Data
Missing records
These records would settle claims people still argue about. Each one is withheld, sealed, destroyed, or was never produced.
Medicine
- Claim at issue: The manuscript was not submitted for publication for one reason: its results showed harm in vaccinated children.
The missing record: The first internal review of the draft, the reviewers' critiques and the initial study plan have not been released: Lead Stories (updated 31 October 2025) reports it asked Henry Ford Health for the reviewers' critiques, the study plan and an interview with Zervos, and records no response, while Henry Ford's statements of 26 September and 13 October 2025 describe the review without naming reviewers or publishing it. - Claim at issue: Henry Ford shelved the draft at the first internal peer review because of data and methodology problems, and never considered it for submission; the circulated copy may have been altered to look finished.
The missing record: The internal peer-review record that Henry Ford says shelved the draft, and any earlier version against which the 'altered' copy could be compared, are not public: Henry Ford's 13 October 2025 fact-check refers only to 'The first internal reviewers', and Lead Stories (31 October 2025) lists its request for the reviewers' critiques and the study plan as outstanding. - Claim at issue: CDC's statement that 98 percent of hospitalizations and deaths were among the unvaccinated used January-June 2021 data, when almost no one was vaccinated, and CDC counts anyone as unvaccinated unless more than two weeks past the second…
The missing record: CDC's underlying data for Director Walensky's 99.5 percent unvaccinated-share figure (preliminary state data, then a five-month study) was never published, as PolitiFact documents in its 22 July 2021 check quoting Walensky's 1 and 20 July 2021 statements. - Claim at issue: COVID-19 'emanated from a Fauci-funded Little Shop of Horrors in Wuhan'.
The missing record: The Wuhan Institute of Virology's laboratory notebooks and electronic files for the EcoHealth-subawarded work were never provided to NIH or EcoHealth; HHS OIG A-05-21-00025 records that WIV did not respond to the requests, and the HHS debarment memorandum (Exhibit 116) lists EcoHealth's failure to take active steps to obtain them as a ground. - Claim at issue: Roche withheld the full clinical study reports on Tamiflu from Cochrane for years, so the evidence on whether the drug reduces pneumonia and death could not be assessed.
The missing record: Roche's full clinical study reports and trial protocols for its Tamiflu trials were supplied to Cochrane only in part from 2010 (about 3,200 pages, which Roche called sufficient) and Roche undertook to release all of them in April 2013; Doshi et al., PLoS Medicine 9(4):e1001201 (2012) prints Roche's dated letters of 8 October 2009 to 26 April 2011, and the NAO memorandum (21 May 2013, paras 3.14-3.15) records the dispute and the April 2013 undertaking. - Claim at issue: Glaxo's Study 329 was fraudulent: it was ghostwritten, negative on all eight protocol-specified outcomes, hid at least eight suicidal children on Paxil against one on placebo, and was published with a conclusion that paroxetine was…
The missing record: The contemporaneous documentation of the analysis plan GSK claimed for Study 329, which the RIAT authors report GSK did not supply despite repeated requests, and the 77,000 pages of case report forms, which GSK made available only through a restricted remote-desktop portal (Le Noury et al., BMJ 2015;351:h4320, methods and limitations).
Defense
- Claim at issue: U.S. officials lied to the public about Afghanistan year after year while privately knowing the strategy was failing, and interviewees described explicit, sustained efforts to mislead.
The missing record: The unredacted names of 366 of the 428 interviewees (CRS R46197), the six audio recordings and the State Department-classified interview passages are withheld, and the court upheld those withholdings on 30 September 2021 (Washington Post Co. v. SIGAR, No. 18-2622, Dkt. 44, pp. 30-31, 47); Sopko told the Senate on 11 February 2020 that most indicia of success in training the Afghan military 'are now classified or we do not collect it' (S. Hrg. 116-203). - Claim at issue: The Lessons Learned interviews 'broadly resembled' the Pentagon Papers in showing the government's private view of the war and its determination to conceal it.
The missing record: Verbatim records that would test how closely the typed summaries track what interviewees said are limited: SIGAR's general counsel wrote on 23 February 2018 that 374 of 410 interviews had no audio or transcript (Complaint para. 23, Dkt. 1), and six audio recordings remain withheld in full, five of them on the ground that they contain classified information (Dkt. 44, pp. 30-31). - Claim at issue: Over the cold war the CIA spied on citizens, tapped telephones, opened first-class mail and conspired to commit murder 'on orders from the White House'.
The missing record: The records that would show who authorized the assassination plots are partly gone: the Church Committee's Interim Report (S. Rep. 94-465) records that CIA Director Helms ordered the working papers of the CIA's 1967 Inspector General study of the Castro, Trujillo and Diem allegations destroyed, that William Harvey's notes of White House 'urging' were destroyed, that the State Department cabled the Dominican station on 31 May 1961 to destroy all records of contacts with the dissidents, and that the Nixon files were not made available because of a court order. - Claim at issue: James Schlesinger's May 1973 order produced a CIA compilation of crimes that 'eventually ran to 693 potential violations', including plots against Castro, domestic surveillance, and drug tests on unwitting subjects.
