Documents / FOIA release

Larry W. Bryant vs CIA

Central Intelligence Agency · 2009-10-26 · 16 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a declaration by Delores M. Nelson, the CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, dated October 26, 2009. She filed it in support of the CIA's motion for summary judgment in Larry W. Bryant v. CIA, a FOIA suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Bryant had sought records of a 1987 FAA meeting about the November 17, 1986 Japanese flight 1628 encounter over Alaska. The declaration describes the agency's searches, which found no records of the meeting and three documents from other agencies about later airborne UFO encounters.

Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083377
8. By letter dated October 3, 20084, Plaintiff appealed the CLA’s decision “to deny
my FOIA request status as a representative of the news media” as regards request
F-2008-01781. Plaintiff went on to state “By this appeal I hereby characterize my
records-search-fee-waiver ‘request’ as a DEMAND” and cited 5 U.S.C. § 522
“a(4)(A)(ii)(H), namely, ‘fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for
document duplication when...the request is made by...a representative of the news
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media. (A true and correct copy of Plaintiff’ s appeal request is attached hereto
as Exhibit C.)
9. By letter dated October 28, 2008, the CLA acknowledged Plaintiff’ s letter in
which he appealed our determination to deny him “status as a representative of
the news media” and to deny his “request for a fee waiver.”
10. The CM explained to Plaintiff that since records responsive to his FOLA request
had been previously released and no additional searches were conducted, he
would be responsible “for copying costs associated with this request regardless of
fee category determination.” That is, these copying fees would apply even if he
were placed into the news media fee category. With respect to his appeal of the
denial of a fee waiver, the CIA reiterated that “if processing has been initiated, the
requester must agree to be responsible for costs in the event of an adverse
administrative or judicial decision.” (See 32 C.F.R. § 1900.13(d).) Accordingly,
4 The “letter” composed as email on October 3, 2008, is actually dated “6 Oct 2008” in a
handwritten annotation next to Plaintiff’s signature. The text states in part: “By snail-
mail, I’m sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.” The appeal was
received in my office on October 14, 2008 (see date stamp). »
5 .
Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083377

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 16 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.