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(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that fights government
corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents through the Freedom
of Information Act (“FOIA”) in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(“FBI”) has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of al Qaeda
terror leader Osama bin Laden. In a September 24, 2003 declassified “Secret”
FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA
law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits the government to withhold all information
about U.S. persons in “personnel and medical files and similar files”
when the disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy.” (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6) (2000))
Before invoking privacy protections for Osama bin Laden under Exemption 6,
the FBI should have conducted a balancing “test” of the public's
right to disclosure against the individual's right to privacy. Many of the references
in the redacted documents cite publicly available news articles from sources
such as The Washington Post and Associated Press. Based on its analysis of the
news stories cited in the FBI report, Judicial Watch was able to determine that
bin Laden’s name was redacted from the document, including newspaper headlines
in the footnoted citations.
“It is dumbfounding that the United States government has placed a higher
priority on the supposed privacy rights of Osama bin Laden than the public’s
right to know what happened in the days following the September 11 terrorist
attacks,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is difficult
for me to imagine a greater insult to the American people, especially those
whose loved ones were murdered by bin Laden on that day.”
The redacted documents were obtained by Judicial Watch under the provisions
of the FOIA and through ongoing litigation (Judicial Watch v. Department of
Homeland Security & Federal Bureau of Investigation, No. 04-1643 (RWR)).
Among the documents was a declassified “Secret” FBI report, dated
September 24, 2003, entitled: “Response to October 2003 Vanity Fair Article
(Re: [Redacted] Family Departures After 9/11/2001).” Judicial Watch filed
its original FOIA request on October 7, 2003. The full text of the report and
related documents are available on the Internet by clicking
here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).
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