SITREP – FOIA Requests and Stolen Valor Cases

It has been a while since I provided an update, mostly because I keep waiting for clarity on what’s happening with the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) backlog of over 500 thousand Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As a reminder, we have over 200 pending requests in since Feb-Mar of 2020.

At least we aren’t the oldest request of the National Archives – that record goes to one filed back in 1992 and the results recently came back.

The NPRC is acting on them because I get one back every once in a while, although it is a VERY slow trickle. Four out of every five we get back are not actionable – meaning, they are historical research vs. stolen valor, confirm individual as legit, ambiguous and have to refile, too borderline to post (i.e. two PHs vs three claimed), or mostly – the informant has no evidence that the person in question made claims other than word of mouth.

The Army, Navy and Marine Corps have been great – USAF goes through NPRC for the most part.  These only come into play if the individual’s service was recent, however.

They have not been coming back from the NPRC in any regular pattern.  One here and there, then two at once, then nothing for a while. I’m going to say I get 3, maybe 4 each month. Again, most are not actionable.

However, the work we are doing does have benefit.  We don’t encourage face to face confrontations over FOIA results since it can tend to be highly charged emotionally and unpredictable, we are told they are going to happen.  So, we don’t get to see these dinner table confrontations, or at homeowner association meetings, but sometimes we are told about them.

I try and keep the moderators of this site informed, and often discuss cases and their merits with Dave.

A few days ago, the USPS Informed Delivery service showed I was to receive THREE (3) FOIA results.  Surely, at least one was actionable – I told myself.

There is still a lot of ongoing behind-the-scenes work with case submissions. Many times, they do not have evidence so it is coaching and educating informants that we need evidence before we can post a case or even order records. Often, we go ahead and do the background work and order records for the informant’s edification, but the cases cannot be published without evidence that they made the claims.

There was a recent SEAL sniper claim with 145 confirmed kills, but I think the post was a parody as he was obviously kidding. I must be going soft to let them slide. 😉

SO – the status of the 3 FOIA requests I received a few days ago:

* 1) Historical vs. SV request. Records checked out to the U.S. Marine Corps – forwarded my request to them.

* 2) No record located. The informant does not have proof of individual making claims. Will ask him again. Otherwise, we can’t post. They will do a confrontation at the next Homeowner’s Association meeting. I guess the faker is running for HOA president, and this may skuttle his ship as far as political aspirations.

* 3) Another response with a cover letter insisting it is a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and claims I need signature of individual. Seeing these more and more. Lazy and/or uninformed tech. I usually call and tell them it is not violating the Privacy Act of 1974, threaten to write the governing IG and they usually will then give me the information. However, they’ve changed their phone answering system and after hitting several buttons, they say to check with the website and do not provide someone to speak to… then they say “This call is now ending.” *sigh* Guess I’ll have to be more persistent or write to them about it if I can’t get them on the phone. That’s new.

I called NPRC a second time and they said the wait time was 39 minutes, but I could enter my phone number and they would call me back when it was my turn.

This worked well in the past, so that is what I did. Well, about 30 min later my phone rang and the recording said I should try back later, then said “This call is now ending” and they hung up on me. *sigh* At least I didn’t wait on the phone only to have them hang up.

Tried the next day at an earlier time – same result.  The hanging up thingie is something new and I suspect the NPRC will quickly grow to like.

The recording should have said “If you would like for us to hang up on you later, please enter your phone number and when it is your turn we will call you and hang up on you.”  That would have been more accurate. 😉

At this point, I’m going to draft a standard letter. I will remind them that I am aware of the FOIA oversight organizations – IG, etc. – that monitor compliance with the FOIA. In the past, I usually spoke with the tech and politely said I would write to these orgs and his/her name would be used. When I asked if they wanted that, they immediately changed their position and gave me the results. Now, they are hiding behind a wall of their new phone cascade system, that hangs up and doesn’t let you talk to anybody. Instead of trying to discourage you or wear you down, maybe it was a fluke, and they were just super busy yesterday, so I’ll try again but it is starting to make sense to craft a standard letter and send it to their supervisors and encourage them to educate their staff on the Privacy Act of 1974 and the FOIA exceptions to lying about one’s service. This strikes me as more efficient than playing Whack-A-Mole with individual archive techs.

For that particular FOIA request – I filed in March of 2022. So, I had to wait over a year and a half for them to tell me that they couldn’t act on it. The other two were both filed in Dec 2022.

I won’t give up but this will obviously involve more time. The point of all this is when I do get something back it is a trickle and there is usually a roadblock associated with it if not a historical or non-actionable result. I still have around 200 requests since COVID started and affected their operations in FEB-MAR 2020 that I’m still waiting on. I have gotten one or two back from FEB-MAR 2020 so I know for a fact they are queued up and backlogged.

Thanks for reading so far. The work is challenging, but it is ongoing.

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