FRINFORMSUM 6/12/12

Steve Jobs used LSD “ten to fifteen times.”

Newly released Department of Defense documents on Steve Jobs’s clearance investigation questionnaire shed more light on his past. According to the questionnaire, Jobs was concerned that someone would kidnap his illegitimate daughter and use her to blackmail him. Moreover, Jobs did not mention a previous arrest in the Personal Security Questionnaire because the arrest was over failure to pay for a speeding ticket, an arrest that Jobs did not consider it an “actual arrest.” The documents go over other parts of Jobs’s life, including his use of drugs and illegal phone-breaking.

On June 8, Kel McClanahan, of National Security Counselors, sent a letter to members of Congress asking them to hold a hearing to clarify the Congressional intent behind the creation of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS). McClanahan argued that the Department of Justice (DoJ), as the CIA’s lawyers in a FOIA court case, attempted to diminish the role of OGIS to an office which only “offers mediation services.”

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) documents retrieved by FOIA requests, there are over seven hundred US coastal communities that are considered “tsunami at-risk communities.” However, only one hundred of those communities are classified as “Tsunami Ready.” The NOAA is proposing to cut its Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program in the 2013 budget.

The American Small Business League (ASBL) has filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon for refusing to release small business subcontracting records on federal contracts with Hewlett Packard. While the Pentagon claims that the subcontracting records would reveal trade secrets, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1994 that subcontracting records do not contain any trade secrets and are releasable to the public.

The Post and Courier has requested all correspondence between South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s office and the South Carolina House Ethics Committee through the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. However, Haley is refusing to release correspondence on the ethics inquiry, claiming attorney-client privilege extends to her entire office, not just to herself. The ethics investigation is about whether Haley illegally lobbied on behalf of a former employer when she was in the House. Haley has a known record of withholding emails under FOIA, as well as destroying them.