obama - The Black Vault

Fiber Optic Internet Cable from Dania Bay, Florida to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

John Greenewald — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 15:47:09 +0000

Background

In October of 2016, I read the following article written by Muira McCammon, which was published on SLATE:

Generally, when we hear about undersea fiber-optic cables, it’s because some sharks are trying to shut down the Internet with their teeth. But there’s more to them than that. Right now, there is a kind of magic at work beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Xtera Communications Inc. is in the midst of building an undersea fiber-optic cable from Dania Beach, Florida, to Guantánamo Bay. The $35 million project, which the Defense Department awarded to the Texas-based firm in May 2014, hasn’t been much publicized, for obvious strategic reasons. Not many people are talking about the cable—certainly not President Obama or Cuban President Raúl Castro.

But the cable is critically important—not least because of the effects it could have on the ever-evolving diplomatic talks between Cuba and the United States. As more and more people urge the U.S. government to shut down the Naval Station at Guantánamo, it’s important to remember that Gitmo is no longer just a surface structure. This subterranean submarine cable, predicted to be 950 miles in length, represents a substantial investment in the future of the base. And the real question: Who will benefit from it?

The world first got wind of it in July 2012, when Navy Capt. Kirk R. Hibbert revealed in an interview with Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald that U.S. officials had sent a diplomatic note to Havana explaining the fiber-optic project and that he’d received no opposition from his Cuban military counterparts. * Click on the above link for the rest of the article.

There are many questions that arise from the approval of such a project, let alone the existence of the cable.

I originally requested the documents from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which informed me that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) would be the controlling agency. So I refiled the request to them, and asked for the following:

I respectfully request a copy of records, electronic or otherwise, of the contract between DISA, and Xtera Communications Inc., to build an undersea internet fiber-optic cable, that stretches from Dania Beach, Florida to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

I please ask that you not only include the contract, but please also include any and all reports, designs or summaries on what the cable will be used for and what it’s purpose will be. This would include, but not be limited to, letters, memos, reports, etc.

Much of my request was denied. By closing letter dated February 8, 2017, they stated in part:

With regard to your request for a copies of the reports, designs and additional documents requested FOIA Exemption 3 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3), protects matters that a statute specifically exempts from disclosure. Contract source selection documentation is protected by 41 U.S.C § 2102(a)(1) and DoD contractor proposals is protected by 10 USC § 2305(g). Additionally, FOIA Exemption 5 (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), protects “internal advice, recommendations, and subjective evaluations, as contrasted with factual matters, that are reflected in deliberative records pertaining to the decision-making process of an Agency, whether within or among Agencies (as defined in 5 U.S.C. 552(e) (reference (a)), or within or among DoD Components.” Therefore, the reports, designs and additional documents are denied.

For your information, redactions were applied to pricing under FOIA Exemption 4 (5 U.S.C. § 552 (b) (4)). Exemption 4 protects trade secrets or commercial or financial information received from outside of the Government, the disclosure of which would likely cause substantial harm to the competitive position of the source providing the information or impairment to a Government interest.

Redactions have also been made to phone numbers, email addresses, and signatures pursuant to FOIA Exemption 6 (5 U.S.C. §552 (b)(6). Exemption 6 protects personnel information.

Despite much of the request being denied, I was able to get the original “Solicitation Offer and Award” contract issued to XTerra Communications, which I have archived below.

Declassified Documents

Solicitation Offer and Award [91 Pages, 9.3MB]

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The post Fiber Optic Internet Cable from Dania Bay, Florida to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba first appeared on The Black Vault.

Did the Obama Administration Lobby to Kill FOIA/Transparency Reform?

John Greenewald — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 21:41:31 +0000

Background

The following documents were obtained through a FOIA lawsuit by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Below the documents, you will also find a copy of the original, and well documented, press release article, as published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation on March 18, 2016.

Documents Released

Justice Department’s opposition to FOIA reform [144 Pages, 12MB]

Additional Information

This work below is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

New documents show the Obama admin aggressively lobbied to kill transparency reform in Congress

March 8, 2016

By Trevor Timm

New documents obtained through Freedom of the Press Foundation’s lawsuit against the Justice Department reveal that the Obama administration – the self described “most transparent administration ever” – aggressively lobbied behind the scenes in 2014 to kill modest Freedom of Information Act reform that had virtually unanimous support in Congress.

Three months ago, we sued the Justice Department (DOJ) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for communications between the DOJ and Congress, since there were vague reports that the DOJ may have opposed the bill – despite much of it being based word-for-word based on the Justice Department’s own policies.

