Mr. BRESSON. You mean what we would receive in terms of fees that might be charged? Mr. MAZZOLI. Yes. Mr. BRESSON. Our present policy now is that we do not charge anything for a case involving less than $25, 10 cents a page, 250 pages. We would not charge anything for that amount, less than $25. If the requester's request involves a case involving more than $25, he will pay the 10 cents a page. We do not have searching fees in our requests because of the retrievability of our files. We are able to locate them rather quickly. They do not usually entail a great deal of searching expense. Therefore the only charges we usually get involved in are the duplication costs. Mr. MAZZOLI. Is that an FBI internal decision not to charge for matters fewer than 250 pages? Mr. BRESSON. Yes; it was, and it was really based on a cost analysis of how much money is involved in writing to the requester, asking for the $7.50 and then having that letter come in with the $7.50 and putting it in the process of getting to the Treasury. It came out to approximately $25 for internal expense, and that was the reason that we did reach the cutoff figure of $25. Mr. MAZZOLI. I would like to hear more on this topic. It seems to me that one of the things that would make this act a little more manageable to you would be to charge. If somebody wants something and they can pay, they ought to pay for it. I don't know why you cut off at $25, even though it may cost you a certain amount of money. Maybe the institution of certain kinds of automatic data processing would help. VISA and Master Charge handle millions of things for $2 or $3 and they seem to make a bundle of money on it. So maybe there is some way here of setting a fee. Maybe it should be more than 10 cents a page so that you bump more into the $25 category. Is there anything that would be helpful to the committee to decide how the money Mr. BRESSON. Congressman Mazzoli, I welcome the thought, and I would like to look into that further. Mr. MAZZOLI. What about CIA. Mr. Chairman? Did they have any charge? Mr. MURPHY. I think out of a total cost of $3 million, they have charged $10,000 in the last fiscal year, and I think they spent $2.9 million. So really there is no relationship. It is a burden that falls on the taxpayer. Mr. MAZZOLI. It is a tremendous burden on the taxpayer. It may be if we got some money back we could pursue the routine requests, and the person who wants to persist then, fine, and if they can file in forma pauperis or something, there can be some arrangement so they can get something done for nothing, if there is some reason for it. Mr. BRESSON. I might just add that while it was an internal decision, it was one of the GAO recommendations when they conducted an audit of our operations to consider this, raising the fee amount. I might also address the question of fees that were received by other agencies. Other agencies may have legitimate searching costs that we do not have. Our central records system, even though it be a manual searching procedure, is very efficient. Mr. MAZZOLI. Why should the requester benefit from your efficiency? And I mean that very seriously. I don't mean you charge them $1,000 to search your file, but why not have a flat fee of $10 to make a search, or $25, something reasonable, you know, that would defray other costs, because if I understand, I am a taxpayer and I am paying for each FBI agent, some part of his or her day, and you are not charging those people who are requesting, and you are not charging anything for postage to respond, yes we have a file, no we don't have a file. Mr. BRESSON. The only thing I can respond to that is that we did carefully evaluate that decision. There was at one time a $3 limit, but as I say, what we were finding was that it was costing us a lot more than $3 to get the $3. It was costing us nearly $25 to collect the $3.20 amount that was owed, and that really was what led to the decision. Mr. Mazzoli. And then, of course, you reach the nightmarish sort of conclusion just like we have with energy where we ask the people to conserve, and then they conserve, and then the gas companies raise the bills because they are not making enough money. So we are back at square 1. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. McČLORY. I have no questions. Mr. Romerstein has a question. Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Romerstein? Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, these questions were prepared in consultation with Mr. Ashbrook and are questions he would have asked if he were here. Mr. MURPHY. How many are there? Mr. ROMERSTEIN. I'll hold it down to three, Mr. Chairman. On August 10, 1978, a convict named Gary Bowdach, who is now in prison for a variety of violent crimes, testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He testified that he had filed FOIA requests with almost 10 agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and so forth. He said that the purpose of the requests was to identify informants so that they could be murdered. Are you aware of the testimony and could you comment on it? Mr. BRESSON. I am aware of the testimony of Mr. Bowdach. I am in a position of saying that I don't believe he identified FBI informants. I am not that familiar with the release that he may have obtained from the FBI at this time to give you any further amplification on that. I am aware generally of his testimony, and that is a very large concern to us, and I have indicated we have 16 percent of our requests coming in from this type of individual, and the fact that this is their purpose is of very much concern to us in our processing procedures. Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Mr. Bowdach testified further, that on behalf of another criminal, he made an FOIA request to the Drug Enforcement Administration which supplied 5 pounds of documents, and he claimed that careful examination identified a DEA informant-it would not have been an FBI informant. And Bowdach then said that he believed the informant was later murdered. Would you have any information concerning that? Mr. BRESSON. I am sorry, I don't have any information concerning that. If it is desired, I might be able to supplement the record with an answer to that. I would have to consult with the DEA for an answer. Mr. ROMERSTEIN. And the last question concerns a GAO report dated November 15, 1978, which discussed four foreign counterintelligence cases where the FOIA was the reason for the loss of valuable sources. They identified three as potential sources and one an ongoing source who refused to continue to cooperate because of fear of FOIA. Is this a common situation? Mr. BRESSON. My answer to that would be yes. If I can somewhat quantify that answer, what I am saying is that we in our survey of our field agents found numerous examples of sources, both potential sources, businessmen, paid informants, who were telling us in counterintelligence investigations that they no longer wanted to work for us or provide us information because of their fear that the FOIA would cause us to give up their names or the information they provided. This is a real concern to us. I am not in a position to measure it in terms of how many sources we have and how many sources made statements like this to us, nor am I sure when a person refuses to cooperate whether or not it is or is not because of the FOIA. But in answer to the question of Congressman Ashbrook, I would have to say that it is definitely a reality. It is a fact that we have documented instances of sources in this intelligence area who have refused to cooperate with us because of the FOIA. Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Bresson and your staff, for coming in today. We appreciate it very much. Mr. MURPHY. We adjourn, subject to the call of the Chair. Mr. BRESSON. Thank you. [Whereupon, at 2:48 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, subject to the call of the Chair.] Appendix A FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION-SUMMARY OF FOIPA COSTS, FISCAL YEARS 1974 THROUGH 1ST QUARTER 1 The costs for the FOIPA program are based on total personnel service costs plus other operating expenses. 2 Fiscal years 1976 through 1st quarter of fiscal year 1978—the estimated costs are composed of personnel compensation and benefits only. Beginning with calendar 1978, the costs are estimated on a total cost basis. 1 Fiscal year 1975 and 1976 allocated from realignment of personnel within FBI. Fiscal year 1977 through 1980 funded to FOIPA program. 2 Does not include 282 special agents assigned to headquarters during "Project Onslaught." 3 Although allocated 389 for 1978, our highest onboard complement figure reached only 368. Federal Bureau of Investigation FOIPA requests received1 1 1974 FOIA amendments were effective Feb. 19, 1975; Privacy Act of 1974 was effective Sept. 25, 1975. |