A blog dedicated to public records requests and Monterey County news.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Stonewalled by the Defense Department on Guardian block

I am being stonewalled by the U.S. Department of Defense.

This summer I wrote a story about The Guardian being blocked on Army bases because of the leaks by Edward Snowden.

As a follow up, I did a public records request to see all the websites the Army was "filtering" on its bases.

got the request back, which showed the Army had only blocked one website all year - a link to a 2010 diplomatic cable from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on The Guardian's website.

This is weird because:


  • The diplomatic cable had been on the website for three years.
  • The Army told me in June it had restricted access to The Guardian because of the National Security Agency leaks. 
  • The same cable is on the New York Times website and not blocked there. 

  • To get to the bottom of this I contacted the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, because it had answered my questions for the story in June. 

    This time, the agency's spokesman Gordan Van Vleet said I needed to contact U.S. Army Cyber Command (NETCOM is a subordinate to Army Cyber Command). So, I made some calls and was told to contact Jennifer Downing, a spokeswoman for the command. 

    On Nov.22, I emailed Downing (at the time I couldn't find a phone number) about some questions about my public records request. She emailed back on Nov.25 that "OSD Cyber PAO will be replying to your questions below. I am passing your information to him."

    She did not bother to tell me who it was or what "OSD" meant but - after two emails - she coughed up a name and phone number. The man who would answer my questions was Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickard. 

    I called Pickard on Tuesday and got him on the phone right away. I was feeling good about it because Pickard said that he had been consulted about my Freedom of Information Act request earlier in the summer. 

    Unfortunately, he had to get going to a previous engagement and would call back in an hour and a half. I normally just start asking questions but, for some reason, I just let him go. 

    He never called.

    So I called later that day, again on Wednesday and now Monday. Nothing. 

    I am not giving up. I still have plenty of folks to keep bothering and I've only become more determined. Yet I thought it was worth noting on my blog that there seems to be a coordinated effort not to talk about this.  

    The Army blocking an individual website on its bases made international news, I think with good reason. The Army did admit it and explained why (classified information on those websites, etc.) but just what the heck is so bad about this public records request that no one wants to give any answers?

    Tuesday, November 12, 2013

    I won a public records court case (sort of)


    Justice prevails! Just slightly!

    I'm happy to report the New Jersey public records enforcement arm, the Government Records Council, agreed with me, somewhat, in a complaint I had made against Warren County Community College.  

    A little more than a year ago, I was a scrappy Express-Times reporter covering northwest New Jersey. I mostly reported on county government but I was lucky enough to get our local community college as part of my beat. To say the least, I got some great stories out that place. 

    For reasons I will not discuss here out of libel concerns, there was a ton of suspicion behind the scenes -- in the newsroom and in the community -- about a building the school bought for a satellite campus in Phillipsburg

    After the sale was complete I made a public records request for closed-session meeting minutes of the school's board. Unfortunately, whenever the 445 Marshall Street building came up the rest of the sentence was blacked out. The college claimed it was "attorney-client privilage" that kept me from seeing what was written. 

    So, I filed a complaint.

    I contended that the sale had already taken place so the college had no reason to block out discussions it had about its purchase. To bolster my point, I also threw in a bunch of complaints about how the college had clearly avoided protocol when it handled my request. 

    The GRC decided this summer the college's response to my request was "legally insufficient" because the college's custodian, Dennis Florentine, failed to respond in writing to all the items in my request. Also, it said the college had limited my access to information by demanding I fill out its official request form. 

    When the council reviewed the unredacted records I asked for, they found it was not direct communication between a lawyer and a client. But, it did contain a "summary" of advice from a lawyer so they were still allowed to redact it because it still fell under the privilege clause. 

    The council said Florentine did not have a "positive element of conscious wrongdoing or was intentional and deliberate." Translation: His response violated the law a little bit but he didn't mean to do it. 

    You can read the council's entire report below. 

    That's it for now. I promise to get back to local stuff later in the week, including a request I got back from the city of Monterey (Hint: It has to do with taxes). 

    Photo courtesy of Warren County Community College

    Monday, September 16, 2013

    Finally! Valorie Pollard's photo


    As you may remember me lamenting last month, we were never able to find a photo of 2nd Lt. Valorie Pollard.

