CNN made FOIA request about DOGE—only to learn FOIA staff was fired

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams ¹ on Feb. 18, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

When CNN put in a Freedom of Information Act request with the Office of Personnel Management for information related to security clearances for billionaire Elon Musk ²  and other personnel at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency ³  who have been allowed access to sensitive or classified government networks, the outlet got an unexpected response.

“Good luck with that, they just fired the whole privacy team,” an OPM email address wrote back, according ⁴  to Tuesday reporting from CNN. An OPM official told the outlet that the federal government’s human resources agency did not layoff the entire privacy team, but did not comment further on the matter.

“Definitely never seen this type of response to a FOIA request,” quipped CBS News journalist Jim LaPorta reacting ⁵  to the news on X.

According to CNN, OPM’s privacy team “is tasked with ensuring the agency’s data privacy practices meet legal requirements and protect the trust of the public.” Members of the agency’s communications staff and employees who handle FOIA requests were also terminated, per CNN, which cited two unnamed sources.

Federal agencies are required to furnish information requested via FOIA unless the information falls within an exemption.

These firings at OPM, which is the chief human resources agency of the federal government, constitute “a move that limits outside access to government records related to the security clearances granted to Elon Musk and his associates,” according to CNN, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the matter.”

OPM was one of the first federal agencies to be infiltrated ⁶  by Musk’s associates at the Department of Government Efficiency and has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s purge of federal workers.

Last month, OPM sent out the now infamous “Fork in the Road ⁷ ” memo, which offered a widely decried deferred resignation program for nearly all federal employees. The message resembled ⁸ —including the verbatim wording of the subject line—an email ⁹  that Musk ¹⁰  sent Twitter employees in 2022, when he took over ¹¹  the social media platform now known as X.

CNN’s coverage also noted that the move to fire members of OPM’s privacy and communication teams echoes Musk’s decision ¹²  to fire the media relations department at Twitter.

On X, Washington Post video journalist Jorge Ribas wrote ¹³  the word “‘transparency'” in response to CNN’s reporting about the FOIA request, in an apparent nod to Musk’s assertion that DOGE ¹⁴  is attempting to be transparent ¹⁵  in carrying out its operations.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network ¹⁶ and was authored by Eloise Goldsmith.