There were cries of outrage around here (perhaps even from you, BG) when the office the Vice President tried to say it wasn’t part of the Executive Branch.
I was one of the cries too. It was ridiculous.
Now comes a claim similar in method and scope - that the White House Office of Administration is not part of the White House. That’s an equally ridiculous claim.
Yet, for some reason, BG, your posting is phrased in a way that makes me suspect you’d like to find some reason for supporting it.
At the risk of making a personal attack, I believe that your standards and methods of analysis are highly dependant on who benefits, or who is injured, by the result.
In any event, yes, the White House Office of Administration is part of the White House and therefore has the smae limitations that apply to other WH FOIA requests.
The only obvious counterargument I see to that, as stated, is that the OoA (as noted in the linked article) apparently does process FOIA requests – arguably as a matter of policy, not as required by law.
But, the exceptions section of [url=]FOIA states:
There’s nothing specifically exempting White House records or communications.
And, further down:
So, where is the DoJ getting its argument that FOIA does not apply to the White House? The author the article states, “Most of the White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,” but no legal authority is mentioned.
Gotta wonder about the timing here. Why didn’t they bring this up before? First, they tell us we can’t see them because they’ve gone to the place the candle flame goes when you blow it out. Darn shame about that, tough luck, gee whiz. Love to comply, but can’t, curse the luck, you know how it is with computers…
Now, the song has changed. You can’t see them anyway, even if we had them, which we don’t.
Rather odd. Are they afraid that our computer geeks are better than theirs?
As for the legal argument, here’s testimony to the House from 2000, as to why the FOIA doesn’t apply to certain parts of the EOP. (Actually, the testimony deals with the application of Privacy Act, but it does so by way of proving that the FOIA doesn’t apply.)
Basically, the testimony is that the FOIA applies to “agencies”, and those parts of the White House whose only function is to advise the President, aren’t considered agencies under the definition. He also sites a lot of legal precedent…Armstrong v. EOP, Meyer v Bush, Rushforth v Council of Economic Advisors, and so on.