Imagine my joy when I received a manila envelope in the mail bearing "DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL" in the upper left. How I should have known better.
"This is in response to your Freedom of Information Act request dated January 26, 2009," OLC Special Counsel Paul P. Colborn informed me. I forgot I filed a FOIA on January 26, 2009. Why? Because it's May 25, 2011.
Apparently I was so seized with hope and change and such in those bygone days that I wanted to read the OLC's correspondence with the CIA about torture. Within my envelope was a memo, dated July 20, 2007 from acting OLC chief Steven Bradbury for John Rizzo, then the CIA general counsel: "Re: Application of the War Crimes Act, the Detainee Treatment Act, and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to Certain Techniques that May Be Used by the CIA in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees."
A stunning new declassification? Hardly. It was part of the Obama Justice Department's 2009 torture disclosures. The ACLU published the document long ago. Here's a version of it in the Washington Post. More comically, here's an analysis of it penned by my friend Daphne Eviatar, back when we were both working at the Washington Independent.
Savor this: it took two and a half years for the Obama DOJ to provide me with a document it declassified two years ago.
I would hazard a guess that maybe 20 percent of the FOIA requests I've filed in my nine (shudder) years in D.C. journalism have been fulfilled. None have ever been fulfilled promptly. Unless you have a legal team and an angel investor, FOIA ain't shit but prose and tricks.
Of course, if the information was publicly declassified in the interim, then what you are expecting from the government in the case of these documents becomes not the limitation of restrictions of the release of classified information, but rather prompt and accurate research assistance, which is something people pay well-educated, private individuals good money for, and don't rely on the federal government to do gratis (or as a service included in your tax bill).
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