jason leopold foia

“So there’s really no incentive for them to stop doing what they’re doing.”. “This year is on track to be higher,” the spokesperson said. Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. Some federal agencies still have enormous backlogs. Oh, and Jason has an eye for the quirky and funny, revealing how the CIA helped produce an episode of Top Chef and how Attorney General Eric Holder used Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s birth name for his official email address. Though Leopold places much of the blame on agencies for FOIA delays, he said many lack the staff to deal with increasing numbers of requests. As for the NSA’s motion, Leopold said he views it as an escalation by the government to thwart his FOIA efforts. Police say Jim Duncan died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a policeman’s revolver in 1972. “We have not seen an increase in members contacting us about issues with FOIA since the administration has been in place,” she said in a phone interview. Zubaydah, a citizen of Saudi Arabia,  was deemed a “high value detainee” after his arrest in Pakistan in March 2002. And it was Jason who discovered that the Department of Homeland Security wanted to “plug” agents into the Ferguson protests to gather intelligence and that the DC police were using special “stingray” technology to monitor cell phones. Jason Leopold and Ky Henderson, VICE News, “Tequila, Painted Pearls, and Prada — How the CIA Helped Produce 'Zero Dark Thirty'” Judge’s comment: “Leopold and Henderson’s extensive report on the CIA’s links to the Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers raises questions about the authenticity of the film about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. “I’m not saying that there have not been moves toward keeping information from the public,” she added, pointing to a reduction in press releases, information being taken off agency websites and staff being instructed not to talk to the public at the outset of the administration. We learned that the Mueller Special Counsel and the FBI essentially gaslit General Flynn. VICE News investigative journalist Jason Leopold has used the Freedom of Information Act to break stories on hot-button issues. An unnamed government agency once dubbed Leopold a FOIA “terrorist,” which the NSA noted in its recent motion for an Open America stay. Until now, he has only sued strategically – when he believed that getting records could be a years-long battle. “They are terrible – they think that they should be exempt from FOIA.”. Indeed, Jason came to BuzzFeed News in large part because of our own Nabiha Syed, who has set aside formidable resources to help Jason continue his strategy of aggressive FOIA litigation. BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold shared documents he requested from the Navy via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. In a memo to BuzzFeed’s staff, Investigative Editor Mark Schoofs said Leopold was attracted to BuzzFeed by its legal team, which has “set aside formidable resources to help Jason continue his strategy of aggressive FOIA litigation.”. But it can take years to actually get the documents. His relentlessness has made him one of America’s foremost national security reporters. “What happens is that it can become troubling for an agency,” he said. The complexity and number of FOIA and Privacy Act requests the agency received spiked after former contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the its classified programs, the NSA said. Buzzfeed’s senior investigative journalist currently has about 2,000 outstanding FOIA requests with federal agencies — 150 of them submitted this year alone. Here are some of the themes from an oral history project documenting local newsrooms during the pandemic, This is Mar. “The FOIA/PA landscape has dramatically changed in recent years such that responding to information requests demands increasing amounts of time and effort and continues to tax finite resources,” the motion states. Under the FOIA reform, agencies are now required to show the actual harm disclosing records would cause if they want to withhold them. I am thrilled to announce that we’ve hired Jason Leopold, ace reporter and FOIA Jedi warrior. “What I’ve found from certain records I’ve obtained after appeals, there’s no national security risk,” he said. A recent motion for an Open America stay filed by the National Security Agency in one of Leopold’s FOIA lawsuits illustrates how some agencies are struggling to keep up. During the Obama years, Leopold said he had a difficult time obtaining records. He says that while he found the penchant for government secrecy to be “really bad” under the Obama administration, things have gotten worse since President Donald Trump took office. “Plaintiff Jason Leopold is ‘a self-styled ‘FOIA terrorist’ who, according to a recent press release by his new employer, BuzzFeed.com, makes his living ‘by deluging the federal government with Freedom of Information Act requests,'” the motion states. Leopold’s FOIA work has been profiled by dozens of radio, television, and print outlets, including a front-page story in The New York Times. Agencies also regularly abuse the national security exemption, Leopold said. The diaries served as the foundation for an exclusive series for Al Jazeera. Jason Leopold: Actually, "FOIA terrorist" is the term that was used to describe me by a certain government agency that was apparently annoyed by the number of FOIA requests and appeals I had filed. Please roll out a hearty BuzzFeed News welcome to Jason! A spokesperson for the FBI said in an email that the agency received more than 24,000 FOIA and Privacy Act requests last year, and has 300 employees and contractors on hand to process them. In response to yet another FOIA request from Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, this time for documents relating to the Mueller investigation, the Justice Department claimed it has as many as 19-billion responsive documents. Jason Leopold faced scrutiny in 2006 for reporting a story about Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, that turned out to be … After Jason secured an interview that would go on to be nominated for an Emmy with psychologist James Mitchell, an architect of the Bush administration’s torture program, Jason got Mitchell on the record saying that he himself had helped waterboard al Qaeda suspects. Coming in at a close second, Jason Leopold has been involved in 69 FOIA cases since 2012, by far the most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States today. He will join an investigative team that now has 21 members around the globe, with journalists based in the U.S. and U.K.

