As U.S. officials dealt with the fallout of the government’s once-secret “Cuban Twitter” program, they had one thing on their side: notorious delays in the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The government didn’t have copies of the documents, which formed the basis of an Associated Press investigation detailing a program on which taxpayers spent millions. But officials were worried that asking the contractor to hand over copies would risk making the details even more public.
“The risk is that it gets FOIA’d later. FOIA will take six months,” Mark Lopes, a former senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote in newly released emails. “I say yes so we get through the next week, six months from now when FOIA comes out, this will all be over?” [READ MORE]