Photograph by Getty Images

A P2V Neptune U.S. patrol plane flies over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban missile crisis in this 1962 photograph.

The last day of “Sunshine Week”’ — celebrating the Freedom of Information Act and not the Age of Aquarius from “Hair” — rings kinda hollow to this defense reporter.

Like many scribes, I was overjoyed — maybe too giddy — when President Barack Obama issued a 2009 FOIA memo directing that “all agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure.”

But two denials for information that I’ve received from the government illustrate that a former Nixon attorney general had a point: It’s always better to “watch what we do, not what we say.”

The denials reminded me of a famous line that JFK quipped in October 1962 at the height of one of the most dangerous moments in human history —  the Cuban Missile Crisis — after a U-2 pilot strayed into Soviet airspace: “There’s always some (SOB) who doesn’t get the message.”

Ditto for the FOIA officials at the Defense Department — they didn’t get the message of Obama’s `presumption of release’ memo.

My Tale of Two Denials:

I dashed off a request on Sept. 19, 2007, requesting a three-page memo prepared for Defense Secretary Robert Gates that outlined the involvement of U.S. and foreign contractors in Iraq. Parts of the content were read at a press conference that day by Gate’s press secretary.

Over five years later, on Dec. 31, 2012, I got the word: Legal counsel for the secretary “has determined that the responsive document, totaling three pages, is being denied in its entirety.”

The FOIA exemption had something to do with “certain communications directed to the president.”

Open government expert Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said: “It’s a common tale. ”

“This is a particularly troubling case for two reasons,” he said. “First, portions of the document were previously revealed at a press briefing. So at least those portions ought to have been disclosed more or less automatically.”

Second, “the cited exemption is discretionary, not mandatory,” he said. “That means they were free to release the document if they wanted to. Evidently, they did not want to.”

A Jan. 23 FOIA request to the Pentagon Inspector General FOIA office for a copy of the closed investigation in the e-mail traffic probe between then-head of U.S. and NATO forces Marine Corp. Gen. John Allen and a Tampa, Florida, socialite, was rapidly turned around — and also denied.

The Feb. 15 reply from the office said that the “fact of the existence or non-existence of the records you requested is exempt from release in its entirety.”

Still, the IG did release a heavily redacted, one-page, Jan. 18 letter to Allen noting: “We conclude that you did not…..(redacted),”

Original post is Some Sunshine: Tale of Two FOIA’s by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey briefs the media at the Pentagon.

Never mind Hollywood’s Golden Globe nominations.

Defense industry bigwigs in Washington want to know who made The List.

Two sister trade publications, Defense News and Army Times, are compiling their first Top 100 Most Influential People in Defense.

The list, to be unveiled Monday, is the brainchild of Richard Sandza, managing editor of Army Times.

“We’ve had some inquiries from the defense world, not necessarily from the Pentagon, trying to gather a little intelligence on who’s on our list, what we’ve been up to,” Sandza says

They haven’t learned much.

“We’ve run ads in our newspapers saying it’s classified,” he says.

Sandza did offer a few non-surprising tidbits: Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the list. The rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made the list as a group.

Yet most of the most influential don’t wear a military uniform.

“There are 945 generals and admirals in the military,” Sandza says. “Fewer than 25 made our list.”

The list, which was whittled down from about 200 people selected by the papers’ staff, had to be revised in the wake of two recent scandals, he says. Former CIA Director David Petraeus resigned after acknowledging a sexual affair. The Petraeus scandal also triggered an investigation into Marine General John Allen, the commander of forces in Afghanistan. At the same time, Christopher Kubasik, who had been tapped to head Lockheed Martin Corp., resigned after acknowledging a relationship with a subordinate.

“All of them fell down our list and some of them fell off,” Sandza says.

Which ones survived? `

`You’ve got to tune in Monday to find out,” he says.

Original post is Generals Slide, Fall From `The List’ — Defense Industry Awaits Full Roster by Political Capital.

President Barack Obama arrives in the East Room of the White House on Nov. 14, 2012, for his first post election day news conference. Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

On Day One of his presidency, Republican Mitt Romney liked to say in his TV ads, he’d start taking care of all sorts of business. He promised an ambitious agenda, starting with the repeal of “Obama-care.”

On Day One after re-election, last Wednesday, President Barack Obama suddenly found a lot more on his plate than his own agenda for his second term.

That’s the day he learned that retired Army Gen. David Petraeus had a problem at the CIA: An FBI investigation of e-mail traffic uncovering an extramarital affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Within days, he’d accept Petraeus’ resignation.

By Friday, he’d learn that his nominee for Supreme Allied Commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, Marine Gen. John Allen, also had an e-mail problem, with the Defense Department’s inspector general investigating what the FBI had found in Allen’s e-correspondence with Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite whose initial complaint of e-mail harassment initiated the FBI probe that ensnared Petraeus. The general maintains he has done nothing wrong, yet his confirmation hearing is on hold.

And now Israel is engaged in combat with Hamas in the Gaza Strip — Obama has been on the phone  this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the leader who had gotten fairly cozy with Romney during the election campaign).