In March, after William Barr, the attorney general, released his misleading summary of the Mueller report to Congress, Jason Leopold, a reporter with BuzzFeed, starting making requests under the Freedom of Information Act, asking the government for the documents—subpoenas, warrants, correspondence, memos, transcripts, and more—underpinning the report. “They were trying to use this as a legal argument to get out of providing me with very, very important documents about what takes place behind the scenes at the most secretive agency in the world,” he said. 4, 2021 edition of Factually. A search of PACER shows Leopold has filed 20 active FOIA lawsuits, and has sued the government three times since January. The mistake nearly killed his career and reputation, but he decided to try and rebuild both by making hefty use of the Freedom of Information Act. Buzzfeed’s senior investigative journalist currently has about 2,000 outstanding FOIA requests with federal agencies — 150 of them submitted this year alone. He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law in 1966 to give citizens the right to access previously undisclosed federal government documents, like those Leopold obtains. Leopold has embraced the term FOIA terrorist but is adamant that the government bestowed the title upon him, something that “pissed” him off initially, he said. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who sponsored the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, did not respond to an emailed request for comment about Leopold’s observations. The Department of Justice, for example, recently issued a Glomar response to a request for records about President Trump’s tweets that President Obama had wire tapped Trump Tower during the campaign. According to the March 6 filing, the NSA had backlog of 1, 566 requests in 2016. A single day of FOIA mail for Jason Leopold; like acceptance letters from colleges, the bigger the envelope, the better the news. Leopold’s reporting and aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act has been profiled by dozens of media outlets, including a 2015 front-page story in The New York Times. “There’s mostly embarrassment.”. Jason, whose Twitter handle is @JasonLeopold, will work out of Los Angeles. Leopold began his journalism career in 1992, but did not start using the public records law aggressively until 2009, after a bad experience with an anonymous source. That number is about to increase in a big way. (Courtesy Jason Leopold) Today there’s a … While noting that Leopold could be correct given his extensive FOIA experience, the national president of the Society for Professional Journalists, Lynn Walsh, said it is still too early in the administration to tell. The NSA, however, has taken recent exception to the pace and fury of Leopold’s FOIA requests and lawsuits. “It’s not as if somebody’s going to be penalized in the agency for violating FOIA,” he said. Leopold’s worst FOIA experiences are with the FBI, which he described as “hostile” and in constant violation of the law. Fact-checkers They say their expertise is indispensable in crafting any misinformation laws. Journalist Jason Leopold is known as a "FOIA Terrorist" for his expert use of the law in procuring documents to support his investigative journalism. Though he joined Vice News only in August, Vice is now backing Leopold’s cases. Jason Leopold is an Emmy-nominated investigative reporter on the BuzzFeed News Investigative Team. Over the last 15 years, Jason has brought more FOIA lawsuits than any news organization except for the entire New York Times. Benjamin Mullin is the managing editor of Poynter.org. “We had begun talking to Jason before the election, so we didn’t know it would end up,” Schoofs told Poynter. He previously reported for Poynter as a staff writer, Google Journalism Fellow and Naughton Fellow, covering journalism…, BuzzFeed News hires 'FOIA terrorist' Jason Leopold from Vice News, © All Rights Reserved Poynter Institute 2021, As Patrick Soon-Shiong comes under increased financial pressure, deals to sell the Los Angeles Times and his Tribune Publishing stake look more and more likely, How a one-man sports department produced a 7-part series about an NFL star’s questionable death, Innovation isn’t just about tech and other lessons from journalists in mid-America, Here are the newsroom layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the coronavirus, Fact-checkers want a seat at the table in discussions about regulation, Economic Development & Growth Reporter - Memphis, OPB seeks Digital Planning Editor to oversee daily digital operations - Portland, OR. According to Walsh, the use of the Glomar response has been rising over the past several years. Jason Leopold (CN) – Jason Leopold knows a thing or two about the Freedom of Information Act. BuzzFeed’s legal team has helped reporters pry more than 70,000 pages of documents from government agencies with FOIA requests. It was Jason, of course, who sued for Hillary Clinton’s emails, leading to an avalanche of stories. Leopold said over time he noticed that the more he requested records from certain agencies, sued them to force disclosure and wrote stories that laid bare behind-the-scenes happenings, the more secretive agencies became. Jason Leopold has so thoroughly aggravated naturally-secretive government agencies that he has earned the nickname "FOIA terrorist. “I was really, really troubled by that,” he added. Watch out, Washington! A $1 billion pharmaceutical lawsuit, needs of his biotech companies and three years of choppy ownership may help deliver both to Alden Global Capital. One time, Leopold found a letter among 300 pages of documents the CIA disclosed to him stemming from allegations that the agency had hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computers during