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Clarify or Close: Agency “Scope” Letters Undermine Rights of FOIA Requesters
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Washington, D.C., March 16, 2026 – In 2025, the Department of Energy gave the National Security Archive 3 business days to clarify a Freedom of Information Request that had generated nearly 100,000 pages of potentially responsive material, otherwise the request would be “voluntarily withdrawn.” On August 21, 2025, the DOE Office of the General Counsel wrote: “We conducted a search for the parameters provided and the search results were 92,823 pages of potentially responsive material. This is over the voluminous threshold of 5,000 pages and requires the requester to narrow the scope of their request. If you are still interested in the request, please provide a narrowed scope within three business days…If we do not receive a response within 3 business days, we will consider your request voluntarily withdrawn.” (emphasis added) Our request asked for copies of Department of Defense annual greenhouse gas inventory reports from 2009 to 2023 submitted to the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program. Sanitized summaries of DOD’s inventories can be found online, but the 92,823 responsive pages are integral to the public’s understanding of agency’s historically obscure emissions trends and their impacts on the planet’s warming climate. This important request is one of multiple instances in the last two years in which the Department of Energy has threatened to close access to information cases unless the Archive responded to a clarification request within 3 to 7 days. In none of these cases was the Archive notified of a right to appeal the agency’s determination. In 2025, two such demands from DOE came over federal holidays. The National Security Archive’s 2026 Sunshine Week Audit examines how federal agencies use “clarification of scope” letters to flip the burden of FOIA search and review onto requesters by punting their statutory responsibility. In total, we recorded 26 instances between 2024 and 2025 in which agencies used inconsistent parameters to clarify or narrow the scope of Archive FOIA requests. In 18 of those cases, agencies also threatened to administratively close the request if the deadline was not met. |
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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party. |
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