Freedom of Information Act May Force Obama to Show Dead Osama Bin Laden Picture

I have watched the Obama administration flip flop on the Osama corpse picture. The final verdict as I write this is they are not going to produce the Osama Bin Laden corpse picture for the American public to view. (Reuters did release some of the Osama death scene photos though.)

That got me thinking. Can a Freedom of Information request force Obama to provide proof to the American people that Osama Bin Laden is dead. An ex federal judge says yes under certain conditions.

Daniel Metcalfe explains to the Gawker Web site the situation in which the federal government might have to surrender the phone through the Freedom of Information Act.

"If someone brought a FOIA complaint seeking the photo, and the government had improperly classified it, I think the government would lose," Metcalfe, who supervised the defense of more than 500 FOIA and Privacy Act lawsuits for the U.S., told Gawker. He is now the executive director of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University's Washington College of Law.

Gawker got an attorney who specializes in these cases to confirm Metcalfe's statement.

"As far as photos of the corpse go," said Kel McClanahan, the executive director of National Security Counselors, a law firm specializing in litigating secrecy issues, "there's nothing I can reasonably think of that would exempt that, unless someone classified them." The government could conceivably try to deny a FOIA request for the photos based on the statute's privacy exemptions, but that would put it in the awkward position of going to court to protect Osama bin Laden's surviving family members' privacy.