June 11, 2013
PRM recently filed an administrative appeal with the Office of Information Policy (OIP) related to our FOIA request for legal opinions about military detention powers under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. OIP handles administrative appeals for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) – another component of the U.S. Department of Justice.
This is our second administrative appeal in this matter. Our earlier appeal was filed after OLC had failed to provide a response to our FOIA request after more than eight months. Our current appeal seeks a review of OLC’s decision to withhold four documents responsive to our request. OLC withheld the documents under FOIA Exemption 5, which protects documents subject to the “deliberative process privilege.” However, documents that constitute “final determinations of policy” (which we expressly asked for in our request) generally cannot be withheld under Exemption 5 and must be released, since they guide government actions.
View the document (and our previous correspondence) here.