The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is based on an important principle: any document paid for by the public belongs to the public. Whenever a government official writes or records something in the course of their taxpayer-funded duties, private citizens have the right to request a copy, and some exemptions For privacy and security.
Of course, politicians hate this responsibility. They are often caught withholding official correspondence from Freedom of Information Act requesters. Hillary Clinton tried to hide State Department emails on private server major scandal During the 2016 election. Last week, the Freedom of Information Act became part of the controversy surrounding: coronavirus origins.
exist e-mail Last week, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found that government scientist David Molens apparently conspired with a Freedom of Information Act official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on how to hide his emails. Morens, a former NIH official and adviser to White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci, wrote in February 2021, “I learned from our foia ladies how to do it when I was foia Make the email disappear after the notification but before the search starts.
In other places e-mail,” he referred to the source of the advice as “an old friend, Margo Moore, who was the head of our FOIA office but also hated the FOIA.”
Intentionally destroying or deleting government records is Very illegal, and there is no magic grace period when processing FOIA requests. During Thursday’s hearing, Morens told a House subcommittee that he had “no idea that anything I deleted, such as emails, was a federal record” because his workplace FOIA training “was conducted in a manner consistent with Federal records are defined in very different ways than you can imagine” and none of them define it as an email. “
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, Tell nation It is “committed to complying with the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act and complying with federal records management requirements. In accordance with HHS policy, all persons conducting business for or on behalf of HHS are prohibited from using personal email accounts to conduct HHS business.”
To be fair, Morens seems to have really gone from bad to worse, even taking FOIA advice from his colleagues. According to another person November 2021 EmailMorens was under the impression that some “Ant Hack” (anti-hacker?) software installed by his IT staff would make his Gmail account “immune from the Freedom of Information Act and not be available on all my devices.” hacked on my computer, including government computers and phones, as well as my devices.” Personal computer and iPad. “
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) also claimed there was evidence that NIH officials Intentionally misspelled words Dodge Freedom of Information Act requests. When members of the public request all documents on a subject, FOIA officers often ask for specific keywords to search for, so misspellings of important names can exclude a piece of information from search results.
This isn’t the first time a House subcommittee has found Morens trying to circumvent transparency laws. “I always try to communicate via gmail because my NIH email is always subject to FOIA restrictions,” he wrote in the email e-mail The subcommittee revealed last year. “Don’t worry, just send it to one of my addresses and I’ll remove anything I don’t want to see in The New York Times.”
NIH claims to have investigated Morens, but Weinstrup Ask for more inquiries On Tuesday, he said newly disclosed emails showed that “the NIH investigation omitted important information” and even that “the NIH FOIA office may have orchestrated a cover-up.”
The investigation into Morens’ FOIA practices stems from a wider inquiry into whether the coronavirus pandemic stemmed from laboratory experiments.
In 2021, scientists are outraged by reports intercept and other newspapers about coronavirus discussed How they respond to reports of lab leaks. Morens wrote in an email that the NIH seemed interested in refuting the lab leak theory, “but Tony [Fauci] Didn’t want his fingerprints on the origin story.
Ironically, Morens’ tactics made the story worse for scientists. The emails show that he and his colleagues sincerely believe the lab leak theory is misinformation and that science shows the coronavirus has a natural origin. But trying to hide files makes them look like they have something to hide. This is a classic case streisand effect.
Let this story serve as a lesson to government officials everywhere. There are no weird tricks to evade the Freedom of Information Act. What officials write on the job is the people’s business, whether recorded on paper or on an email server. While there are tactics to slow down reporters, anything scandalous enough will leak and spread like a contagion.
