FOIA lawsuit vs. the State Department

On March 26, 2009, I filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department in federal court, to try to force the agency to disclose some pre-Iraq War planning documents. Specifically, the main document I'm after is the "chinese menu" of possible rationales for invading Iraq which was created by the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and was presented by Scooter Libby to Colin Powell and other administration officials on January 25, 2003. Page 297 of Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack says that "Libby provided a 60-page version of the case - some 50 percent more than the CIA paper - which he viewed as a kind of Chinese menu fom which Powell could select."

I have been trying to get this document released since 2006, mostly through FOIA requests submitted to the Defense Department. In February, I renewed my efforts with new requests to the Defense and State Departments (while Pentagon employees created it, Powell and other former State Department officials were the recipients of the document, so it should be in their files). The DOD responded within the 20-day statutory period, but the State Department failed to respond, which triggered a cause of action in district court under FOIA (5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(B), to be specific).

In addition to asking the court to compel the State Department to release the document and other related documents, the lawsuit also asks the court to grant me FOIA's "representative of the news media" fee waiver, which means that processing fees related to this request would be waived. Under FOIA, media outlets do not have to pay these fees, and the Open Government Act of 2007 amended FOIA to clarify that the "representative of the news media" fee waiver is intended to include citizen journalists and/or bloggers who can show that they gather information, create a distinct work, and distribute that work to an audience (Congress didn't use the "b"-word in the law itself, but Senator Leahy, who introduced it, specially talked about bloggers in his floor statement just prior to the passage of the bill). Based on my research, I have not been able to find any instances of a blogger getting the news media waiver, and one goal of mine is to provide an example of how other bloggers can successfully request the waiver.

Anyway, now the ball is in the State Department's court to provide an answer to my complaint, and that should be forthcoming in the next week or two. I will be providing updates once things get moving.