    Pollard was a pilot in the Army Air Force in World War II and he remained missing until the Defense Department finally identified his remains this year.

    I wrote about it on this blog after my request for records on him failed because the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis lost them in a horrific fire in 1973.

    Good news though! I was just talking to his daughter, Sandra Pollard, on the phone and she sent this image along. Sure, it is not the best, but it is still pretty cool.

    I had called Sandra Pollard because Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered all Sacramento flags at half-staff in honor of Pollard today.

    Wednesday, September 11, 2013

    Fort Ord Gambling: Part One

    In early June, I was doing a lot of stories that included a discussion of gambling on the county's former Army base and one question kept bothering me.

    Officials at the Fort Ord Reuse Authority told me a horse race track would be OK with its current anti-gambling policy because it was considered "a sport."

    I began to wonder: "Are they just saying that? Or is there some basis for it?"

    So I made a California Public Records Act request for, basically, any time FORA discussed gambling in its history. I got so many documents back I needed to split this one up into several posts.

    Included here are my response letter, documents related to a 1995 to 1996 saga between Monterey and the authority over gambling and a letter from then-Mayor Dan Albert about the whole ordeal.

    In the second document make sure to check out pages 14 to 15 which describes the laws (at that time) on horse racing. It actually explains how a local district could stop a horse track (which I would think something Measure M folks have probably already explored).

    I know there is a lot of interest in this subject, so I hope someone finds use of this material. More coming next week ...




    Fort Ord gambling 3 -
    Fort Ord gambling 2 -
    Fort Ord gambling 1 -

    Sunday, September 8, 2013

    Fort Ord Gambling: Part Two

    Today, we will continue our search for answers in the Fort Ord Reuse Authority gambling saga.

    As described in my previous post, I have too many documents on this one for a single post.

    First, I start with a brief letter from the Fort Ord Reuse Authority to the Monterey city manager in 1996. It is just to let him know FORA's board voted to not have casinos or card rooms.

    The next two deal with the fear the local Native American tribe would build a casino on the former Army base. I did an update on this one in May which, hopefully, set the record straight on the Esselen Nation.

    The deal is it would be basically impossible for the Esselens to get the land, get tribal status to do what they want on whatever land they may get and, most importantly, the tribe itself said it does not want a casino.



    Fort Ord gambling 6 -
    Fort Ord gambling 5 -
    Fort Ord gambling 4 -

    Friday, August 30, 2013

    The Lost Tale of 2nd Lt. Valorie Pollard

    Sometimes the best stories can be the hardest to do.

    In early August, I became obsessed with the found remains of 2nd Lt. Valorie Pollard. It turned out the Defense Department's Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office had finally identified this man after he went missing in World War II nearly 70 years ago.

    Pollard was a complete mystery and it just made me work that much harder. I called every Pollard in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, searched tons of online military databases, read the obituaries of everyone with his last name in our paper archive and called just about every government agency I could think of.

    Besides some very basic information, it was a dead end.

    In my desperation, I filed a request with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.

    In the meantime, I tracked down Pollard's daughter and a neighbor. The result was one of the top 20 stories I've ever done. Here's the link.

    A few weeks later I got my request back from the center in St. Louis. It turned out Pollard's file was burned in the now-infamous fire that torched 16 to 18 million records in 1973.

    I do not plan to put many rejections for information on this blog, but I thought this one was worth a post because it is so heartbreaking. This man gave his life for the United States and when we finally find his remains, it is a lost cause because he did not have much family left.

    For Pete's sake, we could never even find a photo of the guy!

    Still, I think there is some good news here. 1) At least we found his daughter and were able to put together an article that can be a reference for future generations and 2) It sounds like the center has really turned things around.



    Friday, August 23, 2013

    Salinas: Jose Castañeda's $2,300 travel bill

    The Salinas City Council seems to get plenty of ink in local papers, especially Mayor Joe Gunter and Councilman Jose Castañeda.

    It even looks like both men could be subject to a recall election next year.

    So I decided it would be a good idea to check in on their reimbursement forms. Although Castañeda racked up a hefty travel bill, an article was a tough sell because all of his trips had been approved by the city council.

