Tuesday, April 08, 2008

FOIA - Rejected

For some time now, I've been working on a new article related to the disappearance of Kirk von Ackermann and the death of Ryan Manelick for the Journal at ePluribus Media. I'm a very slow writer -- both of my previous articles took me close to a year to write -- so I am very fortunate I don't have a deadline. One result, I can take the time to file FOIA requests.

ePluribus Media received a written response to one of my FOIA's, specifically one I filed with the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) for information regarding Kirk von Ackermann's case. The FOIA was rejected.

A search of the USACIDC file indexes revealed that an active investigation is in progress with an undetermined completion date.
Most of what the FOIA requested was the kind of information one might expect to receive at say a press briefing: time von Ackermann's vehicle was first reported abandoned, etc. In other words, the FOIA request didn't ask for anything particularly earth-shattering like the names or identities of secret sources of information.

At this time, ePluribus Media will not be filing an appeal. Why? The FOIA request was always a long shot and the reason is provided by the Department of Defense Freedom of Information Policy Office (DFOIPO) in the FOIA Handbook (PDF)
The nine FOIA exemptions are cited in the Act as 5 U.S.C. § 552

(b)(7)—investigatory records or information compiled for law enforcement
purposes;
Fingers crossed for some positive responses to the other FOIA requests.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I'm not sure what to say about the "active investigation" thing since last year I was given to understand that they "had an answer" and were satisfied that the story they gave me was correct. I'm not entirely sure what is still being investigated? Does this imply that things aren't as resolved as they told me? Or is it because Kirk's investigation was rolled into Ryan's and the fraud case. Not sure.

Susie Dow said...

It may be as simple as no one has yet been formally charged therefor it's still an "active investigation."