Item 2.130: NASA Headquarters Relents by Granting Larry W. Bryant's FOIA Appeal (See Item 2.117)
[LWB Note: The following Sept. 23, 2011, letter from the U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's general counsel's office concedes that my FOIA request of May 14, 2011, merits both adequate processing and full waiver of all records-search/review fees. If the general counsel's office remains unable to grasp the clarity of my FOIA -requester status as a representative of the news media (RNM), what does that incapacity say about the office's competence and credibility? Note that this NASA capitulation ignores MUFON researcher William I. McNeff's letter to the agency of Aug. 14, 2011 (now posted as a comment upon Item 2.117), by which he formally confirms my RNM-requester status. Do you suppose that a similar letter of explanation from, say, the publisher of UFO Magazine would've tipped the scales in my favor -- or a declaration from a tenured professor of general semantics?]
TO: Mr. Larry W. Bryant
FROM: NASA Headquarters
DATE: September 23, 2011
Dear Mr. Bryant:
This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal dated August 5, 2011. Your original FOIA request to NASA Headquarters dated May 14, 2011, is derived, as you state, "mainly from remote viewer (RV) Joseph W. McMoneagle's account of his RV session in which one or more NASA personnel played a key role," and specifically requests the following records:
"(a) Any and all graphic representations of the Martian surface structures described by McMoneagle based on his RV perception of the geographical coordinates listed by the involved NASA personnel;
"(b) Any and all correspondence, memoranda for record, memoranda of telephone conversations, tasking documents, minutes of meetings, action-officer notes, temporary-duty reports, electronic-tracking data, photographic-interpretation/analysis reports, and case-study reports deriving from any NASA employee's participation in the RV session in question;
"(c) Any and all contracts (past and present) between NASA and the Monroe Institute as regards any RV experiments, applications, protocols, projects, studies, consultations, and plans;
"(d) Any and all other NASA-documented activity (past and current) pertaining to RV plans, operations, processes, principals (e. g., participants, observers, recorders), and funding."
In an e-mail dated June 23, 2011, you provided further detail indicating that "In my phone conversation today with Mr. McMoneagle, I determined that the pertinent remote-viewing event occurred in late July or early August 1983 -- and that the 'NASA' employee was not from NASA headquarters but from NASA contractor Jet Propulsion Laboratory."
You have received initial determination from two NASA FOIA offices in response to your request. In one dated July 13, 2011, Dennis B Mahon, the FOIA Public Liaison Officer at the NASA Management Office (NMO) - Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), to which your request had been forwarded by NASA Headquarters, provided you with an estimate of approximately $116.25 to process your request, which he stated would be held in abeyance until he received your fee agreement. He did not specifically address whether any search had been done or your status as a representative of the news media, but did point out you could appeal his action on fees. Subsequent correspondence dated July 29, 2011, from Jessica Bowen, the NASA Headquarters FOIA Public Liaison Officer, stated that although you do not meet the threshold for a representative of the new [sic] media, this issue is moot because of NASA's "inability to conduct a non-random, reasonable search for responsive records." She concluded that you had not "reasonably described the records you seek," and therefore found that your request was not a proper FOIA request.
Your appeal contests your denial of status as a "representative of the news media" because it violates your statutory right "to full waiver of any records-search/review fees," and seeks "immediate processing in good faith of requested records." Additionally, you sent a letter dated July 30, 2011, that includes a photocopy of the table of contents from Issue No. 155 of UFO Magazine, along with a photocopy of a column within that issue, as evidence of your status as a representative of the news media. Your letter also states "it would be redundant for me to submit to your four-point demand for explaining, say, my support to the public interest/understanding in pursuing official disclosure of UFO-E.T. reality."
Your appeal has been reviewed and processed pursuant to the FOIA and NASA FOIA regulations, 14 CFR Part 1206. This process involved consideration of your original request, the communications from the two NASA FOIA offices, related correspondence, relevant statutory and regulatory provisions, and your appeal. Based on this review, I regard your possible status as a representative of the news media as still unclear. However, as a matter of agency discretion in this particular case, and without making any determination on such status, I find it appropriate to waive all fees, with the exception of potential duplication costs. Further, I find that your request, as supplemented with the information you provided in your e-mail of June 23, is sufficiently specific to conduct a search of NASA records at the NMO-JPL. Therefore, I reverse the initial determinations and remand the case to the NMO-JPL for action consistent with these findings.
This a final determination and is subject to judicial review under the provisions of 5 U.S.C. Section 552(a)(4), a copy of which is enclosed.
Sincerely,
Thomas S. Luedtke
Assistant Administrator for Agency Operations
Enclosure
CC:
HQ/Ms. Bowen
NMO-JPL/Mr. Mahon
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