Documents / FOIA release
This is a July 27, 2021 FOIA response from NASA's Office of Communications to John Greenewald, Jr. It covers records from Leslie Kean's lawsuit against NASA seeking Kecksburg documents. NASA released 207 pages in full, 7 in part and withheld 31, noting that most of the lawsuit case files had been destroyed under records retention rules. The enclosures include court declarations, a 2003 appeal decision ordering a broader search, a 2019 FOIA response, and Stan Gordon's account of the missing NASA fragology files.
Lee E, Helfrich Partner. Lobel. Novins and Lamont Executive Summary October 21, 2003 My name Is Lee Helfrich. I'm a partner at the law firm of Lobel, Novins and Lamont and have been assisting the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi) with Its Freedom of Information Act (FOJA) initiative. I've been asked to give you a very brief summary today. No one up here with me seems to appreciate - that as a lawyer - I get paid by the word. When CFi started its FOIA initiative a yea r ago, it faced two hurdles. The first is what we've termed the "ridicule" factor. The second was the bureaucratization of the government's FOlA process. The Kecksburg incident -like many others - is viewed as a "UFO" story. Today, those three letters are associated in the public's mind with entertainment and Star Trek conventions. That we are entertained by the unknown and the prospect for the future is certainly okay , What is not okay is when the popular culture or conventional wisdom overwhelms and excludes the search for real answers. As today's newspapers repeatedly remind us, the line between official fact and fiction is not all that clear. What today we call the "UFO phenomenon" began as a taxpayer funded, government internal security program administered by the U,S, Air Force, Any object that entered U,S, air space that could not be immediately identified was an "Unidentified Flying Object" - a term coined by the military, Initially, the public was asked by the government itself to report incidents like Kecksburg. During the time period of Kecksburg, however, the government was also reorganizing this "homeland"security program - a not uncommon bureaucratic maneuver. A by-prodUct of the government's reorganization effort was the re-deflnltion of a "UFO/ Investigation as an inquiry about space aliens. To patronize and trivialize the honest reports and questions of citizens, whose lives and communities were impacted by a government program is, in my opinion, disgraceful. In today's environment, the' public is often reminded that premature disclosure of government information could harm legitimate national security and law enforcement efforts, The FOIA balances the goal of open government with the government's need for temporary secrecy. At some point in time, however, secrets become stale, and the government's activities, in the words of the Supreme Court, should "be opened to the sharp eye of public scrutiny." This is not an effort to revise history, but to complete it, As summarized In a 1997 report of a congressional commiSSion, the reality is that access delayed is access denied. Since its enactment in 1966 - and despite its lofty goa ls - FOIA has become user unfriendly - a bUreaucratic maze that can be pursued only by those with extraordinary patience and pocketbooks. An example of this is CFi's experience with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA.
FOIA release, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 223 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.