Interesting, first-of-it-kind Freedom of Information Act decision Tuesday, as a federal judge blocks what may perhaps be best described as a lateral FOIA pass.

In a 12-page decision, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle tossed a FOIA lawsuit filed by Barbara Feinman, journalism director at Georgetown University's English Department. Feinman, who also directs the Pearl Project -- an investigative reporting effort named for murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl -- sought FBI records on suspected terrorist Qari Ismail.

Here's the unusual part. The original FOIA request was filed by a Catherine Beirne. The FBI replied it couldn't provide documents unless she presented either proof of Ismail's death or his privacy waiver. (That, Suits & Sentences would like to see: "Dear FBI: please provide Ms. Feinman any secret document she desires. Sincerely, Qari Ismail.")

Beirne subsequently declared that she had transferred the "rights and interest" in her FOIA request to Feinman, who then filed a lawsuit to compel FBI disclosure. Beirne is not otherwise identified, but Suits & Sentences is speculating that she was a student who had graduated and hence was no longer involved in the project.

The suit challenged the FBI's refusal to provide certain files pending proof of death or a privacy waiver. Potentially, this could crack open lots of files. But while Washingtonian editor Garrett Graff is continuing to pursue this same legal approach, regarding files on former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and others, Judge Segal Huvelle determined that Feinman lacked standing to sue since she hadn't filed the original FOIA request.

The judge cites potential administrative hassles, among other problems:

"An individual who informs an agency that she is the assignee of a requester’s FOIA rights may be incorrect for a number of reasons...(and) it would be unreasonable to expect overburdened FOIA administrators to verify the validity of an assignment by determining whether it complies with local law and
reflects the original requester’s actual intent."

Interesting move Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, as the organization filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests seeking documents concerning "targeting killings" by Predator drones overseas.

Another word for it: legally sanctioned assassination.

In FOIA requests filed with the departments of State, Defense and Justice, as well as the CIA, the ACLU says it wants information about the legal basis for the drone program and data regarding the number of civilians and non-civilians killed in the strikes.

This is no mere boilerplate FOIA request. The 16-page document is jammed with supporting citations as well as highly detailed specifications. For instance, the ACLU is asking for "all records created after Sept. 11, 2001 pertaining to agreements, understandings, cooperation or coordination between the U.S. and the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan or any other country regarding the use of drones to effect targeted killings in the territory of those countries..."

The ACLU has often deployed FOIA to find out more about national security policies and problems, including obtaining evidence that the U.S. military mistreated prisoners overseas. They'll probably want to settle in for the long haul on this one.

Prisoners may be bad people, right? Violent, dangerous, incorrigible; ruiners-of-other-peoples'-lives. But nowhere in the Freedom of Information Act does it say the act is designed solely for good people.

So Suits & Sentences is always a little bit heartened when anyone, even a convicted inmate, secures some informational satisfaction through FOIA. On Wednesday, federal inmate Anthony Ray didn't exactly win a FOIA fight, but neither did he outright lose. And sometimes, that counts as a victory of sorts.

Broadly, Ray complains that the Bureau of Prisons systematically delays processing FOIA requests from prisoners in violation of the law. The Bureau until now has ignored this claim, but in a procedural decision Tuesday U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts directed the Bureau to formally respond to the claim.

More narrowly, Ray is demanding documents containing the testing of a urine sample -- to be precise, "Urine specimen #BOI652926." Presumably, this is one that tested positive for drugs and subjected him to punishment. After three months, Ray still hadn't received a reply from the Bureau of Prisons. As Judge Roberts noted:

"The BOP acknowledges that it mishandled Ray’s FOIA request upon receipt, and did not begin its search for responsive documents until after this lawsuit was filed."

Speculation: Federal agency officials lack incentive to provide exemplary service for disfavored populations, such as inmates.

Roberts declined the Bureau's request for summary judgment, ordering it instead to provide more information about how it responded to the FOIA request.

Give the Obama administration credit. Officials have made some changes that provide more transparency, especially in the area of the Freedom of Information Act.

See, e.g., this new Justice Department FOIA page, which lists in one convenient location the Annual FOIA Reports for myriad other federal agencies. As a Justice Department press release put it Wednesday:

"As a result of the new format, members of the public, including public interest organizations, scholars, and the media, will be able to more easily track FOIA performance."

This is actually true. the Annual FOIA Reports include information such as "detailed statistics on the number and disposition of FOIA requests, including response times, volume of requests, and personnel costs."

