's oversight committee sent out letters today to the Department of Defense, the Department of State and to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince asking for various sets of documents regarding contracts going back to 2003.
Among other issues, the seven-page letter to Erik Prince raises questions about all the no-bid contracts Blackwater has been given and asks the company to hand in documents detailing the hourly billing information that Blackwater charges the State department.
In the letter to DoD the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform touched upon an earlier letter from Mar. 31 ...
Continue readingCongressional Oversight of Blackwater Hampered by Lack of Documents
Nine months before Blackwater
One member who requested information to bring some oversight and accountability to the Blackwater found that neither the State Department nor the Defense Department complied with ...
Continue readingThe Favor Factory: Earmarks and Campaign Cash Connections
Getting information during a “war-time situation”
I've been calling various Army public affairs officials to get some information about Blackhawk helicopters and was passed from one official to another. I finally reached the right department and I was asked to send an e-mail listing my questions.
This morning I received a reply from the Army saying that my request had been forwarded to the FOIA office. My reaction: you don't need a FOIA request to talk to or e-mail another person."
So I called them back and talked to another person in the same office who said since we were not a print publication ...
Continue readingDepartment of Energy correspondence logs
This article in the Washington Post yesterday on the earmarking process cites letters sent to the Department of Energy written by members of Congress including Rep. Rahm Emanuel in support of projects at the Children's
We recently received the correspondence logs from DOE and there were at least 15 similar letters. Although none of these seem to have actually secured the funding, we have found that writing in support of a specific project is not unique to just one lawmaker or only to the DOE either. For instance EPA ...
Continue readingTed Stevens’ Financial Disclosures
After filing for extensions, Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) personal financial disclosure forms for 2007 were available with the Senate Office of Public Records this week. Scanned PDF's are here. On the same day, July 17, there were also a few amendments that were filed that are here. (Most of them are about rifles presented to the Senator by the Kenai River Sporting Association.)
Continue readingOffice of Administration not subject to FOIA
According to this AP article, the Justice Department is maintaining that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
The argument for this seems to be that the OA is not an agency" as defined by FOIA. But in the past year, the Office of Administration has processed 65 FOIA requests, as AP reports. The OA also replied to one of our FOIA's this year asking for correspondence logs, although a letter sent to us stated that OA conducted a search and found no OA records responsive to your request."
This Justice ...
Continue readingLetters from Defense
We just received few of the letters we had requested from the Department of Defense from the January batch of correspondences. We received only a partial response to the FOIA where we had selected specific letters from the correspondence logs.
The other letters will come in if we manage to convince DoD that we are entitled to a fee waiver or shell out the money.
The letters we have are here. Most of them are about congressional travel requests that were made to the DOD. More interesting ones, including ones about whistleblower complaints and those related to contracts are being ...
Continue readingOut of Compliance: Nonprofit with ties to Stevens’ PAC, Tardy on Paperwork and Fees to the State of Alaska
An Alaskan nonprofit foundation that raises money to make the records and mementos of Sen. [Ted] Stevens' career in public service" has failed to file registration documents or pay fees since 2004, according to the Alaska Department of Law. In response to a FOIA request to the department for all documents filed by the Ted Stevens Foundation (recently renamed the North to the Future Foundation), we received papers filed in 2003 and were told by department officials that none had been filed since then.
Any organization that is raising funds in the state of
Does the EPA collect SF-LLLs?
Browsing through the 2008 Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill on the Taxpayers for Common Sense site, I noticed that one of the largest amounts ($11 million) was earmarked to the National Rural Water Association a non-profit organization that provides training and technical assistance and gives out sub-grants to water providers in rural areas. They receive grants from the USDA and the EPA.
Earlier in our search of the elusive SF-LLL forms, I had sent out a FOIA request to the Environmental Protection Agency asking for:
59063