Today, we are publishing a detailed memo authored by the Justice Department that strongly objected to almost every aspect of FOIA reform put forth by the House of Representatives at the time.

The bill in question – known as the FOIA Act – was unanimously passed by the House in early 2014. The Senate passed a similar bill – known as the FOIA Improvement Act – in December of 2014, but a final vote in the House to merge the two bills was held up at the last minute by then-Speaker of the House John Boehner and the session of Congress ended before it could become law. It was unclear at the time why the bill did not come up for a final vote, but the Washington Post later reported that a few federal agencies—including the Justice Department—had “warned” lawmakers about some provisions in the bill.

But these new documents show it went well beyond that: the Justice Department vehemently objected to both House and Senate members on nearly all aspects of the bill from the very start, and made clear: “The Administration strongly opposes passage of [the FOIA Act].”Notably, the Justice Department indicates that this policy memo (published in full below) is not just the agency’s individual opinion, but that it is speaking for the entire Obama administration.

The Obama administration’s specious objections to FOIA reform were manifold. They were against codifying the Obama administration’s “presumption of openness” policy that Obama declared upon his first month in office, they were against Congress mandating that the federal government create a unified online portal to process FOIA requests, they were against mandating discipline for FOIA redactors who break any of rules or regulations for processing FOIA requests, and they were against providing more reporting and oversight to Congress to make sure FOIA was being complied with.

The administration tried to couch some of its opposition in concern that the bill would “cause delays” in the FOIA process, despite the fact that many of the provisions were written to speed up the process, modernize the system with an online portal, and encourage proactive disclosure by making more information available to the public without even having to file a request. Concerning other provisions, the DOJ claimed the administration is not opposed in principle, but its is against seeing them codified into law — which allows the Executive Branch to delay implementation indefinitely and gives the next administration carte blanche power to rescind any good policies the Obama administration did put in place.

Most importantly, the administration was vehemently opposed to the “foreseeable harm” provision, also known as the “presumption of openness” standard. During President Obama’s first few weeks in office, Attorney General Holder made clear that the Justice Department would defend an agency’s decision to withhold information from the public “only if (1) the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions [in the FOIA], or (2) disclosure is prohibited by law.” The FOIA Act would have simply made this policy the law:

An agency may not withhold information under this subsection unless such agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would cause specific identifiable harm to an interest protected by an exemption [in the FOIA], or if disclosure is prohibited by law.

Doesn’t sound controversial at all, right? While, the DOJ noted it was “seemingly analogous to the Attorney General’s ‘foreseeable harm’ standard contained in his 2009 FOIA Guidelines,” it referred to this language as “particularly pernicious.” They claimed a slight word change from the DOJ’s own policy would dramatically expand current policy; yet critically, they stated that they would be against it even if the language was exactly the same as their own stated policy. From the memo:

To be clear, we do not believe that this is fixable by amending the language, because any codification of a foreseeable-harm standard would undermine proper FOIA administration by requiring judges to determine on a document-by-document, subjective basis whether withholding is proper.

Imagine that: giving judges the power to be able to determine whether the government was lying!

While the Freedom of Information Act remains a valuable tool (this lawsuit can attest to that), any reporter who has filed a FOIA request can corroborate the fact that the law is badly broken. Multiple investigations have shown that the Obama administration has been the most secretive ever when it comes to FOIA. Requests can often take years to be fulfilled if at all, and the only way to get results is to sue, like we were forced to. (We did not receive any documents for over a year from our first requests, and only received these documents after filing a lawsuit).

This summer is the 50th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, and Congress is yet again debating a FOIA reform bill, this time with even more holes in it than last time. We hope that Congress will amend the proposed reform in the strongest possible way and send it to the president’s desk with the same message they did fifty years ago when the Johnson administration opposed it, yet was forced to sign it anyways: transparency is vital to democracy.

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Special thanks to our amazing pro-bono legal counsel working on this case,Marcia Hofmann and D. Victoria Baranetsky, who did all the hard work to make this lawsuit possible.

The post Did the Obama Administration Lobby to Kill FOIA/Transparency Reform? first appeared on The Black Vault.

Senator Barack Obama (Pre-Presidency)

John Greenewald — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 18:55:17 +0000

Barack Hussein Obama II, born August 4, 1961, is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

SF 278 Form for then Senatory Barack Obama, 2006-2008 Filings [25 Pages, 13.10mb]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/financial/ObamaFinancial2006-2008.pdf

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