    I don't regularly cover Salinas so I might have missed something here. Below you can check out both men's forms from Dec. 19, 2012, to April 11, 2013.



    Jose Castaneda 1 -
    Joe Gunter -

    Thursday, August 22, 2013

    Monterey City Council wants taxpayers to pay for ...

    Monterey City Council members asked to be reimbursed for more than $3,000 from January 2011 to May 2013.

    They asked for everything from plane tickets to business cards.

    I could not find anything troubling about any of the purchases and compared to a lot of municipalities and cities I've covered, it seemed like Monterey politicians were a little more careful with this kind of thing.

    I did find it a bit odd Nancy Selfridge had to buy her own business cards. Also, it looked as if Frank Sollecito had asked to be reimbursed for a ticket to an art event which, at least on the surface, appeared to be for his wife.

    At the end of the day, it was only for $30 and hardly worth clearing the front page.

     Check it out for yourself:    
    Monterey City Council -

    Monday, August 19, 2013

    Naval Postgraduate School's "ethical standards" in curriculum

    After getting all the FOIAs from the Naval Postgraduate School (see Saturday's post) I decided to make a request for one that had already been made.

    Someone had requested a response the school had made to the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman to review educational materials for "anti-Islamic content."

    The response was fairly boring and it happened too long ago, so I decided against a story. Yet sticking with the purpose of this blog, I am sharing the response here.

    The school basically listed a bunch of ways it searches and prevents this type of thing and, unless someone from the inside tells me differently, it looks like they are doing a pretty good job.

    Tomorrow I will start getting into my municipal requests before swinging back around to local military stuff.

    Read NPS' response below:



    NPS FOIA follow -

    Saturday, August 17, 2013

    FOIAing the FOIAs at Naval Postgraduate School

    Today we will look at one of my favorite tricks to do when I'm new to a beat: Making a public records request for all the public records requests.

    It might seem silly, but you learn some amazing stuff sometimes.

    In this instance, I used the information to bolster my case for an article about a backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests at the Naval Postgraduate School.

    I also later made a separate request for something I saw here and will post that Monday.

    Below is my FOIA request for the FOIA requests and the Navy school. I should note the Presidio of Monterey denied a similar request for its requests a few months later.


    NPS FOIAs -

    Friday, August 16, 2013

    My love of public records requests and thoughts on FOIA Machine

    Hello and welcome to my new blog.

    One of my passions is open government and I enjoy making public records requests, so I decided to share my adventures with you here on this site.

    I was lucky when I started as a reporter at the New Jersey Herald that I had someone show me the ropes (Seth Augenstein) but have had to learn a whole to new skill set with all the federal entities in Monterey.

    New Jersey's Open Public Records Act is one of the most progressive public records laws in the country, allowing people to get an answer in seven days. I even wrote this story for its 10th birthday.

    California's law is pretty weak in comparison. A public entity has a maximum of 24 days to release records, give a date for their release or explain what exemption allows them not to release it.

    That brings me to the big, bad Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. I've thought up some better names for it: Frowned on Instantaneously Act, Forgot or Ignored Act, Free-reign on Information Abolishing, Fallacy of Information Assumption. You get the point.

    I actually find filing FOIAs really easy. You just go to FOIA.gov, click on "FOIA Contacts" at the top of the page and scroll down to the department you want. The problem is it can take months to get a response and you need to call and harass them.

    There's a recent Kickstarter campaign for something to make FOIA requests easier. It is called the "FOIA Machine" and has raised $53, 503 so far. I think it has some good features - a reminder to call federal entities, a way to share requests and a feature that connects to social media - but something I doubt I would use.

    FOIA.gov already does a great job of pointing you in the right direction and I fear FOIA Machine's function to alert me when I might have made a mistake would be a bad thing. Some of my best requests have involved something I unintentionally got.

    Having said that, I don't actually have access to the software so I can't say it won't be useful for the public and it is run by the Center for Investigative Reporting, which has been doing some really great stuff lately.

    Tomorrow I will begin digging into the treasure trove of requests. My goal with Open to the Public is to share documents I could not necessarily make into a story but may be useful to someone out there.