USCG HQ FOIA Office - Violating the Law Daily

The Coast Guard’s Illegally Administered Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Effort

The Freedom of Information Act is the United States federal freedom of information law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by the U.S. government upon request. The act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures, and includes nine exemptions that define categories of information not subject to disclosure. The act was intended to make U.S. government agencies' functions more transparent so that the American public could more easily identify problems in government functioning and put pressure on Congress, agency officials, and the president to address them.

The FOIA is commonly known for being invoked by news organizations for reporting purposes, though such uses make up less than 10% of all requests—which are more frequently made by businesses, law firms, and individuals, the latter of which are largely ignored by the Coast Guard. Restated, if you aren’t represented by a lawyer, you are unlikely to receive a response within any reasonable timeline… if at all.

Although the Coast Guard refused to release statistics on the timeliness of their FOIA responses, responses to our staff’s many FOIA Requests and / or Appeals, on average, required over a year to receive. One request took over two years to satisfy. Keep in mind, that FOIA law requires a reply within 20 to 30 working days!

Denyiny Access to U.S. Citizens

It has often been observed that the central purpose of the FOIA is to "open … up the workings of government to public scrutiny." One of the premises of that objective is the belief that "an informed electorate is vital to the proper operation of a democracy." A more specific goal implicit in the foregoing principles is to give citizens access to the information on the basis of which government agencies make their decisions, thereby equipping the populace to evaluate and criticize those decisions.

McGehee v. CIA, 697 F.2d 1095 (D.C. Cir. 1983).

What is Weaponized Incompetence?

In this usage, “Weaponized incompetence” defines an FOIA office whose personnel don’t know, don’t acknowledge, or knowingly don’t follow the law as written. By ignoring the statutes of the FOIA in accordance with verbal guidance from Coast Guard flag officers and JAG attorneys, petty bureaucrats within the USCG HQ FOIA Office knowingly break the law literally mutiple times a day. Unqualified, unethical and understaffed, they purposely delay or withhold information from the general public and the national press in order to cover-up the latest Coast Guard debacle. They lie to reinforce the lies Coast Guard leadership tells Congress, DHS, the Press and the public.

Rather than comply with the precepts of the FOIA, the Coast Guard has, from the law’s inception, fought to impede the public’s right to transparency. As noted many times in this site, the Coast Guard routinely chooses deceit over integrity. The question is why? What exactly are they hiding? Who are they protecting?