There's eye-opening stuff. Randomly selected: the oldest unresolved administrative FOIA appeal at the Central Intelligence Agency dates back to March 1, 1993. The longest the State Department took to complete a complex FOIA request was 1,900 days. The Department of Veterans Affairs received an eye-opening 99,333 FOIA requests during the year.

Information-gathering time for the preceding paragraph: three minutes.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is getting his two-cents in, or whatever it's worth, as he blasts the Obama administration for one dither after another.

Now, thanks to a successful lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another kind of Cheney-speak is available. On Friday, CREW made public the notes from a law enforcement interview with Cheney conducted as part of the investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name.

This is not a transcript, but rather a 28-page, single-space memo recounting Cheney's answers. As noted by CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan, Cheney's memory seemed sketchy. Many recitations of "could not recall" occur throughout.

Still, a quick glance offers tidbits; like, the use of Mary Matalin, the old GOP warhorse, even after she left the vice president's official employ. As the notes state, Cheney said it was "possible" he had discussed the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair with Matalin. Presumably, "possible" means "certain." The notes state:

"The Vice President advised that after Ms. Matalin left her full-time position with the White House, he continued to consult with her on a variety of issues and it was not uncommon for him to reach out to her for advice."

Assignment Desk: Find out what Mary Matalin said in public. Assignment Accepted!

From Fox's Hannity & Colmes show of July 11, 2006, after Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby was indicted:

Mary Matalin: "(Libby) did not commit a crime. He had a mis-remembrance of when it was that he heard about it, but clearly he's not one of the guys that revealed it in the first place, which the revelation of such was not a crime."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's error-ridden February 2003 speech to the United Nations about the imminent threat posed by Iraq was literally a matter of life and death. In its promotion of the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, it might have been one of the most consequential -- and controversial -- speeches ever by a U.S. secretary of state.

But here's what the State Department says it found when it searched its files for documents about a key presentation that undergirded Powell's speech: Zilch.

On Wednesday, in a rather illuminating case, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle rejected a Freedom of Information Act demand for the State Department documents. Substantively, Huvelle agreed with the State Department that it had adequately searched its records.

William Thaddeus Anderson asked for a presentation on “intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq” that had been given by I.Lewis Libby to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on January 25, 2003. He also asked for related documents from files belonging to Powell, Armitage, and Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff.

Huvelle reports the State Department searched:

"The Central Foreign Policy Records, as well as active and 'retired' records from the Office of the Executive Secretariat, the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, and the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism."

And in none of those locations, State said, were relevant documents found. This seems surprising. One would think memos -- of the CYA variety, if nothing else -- would have papered the building. Or, maybe this was one of those presentations that was, you know, strictly off the books?

This should be interesting.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed that at least portions of the FBI's records concerning the bureau's interview of former Vice President Dick Cheney must be made public. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Judge Sullivan said in his 37-page opinion that the Justice Department cannot continue withholding all records of an investigation has is now completed.

Notes Judge Sullivan:

"DOJ concedes that there is neither a pending enforcement proceeding with which the disclosure of the records could interfere, nor an ongoing investigation that is likely to lead to such proceedings."

The FBI interview was conducted as part of the investigation into the Valerie Plame affair, in which certain, hmmm, Bush administration officials made public the name of a covert CIA intelligence officer.

The judge further concluded that there weren't sufficient grounds to reason that unspecified future investigations might be chilled by the prospect that the investigation records might be released some day, and he rejected the various law enforcement privileges raised by the Justice Department.

On the other hand, the ruling will still permit the FBI to withhold certain portions of the records. 

"High-level government officials should not be allowed to hide their misconduct from public view," CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan declared.

The International Counsel Bureau and Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman have been trying to uncover video, photographic and other documentary evidence concerning four Guantanamo Bay prisoners. A new ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates gives the lawyers something to work with.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Pentagon located 59 photographs, 45 videotapes and one audiotape concerning the four Kuwaiti citizens: Fawzi Khaled Abdullah Fahad Al
Odah, Khalid Abdullah Misha'al Al-Mutairi, Fouad Mahmoud Al Rabiah and Fayiz Mohammed
Ahmed Al Kandar.

The Pentagon said none of the evidence could be disclosed. The prisoners' attorneys said the Pentagon's search was inadequate and that, surely, non-classified material could be released. For instance: how about photos of the Kuwaiti prisoners in the midst of their hunger strike, since it was Pentagon policy to photograph hunger strikers?

Judge Bates agreed the Pentagon's search was "inadequate" and "inappropriately limited," and he further agreed that the Pentagon's stated justifications for withholding documents were overly vague and overly broad. So now Pentagon officials have to go back and look some more.