FOIA Documents ‘Scrubbed’ From Intelligence Agency Website

Welcome back to FOIA Files! Last May, for unexplained reasons, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence took down its website. Days later, the site was restored. But a ton of material was missing, notably hundreds of intelligence-related documents released over the years in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Why? I filed a FOIA request to find out (surprise, surprise). This week, a year after I filed my request, and sued ODNI to compel the release of records, the agency sent me more than a dozen pages of emails that offer some answers. The communications call into question the Trump administration’s pronouncement that it’s “the most transparent administration in American history.” If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.

At first glance, the disappearance of documents from ODNI’s FOIA page in early May seemed to be connected to a swirling controversy at the agency run by Tulsi Gabbard. On May 5, transparency expert Lauren Harper at the Freedom of the Press Foundation received a copy of an intelligence assessment from a unit of the ODNI on Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang.