FOIA/Open Records - You Should Try It

Working on part two of my Russiagate theory and a re-cap of all the cyber researchers and their company affiliations, and waiting on FOIA’s that I expect back by early next week. I am chomping at the bit to have my twitter account @UndeadFOIA reinstated. It’d be quite an interesting analytics project, but for the month of May I had something like 10 million impressions on my tweets and I could blast out information with high engagement. Having that destroyed and posting stuff here in long-form, it just doesn’t get the absorption and the weight of some of our documents just doesn’t fall as heavy. There is stuff that we KNOW, even if I do a poor job of writing it, that everyone in the country deserves to know. Truly a twilight zone moment. I saw people talking about Russiagate today on Twitter and I literally can’t tell them everything we know.

Tonight I got another lesson in the ongoing Open Records fiasco with Georgia Tech, and I’m furious.

Margot Cleveland and I have both blasted Georgia Tech with requests. It’s always been a frustration for me that new emails were popping up that were responsive to our previous requests. I would get documents she should’ve gotten, and vice versa.

Even after dozens of requests (about 40 from me alone to Georgia Tech), Open Records Hero @TheAndersPaul has shared some documents on requests he has submitted that are NEW. Documents that were responsive to both Margot and my requests. It’s like fire injected straight into my veins to find new documents that I should have already.

If anyone is motivated, I encourage you to begin your FOIA/Open Records journey. You can put in the same request as 10 people before you, and come up with new documents. There is something wrong here.

Anything you are curious about, ask for the documents. It doesn’t necessarily have to be for Russiagate. Most federal or state agencies are subject to FOIA/Open Records at some level.

If you’re curious about Russiagate, use some of the FOIA documents we have available. A trick I use is to ask Who, What, Where, Why and How for every section of every email I read. Who is involved, what are they discussing, where are more documents likely to be located related to that subject?

Maybe they are discussing something that seems notable. Why? What are their goals? Why are they asking for something they might be asking for, or why are they doing that?

Using those questions, I submit more FOIA’s or Open Records Requests to look for answers. Sometimes, I submit requests just because someone is casually referenced or CC’d on an email and I take a complete shot in the dark on it. Maybe they reference a government program, I’ll go and submit FOIA’s for that subject at that agency.

There are numerous examples for making FOIA requests out there, it’s really very simple. If you plan on doing more than 5, I would suggest creating a tracker. You think you’ll remember them, but trust me, you won’t.

It’s also super easy not to do FOIA’s. It’s easy to think that someone else is on top of it, or some well-financed group will take care of it. Trust me, there’s nobody but us.

I get tired of the comments from people usually unfamiliar with me or the other sleuths-

“Nothing will happen.”

“Oh FOIA? You won’t get anything, and if you do at all it’ll be completely redacted. It’s a waste of time.”

Those people aren’t putting in any work on this. They have no clue. They’ve never submitted a FOIA. They haven’t spent more than an hour “researching” anything.

We’ve shown that we can get documents. There are other sleuths fighting hard for Russiagate documents, both in and out of the courtroom. But we can’t account for every FOIA, we can’t fight for every document. I’ve done something like three hundred FOIA’s and 3 FOIA lawsuits, with a fourth lawsuit soon. We are making progress, but we need more.

Take a lesson from @TheAndersPaul and take nothing for granted. He obtained new documents tonight that are very important because he called bullshit on the work that everyone else had done.

If you’re really interested in this stuff, do that.