The FBI and CIA: What’s a FOIA?

Of all federal agencies, the FBI and CIA are least likely to respond to FOIA requests. In fact, Judicial Watch has filed hundreds of FOIA requests with these agencies but few have been answered. One FOIA request Judicial Watch filed with the FBI about U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy resulted in the release of 900 pages, 100 of which revealed Kennedy’s trips to Central and South America and connection to former Soviet Secretary General Yuri Andropov. However, these pages were heavily redacted and were released over a period of time, along with the rest of the pages.  Read more about that here.

Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations, offered commentary to Watchdog.org about the FBI and CIA’s responses to FOIA requests:

“The FOIA process is glacial and incredibly slow to begin with,” said Chris Farrell, director of investigations for the open-records advocacy group Judicial Watch. “There is a very heavy-handed use of the B-1 (classified) exemption where they claim something is classified. They use it in an overly broad way.”