its investigation of the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program – a euphemism for the torture program. Get the Poynter newsletter that's right for you. "He routinely files two dozen FOIA … Jason Leopold has used the Freedom of Information Act to break a number of major stories, from the drugging of Department of Defense detainees to the Biblical justifications the Air Force used for nuclear war to a drawn-out battle with the FBI over Occupy Wall Street documents.. BuzzFeed News hires ‘FOIA terrorist’ Jason Leopold from Vice News This photograph made in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013, shows pages from a U.S. The law contains nine exemptions that allow agencies to protect information from disclosure, but Congress reformed it last year to close some loopholes agencies abused to obstruct disclosure. Jason comes to us from Vice News, where he’s worked since 2014. Contact Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com. Jason Leopold, according to the National Security Agency, is something even worse. The letter, which the CIA had accidentally given to Leopold, contained an apology from former CIA director John Brennan for spying on the committee. And we are thrilled to have him now more than ever.”. Despite the struggle of agencies to keep up, Leopold is frustrated by the lack of an accountability standard when agencies fail to comply with the law and thwart his efforts to secure documents that should be released. “So they try to find ways in which they can continue to withhold records.”. (CN) – Jason Leopold knows a thing or two about the Freedom of Information Act. He got his hands on internal CIA documents showing how the agency worked with Hollywood to produce Zero Dark Thirty, which led to legislation cracking down on how intelligence agencies collaborate with the entertainment industry. Vice News reporter Jason Leopold filed eight freedom of information suits in 2014. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News announced the hiring of investigative journalist Jason Leopold, who has made a living — and eked out tons of scoops — by deluging the federal government with Freedom of Information Act requests. According to Leopold, agencies are now issuing Glomar responses to requests for already public information. the diaries of Abu Zubaydah, the guinea pig for America’s torture program, Jason finally got a source to turn them over. And in 2016, top senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee included an amendment in a spending bill that required the Director of National Intelligence to detail how intelligence agencies interact with Hollywood after Leopold reported that the CIA had played a role in Hollywood productions. “That is something that we are concerned about because we have seen more of those coming down recently,” she said. His suits have caused the FBI and Defense Department to change their FOIA policies, and he’s won various honors, including being inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame. The senior investigative reporter at BuzzFeed is a power user of FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, and he is such a nuisance that the NSA has joined the FBI in labeling him a FOIA terrorist. But Leopold said that since January, he has received 12 Glomar responses, which allows an agency to neither confirm nor deny the existence of records. This would mean the investigation had generated or collected more than 28-million documents each day, weekends included. “But obviously having someone like Jason, with his expertise in FOIA is a huge asset. The uptick in Glomar responses makes it “abundantly clear” to Leopold that he will have to increasingly sue the government for records. Testimony of Jason Leopold, Investigative Reporter, VICE News Before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform Ensuring Transparency through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) June 2, 2015 Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings, and Members of the Committee: Thank you for inviting me to testify before the Committee today. LEOPOLD DHS FPS FOIA Capitol Riots. LEOPOLD HHS FOIA Caputo Alexander Emails. While Congress tried in 2016 to improve access to federal records with the FOIA Improvement Act, it failed to earmark funding to help implement them. Jason Leopold is an Emmy nominated investigative reporter on the BuzzFeed News investigations team and a member of the reporting team named a 2018 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. Still, Leopold said things are worse now, though the reason for that remains unclear to him. Leopold has brought more FOIA lawsuits by himself than any other news organization except The New York Times. Jason Leopold, Senior Investigative Reporter, Buzzfeed News. Reporter Jason Leopold obtained a FOIA release of the 302’s of interviews between retired General Michael Flynn and the Special Counsel’s office during the Mueller probe. Out of the clenched fist of the government, he pried loose the unredacted manual on how Guantanamo prisoners were force-fed, the NSA’s talking points on the Snowden revelations, and the CIA’s legal justification for killing an American — Anwar al Awlaki — suspected of engaging in terrorism. A FOIA lawsuit often forces the request to the top of an agency’s pile. A spokesperson for the FBI, meanwhile, said the agency “fully implemented the provisions of the 2016 FOIA statute amendments.”. Prior to hiring Leopold in 2017, BuzzFeed had only filed one FOIA case in 2014. LEOPOLD HHS FOIA Caputo Alexander Emails Contributed by Jason Leopold (Jason Leopold Investigations) p. 1. “I have seen across the board with all agencies, an aggressive effort to withhold records,” he said recently. “I see this as a radical change in just three months compared with what happened under the Obama administration.”