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.
“Headquarters”17 pages
In response to (Fi's first request letter, NASA came back relatively quickly with a " no records" response. This was one of the many "go away" responses that CFi expected to receive from the federal government at the outset of its FOIA initiative, Most FOIA practitioners steer clear of pursuing "no records" responses, because, to prevail, the requester most show that the agency did not conduct a reasonable, good faith search - a showing that requires the FOlA requester to, in essence, produce govemment documents responsive to his/ her own FOIA request. CFI was prepared to do this - indeed, as you know, it is actively pursuing a parallel investigation. As a result, CFi won its administrative appeal of NASA's "no records" response. CFi has now waited patiently for four months for NASA to produce the results of its promise to conduct an " expedited" search , For over forty years, we lived with the Cold War and all the fear it engendered. The " UFO phenomenon" - whether it coincided with that War or was a product of it - is an important chapter in our government's operations and our history. As Kecksburg demonstrates, it still has an impact on real people and real communities, who have no agenda other than obtaining honest answers. Aliens may not have invaded Kecksburg in December 1965, but the U,S. military surely did. In my opinion, Congress did not intend to force the public to litigate over its own history, Unfortunately, the government has created FOIA process in which litigation has become a necessary evil. "Freedom of Information" is being held hostage to a sometimes hostile, and definitely byzantine bureaucracy, For a democracy, that deserves much more ridicule than legitimate curiosity about crop circles or extraterrestrial life.
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.