Even More FOIA Follies
C.J. Ciaramella
The Washington Free Beacon
10/3/2012
Environmental Protection Agency senior executives used secret email addresses to skirt freedom of information laws, a lawsuit by a free-market think tank alleges.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit against the EPA last week claiming senior executives at the agency used secret email accounts to conduct public business, shielding their communications from the Freedom of Information Act.
The suit cites an internal EPA memo, first revealed in a 2008 Government Accountability Office, which describes secondary email accounts known only to a “few EPA staff members, usually only high-level senior staff.”
CEI is asking the court to compel production of three FOIA requests to the EPA regarding these secondary email addresses…
…The lawsuit was filed last week by CEI counsel for special projects Hans Bader, CEI senior fellow Chris Horner, and general counsel Sam Kazman.
Horner released The Liberal War on Transparency, a book describing the use of private email addresses by administration officials.
The Obama administration has often used such methods to keep information out of the public record.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report in July detailing how White House officials met off-site with lobbyists and used private email addresses to avoid triggering disclosure laws…
The complete article is at The Washington Free Beacon.
