The FOIA Project

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy (left) in 2013 as she is sworn in by Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe, while former Administrator Carol Browner holds the Bible.

Three nonprofit organizations are suing the National Security Agency in an attempt to get it to release the metadata associated with records they say were inappropriately destroyed by another agency.

They believe the NSA has the records because of revelations in 2013 that the agency was collecting the data associated with millions of Verizon email and text messaging accounts.

The complainants – the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic – filed suit on June 8 after the NSA issued a Glomar response neither confirming nor denying the existence of the records.

One of the complainants, CEI, originally sought email and text messages directly from the Environmental Protection Agency that were sent and received from Verizon accounts EPA provided to Administrator Gina McCarthy, as well as the private Verizon account of her predecessor, Lisa Jackson. The EPA at first denied CEI’s fee-waiver request, which became the subject of another FOIA lawsuit, and later said that the emails had been destroyed because the messages sent from the accounts were personal. But the lawsuit contends that the accounts were used to correspond with EPA staff and lobbying interests such as the Sierra Club and Siemens Corp., making the correspondence subject to FOIA.

The lawsuit against the EPA and the subsequent suit against the NSA are among the more than 5,000 that can be found using the FOIA Project’s free Case Search tool.

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Shane Bauer, one of three Americans detained in 2009 by Iran when they unknowingly crossed into the country while hiking, filed suit against the CIA, Department of Justice and Department of State on June 6.

Bauer, who was released with his friends in 2011, is seeking records pertaining to the government’s actions in trying to free him and his two colleagues.

Bauer’s complaint — culled from more than 5,000 cases you can access for free using the FOIA Project’s  Case Search tool — states that his initial FOIA requests to these agencies, as well as the subsequent appeals, were either denied or ignored.

His original FOIA requests included Privacy Act waivers from the other students involved.

The complaint outlines how each agency was involved in Bauer’s case. For instance, it states that “the Department of State was highly involved in the case. [The students’] families traveled to Washington, DC, on numerous occasions to meet with State officials, including Secretary Clinton. They also maintained regular contact with State throughout their detention. State was in discussion with Oman and Iraq, and possibly Turkey, Senegal, Venezuela, and other countries in efforts to secure our release. Sean Penn was in discussion with DOS at some point regarding his intention to ask President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to petition for our release.”

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