• WARNING! Low Visibility Conditions: Reportedly, 200,000 public records requests remain unanswered and some of them are 15-years old!
• Partly Sunny: Meanwhile, a FOIA upgrade has been proposed by Sens. Leahy (D - Vt.) and Cornyn (R - Texas) which targets so-called (b)(3) exemptions.
• Partly Cloudy: And all over the nation, public officials are learning that their text messages from official phones and e-mail from government accounts are a matter of public record.

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The executive privilege and state secrets doctrines are under attack.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) ruled that “White House claims of executive privilege ‘are not legally valid to excuse current and former White House employees from appearing, testifying and producing documents related to [the U.S. Attorney firing] investigation,’" Sidebar reports.

In related news, “challenges are brewing to a key legal strategy President Bush is using to protect a secret surveillance program that monitors phone calls and e-mails inside the United States,” the so-called state secrets doctrine, AP reports.

According to Sidebar,

The [state secrets] principle was established a half-century ago when, ruling in a wrongful-death case brought by the widows of civilians killed in a military plane crash, the Supreme Court upheld the Air Force's refusal to provide an accident report to the plaintiffs. The government contended releasing the document would compromise information about a secret mission and intelligence equipment. The Bush administration has used the privilege in unprecedented numbers, and Congress and the courts are finally addressing this trend, which the Reporters Committee has been criticizing for several years.

Some stories make me very proud of open government. Today, I'm simply amused.  

According to FOI FYI:

A judge in Kentucky ruled that a man should be able to see messages exchanged through state government e-mail accounts by his cheating wife and her co-worker lover . . . [the government] originally denied the request because it said the e-mails contained private conversations that are exempt from state public records law. The judge disagreed, saying that if public employees are using state resources to exchange non-work-related messages during work hours, then the public ought to know.

• More textual treats: Read below the jump another story about how one man got busted playing the field by accidentally texting his wife instead of his latest lover. A wise suggestion from the author: “Text to self: When having an affair, make sure to text your girlfriend, not your wife . . .”

Former press secretary Scott McClellan says he had unknowingly passed along false information at press conferences regarding the leak of a CIA operative as instructed by Karl Rove, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney and the president himself. McClellan revealed the web of deception in an excerpt from his forthcoming book.

Another study demonstrates how states restricted critical infrastructure information following September 11, 2001. Every state except South Dakota restricted access to information deemed critical to homeland security, according to a congressionally funded study by the Center for Terrorism Law, based at St. Mary's University in Texas.