. Although it usually takes a lawsuit to get the agency to comply, he called the CIA “pretty compliant,” and said he fares pretty well with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Homeland Security. Though Leopold acknowledges the government can legitimately withhold some information, he said agencies often withhold information just because they don’t want it released. The report also identified one of the authors of this article, Jason Leopold, as "the most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States today" with 69 lawsuits filed against the federal government since 2012. “It’s secrecy for secrecy’s sake,” he said. “They were completely redacted, so it’s a painstaking effort to do this type of work.”. And after our very own Ali Watkins helped break the story that the CIA was spying on the US Senate, Jason obtained documents that allowed him to delve deep into how the agency came to take that shocking and extraordinary step. Support responsible news and fact-based information today! BuzzFeed ended up … “They are the worst agency,” he said. He doesn’t only use FOIA, of course. It can also be used to protect privacy if identifying an individual in federal law enforcement documents, such as a public official under federal investigation, could be stigmatizing. LEOPOLD DHS FPS FOIA Capitol Riots Contributed by Jason Leopold (Jason Leopold Investigations) p. 1. After pursuing for ten years (!) In 2011, the Air Force removed slides used to train officers on the ethics of using nuclear weapons after Leopold reported for Truthout that they had cited the New Testament and an ex-Nazi. “Yesterday I tweeted out documents I waited three years for,” he said. He also obtained the secret diaries of Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah from a U.S. intelligence official after failing to obtain them through the FOIA. Shane Bauer, a reporter for Mother Jones filed two suits. “I was thinking I could have gone to college, gotten another degree and then I would have had my FOIA at that time as well,” he joked. Vice News investigative reporter Jason Leopold on Tuesday raised journalism’s eyebrow with a story that he told in testimony regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) before Jason … “All agencies that I’ve dealt with thus far – and it’s more than two dozen – are failing to do that,” Leopold said. “Remember last November when WH said Trump could not attend WW1 memorial at US cemetery in France due to rain?” he asked on Twitter. Leopold said he also recently received documents from a four-year-old request. Among the only ways to overcome it is to show that an agency is acting in bad faith, or that the information has already been officially acknowledged to the public. Jason’s reporting efforts range far and wide. “I think any journalist should really be concerned and troubled by the fact that this is what the government is willing to do in an effort to thwart our legitimate attempts at shinning a light on government secrecy.”, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Judge Approves Oil and Gas Exploration in Florida Preserve. As we enter a new and uncharted era in covering the federal government, Jason will build on that track record here with us. Leopold, who will be based in Los Angeles, will have free rein to cover a wide variety of topics for BuzzFeed News, but he will likely pay close attention to national security during his tenure. While working for Truthout, the nonprofit news website and daily newsletter, Leopold relied on false information from the source and wrongly reported in 2006 that a grand jury had indicted Karl Rove for lying during a federal investigation of the public identification of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Before that he was at Al Jazeera America and co-founded The Public Record. Under the law, agencies are required to approve or deny a request within 20 days.

Jason Leopold is an investigative reporter covering Guantánamo Bay, counter-terrorism, national security, human rights, open government and civil liberties issues. He will join us for our investigations confab in January and officially starts work on February 6. The case concerned a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News for documents on CIA funding for anti-government rebels in Syria after Trump tweeted about ending the program. The circumstances remained a mystery for 50 years. Before he reported on it for Vice News in 2016, the CIA asked him not to disclose the letter, citing the national security exemption. Leopold, who currently works for VICE News, is a self-styled “FOIA terrorist,” and has the distinction of triggering a flood of stories after suing for Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails. The most abused exemption, Leopold said, is a discretionary one that covers attorney-client privilege, attorney-work product privilege and deliberative process, which allows federal employees to communicate candidly without fear of public exposure. The agency, however, never sent it. “That’s been a growing trend, that even under Obama was definitely happening at alarming rates,” she said. In the wake of the presidential election, Leopold’s scrutiny of the federal government will be more important than ever, Schoofs said. What did we learn in this release? Agencies can issue a Glomar when denying a request would confirm the existence of a program or information that would harm national security, usually by revealing an agency’s sources and methods. “It was a horrible, terrible error which I regret,” he said. That’s more, he said, than he received in all of 2016. He soon discovered that prying loose government documents can pack a powerful reporting punch. Courts generally show great deference to agencies that issue Glomar responses.