Asked at his news conference yesterday when he might schedule that meeting he suggested on Election Night that he would hold with Romney to discuss ways of working together, Obama said: “We haven’t scheduled something yet.”

“I think everybody forgets that the election was only a week ago,” the president said, adding with a laugh: “I know I’ve forgotten… I forgot on Wednesday.”

Original post is Obama: Election Soon `Forgotten’ by Political Capital.

“We should not hold the middle class hostage while we negotiate taxes for the wealthy,” the president said.

This was the president’s first White House news conference since June 8, when he answered just a few questions, and a formal one in March — and of course his first meeting of the press since winning re-election Nov. 6 with 50.8 percent of the popular vote and an Electoral College count of 332-206.

Unlike the “shellacking” of the 2010 mid-term elections, the president’s party came out of  this year’s campaign with more seats in the Senate and House, yet still a party-divided Congress.

“Our top priority has to be jobs and growth — you’ve got to build on the progress we’ve made,” Obama said. The economy “can’t afford” the taxes and spending cuts that come without action on the fiscal cliff.

Original post is Obama: `Very Clear Deadline’ — Don’t `Hold Middle Class Hostage’ by Political Capital.

What’s in a title?

For Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite who embraced the world of the top brass at U.S. Central Command, it’s not only a license plate.

It’s also “inviolability.”

Kelley, whose e-mails complaining of harassment led to an FBI investigation that led to exposure of an extramarital affair that retired Army Gen. David Petraeus was having with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, which led to Petraeus’ resignation as CIA director and also to a Pentagon inspector general’s inquiry into prolific e-mails between Kelley and Marine Gen. John Allen, has called on 911 to clear her bay-shore sidewalks of the media seeking comment. (See the Bloomberg.com profile by Michael C. Bender and Phil Mattingly on Kelley.)

“You know, I don’t know if by any chance, because I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability, so they should not be able to cross my property,” Kelley told a 911 dispatcher in Tampa. “I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.”

Foreign Policy reports that the 37-year-old Kelley is an “honorary consul” to South Korea – a title described as symbolic, with no official responsibilities, yet stamped on the specialty license plate of her Mercedes S500.

“She does not work as a real consul,” Foreign Policy quotes a diplomatic official as saying. “They play a role to improve the relationship between the ROK and the U.S. Jill Kelley helped to get support for [the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement] and she arranged meetings between the ROK Ambassador to Washington and local businessmen when the ROK Ambassador visited the Tampa area.”

Foreign Policy notes: “In fact,`honorary’ diplomats have no specific privileges or protections under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and therefore her property is not actually ”inviolable” as a matter of international law.”

ABC News also reports this this afternoon:   Kelley has lost the privilege of visiting MacDill Air Force Base, home of CentCom and the U.S. Special Operations Command, without an escort. ABC News reports hat Kelley participated in a base program known as “Friends of MacDill,” its members granted cards allowing them to clear security when entering the base.

Both Petraeus, who led the Tampa-based CentCom before running the war in Afghanistan, and Allen, who served as deputy there before running the war in Afghanistan and continues in command there have served with actual titles: Four-star general.

Original post is Jill Kelley on `Inviolability’ by Political Capital.

Marine Gen. John R. Allen in May 2012. Photograph by Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo

Updated at 2:10 pm EST

Two four-star generals were set to go up to Capitol Hill this week.

One, retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, now former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was supposed to address the Intelligence committees returning from their election recess about what he’d learned from his own personal investigation of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed an ambassador and four other Americans.

The other, Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, was set to appear at a confirmation hearing for his nomination as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces, nominated by the president last month for a post held by the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Now those hearings are off.

Petraeus and Allen are ensnared in a web of e-mails discovered by a FBI investigation of a Tampa woman’s complaint about e-mail harassment. The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating Allen because of e-mails between him and Jill Kelley, according to a Defense official who spoke with reporters on condition of anonymity while traveling with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.   The FBI has handed over 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, most of them e-mails. Panetta has asked senators to delay action on Allen’s nomination. The general remains commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said today that the president had known of the FBI’s findings about Allen since Friday, though he hadn’t learned about Petraeus’ problem until Wednesday, the day after Election Day.

Kelley is a doctor’s wife in Tampa, home of the U.S. Central Command which Petraeus once ran, and where Allen served as a deputy, who complained about receiving harassing e-mails from Paula Broadwell, the Petraeus biographer identified by several officials as the woman involved in an extramarital affair with Petraeus. The CIA director resigned last week because of that affair, unearthed in the FBI e-mail probe.

Enter the president and commander-in-chief, celebrating a re-election won with a commanding lead in the Electoral College and narrow popular vote victory, returning to confront a Congress somewhat more Democratic yet still divided along party lines by Senate and House.

President Barack Obama, who hasn’t held a formal White House news conference since June 8, plans one tomorrow.

In June, he wanted to talk about the economy and Europe, and he took just three questions.

Tomorrow, Obama wants to talk about the way forward with the economy and the looming challenge of the “fiscal cliff” facing Congress at year’s end. He’s likely to face a lot more than three questions, and they will involve much more than the economy.

Original post is Washington’s Homecoming Scandal by Political Capital.