Last month, I filed a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) to the Office of Administration in Washington DC, asking for copies of any records “relating to the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission, formerly known as Triana, from the period January 1, 2000 to the present.” (documents attached to the end of this post).
I then received this strange response from Whitehouse Deputy General Counsel F. Andrew Turley, stating:
Strange.
I sent my letter to the Freedom of Information Act Officer for the Office of the Administration.
The Executive Office of the President (EOP) entities subject to the FOIA are:
- Council on Environmental Quality
- Office of Administration
- Office of Management and Budget
- Office of National Drug Control Policy
- Office of Science and Technology Policy
- United States Trade Representative
Then I received a call back from the Deputy General Counsel, saying that while this is confusing, the Office of the Administration is no longer subject to FOIA due to a “recent legal determination.”
They still have a FOIA officer on staff, doing God knows what.
Part 1: the background
Part 2: How politics conspired to kill DSCOVR
Part 3: Digging for answers from NASA
Part 4: FOIA, NASA, DSCOVR – my acronym hell
DeSmogBlog is a registered non-profit, and we count on reader’s donations to help us do what we do. So donate today, $10, $25, heck even $5,000 and help us keep hosting great US science writers like Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and Stormworld and Mitchell Anderson.