The missing record: The 1973 compilation is public only in a 2007 version the National Security Archive calls 'substantially-excised' and more heavily excised than the 1977 release, after a FOIA request the Archive says was 15 years old (EBB 222 and EBB 435), and the MKULTRA files themselves were believed destroyed in 1973 on the orders of the retiring Office of Technical Service chief with the authorization of the DCI (Adm. Turner, joint hearing, 3 August 1977, p. 8). - Claim at issue: William Casey was 'ultimately responsible' for the arms-for-hostages deal, kept using Ghorbanifar after being told he was a con man, and President Reagan then told the nation on 13 November 1986 that no weapons were traded for hostages,…
The missing record: Walsh's Final Report, ch. 15, records Poindexter's testimony that he destroyed the signed December 1985 Finding on 21 November 1986, records that no copy of the signed Finding was located and that Reagan did not recall signing it, and records that Independent Counsel could not corroborate North's testimony that Casey told him to destroy the ledger of the contra fund; Casey resigned on 29 January 1987 'incapacitated by a brain tumor'. - Claim at issue: President Bush's 17 September 2001 directive 'set no limits on what the agency could do' and was the foundation for secret prisons where the CIA used torture; the CIA threw 'hundreds of suspects into secret jails in Afghanistan, Thailand,…
The missing record: The Senate Committee's 6,700-page study 'remains classified' and only the Findings and Conclusions and Executive Summary were released, with CIA-proposed redactions and 'significant alterations' negotiated with the CIA and White House (S. Rpt. 113-288, Foreword pp. 5-7 and note 6, PDF p. 39); the CIA also destroyed the interrogation videotapes of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri on 9 November 2005 (same report, PDF p. 473).
Politics
- Claim at issue: Some analysts used the access as a marketing and networking window into defense business, though the released documents show no quid pro quo between commentary and contracts.
The missing record: Contractor bid, contract and contracting-officer records, and any analyst-by-analyst review of awards, which the IG states it did not collect (DODIG-2012-025, p. 32) and which the January 2009 IG review was withdrawn for not producing (GAO B-316443, n.3). - Claim at issue: The Pentagon punished sustained criticism by cutting analysts off: critics lost access, and one analyst was "precipitously fired from the analysts group."
The missing record: Invitation lists and any written decision to remove an analyst: the IG found no criteria for inclusion or removal, no list of participants, and could not construct invitation lists from the documents (DODIG-2012-025, pp. 8-9, 13-14); the officials named in McCaffrey's removal did not recall a decision (p. 16). - Claim at issue: The analysts' business ties were hardly ever disclosed to viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks.
The missing record: The FCC's findings on disclosure by the broadcasters and analysts, reported as incomplete as of 21 November 2011 (DODIG-2012-025, p. 7; GAO B-316443, n.4). - Claim at issue: The Pentagon paid a contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to monitor the analysts' appearances.
The missing record: Omnitec invoices or task-level cost data for analyst-related reports, which the IG states the contracting-officer representative did not have (DODIG-2012-025, p. 23), and a total program cost, which the DOD Comptroller told GAO it could not calculate (GAO B-316443, p. 6). - Claim at issue: Banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates; the six largest banks' share was $4.8 billion, 23 percent of their combined net income while borrowing.
The missing record: Each borrower's internal records of how it invested Fed proceeds are not published by the Fed or any regulator; the article states the numbers 'aren't disclosed' (Bloomberg, 27 Nov 2011, section 'Added Income'), and the Fed's 6 Dec 2011 memo disputes the estimate without producing them. - Claim at issue: A federal court found that the government coerced or significantly encouraged the platforms' moderation of speech.
The missing record: Discovery to establish standing, permitted by order of 8 Nov 2024 (ECF 404), was stayed on 3 Feb 2025 (ECF 432), and the case ended by consent decree on 25 Mar 2026 with no merits findings and no admission, so no evidence beyond the preliminary-injunction discovery was produced (Consent Decree, Doc. 478, paras. 5, 10, 17).
Food
- Claim at issue: Dietary Guidelines advisory committees have included members with ties to the industries affected, as in Table 9, which lists the industry affiliations of members of the Dietary Guidelines 2000 Advisory Committee, and “In 2003, the Center…
The missing record: For the 2020 and 2025 committees the individual conflict-of-interest records are not public: the CSPI-led coalition letter of 27 January 2023 (Exhibit 553) says the nominee information on funding sources and affiliations 'has not been released to the public' and that OGE Form 450 'is exempt from public disclosure', and Senator Grassley's release of 25 May 2023 says the individual OGE 450 reports remain non-public and that HHS and USDA had not answered his March 2023 request for special-government-employee ethics waivers.
Religion
- Claim at issue: More than 1,000 child victims were identifiable from the church's own records, and the true number is in the thousands.
The missing record: The half million pages of subpoenaed diocesan records and the witness testimony remain under investigating-grand-jury secrecy (42 Pa.C.S. 4549(b)), as the Pa. Supreme Court states in its 27 July 2018 opinion, pp. 2-3 and n. 2. - Claim at issue: FBI behavioral analysts reviewed a significant portion of the evidence and identified seven recurring diocesan practices: euphemisms, biased investigations, treatment-provider bias, no public disclosure, continued financial support,…
The missing record: The FBI agents' grand jury testimony and the review materials they examined are not public; they sit inside the grand jury record the Pa. Supreme Court describes as subject to secrecy (27 July 2018 opinion, pp. 2-3). - Claim at issue: Kenneth Copeland's church declined to give the detailed accounting, audited financial statements, board names or compensation information, and pointed to an IRS church tax inquiry under section 7611 as the proper route.
The missing record: The church's compensation, credit-card, vehicle and audited-statement records were requested on 5 November 2007 and declined (Copeland overview pp. 1, 8, 10, 16; Q&A memorandum 7 July 2008); the memo says the Committee did not receive them (memo p. 2). - Claim at issue: The finances of the four non-responding ministries were never produced to the Committee; the ministries that complied (Meyer, Hinn) and White in part did produce financial statements.
The missing record: Audited statements, compensation figures and the 'detailed accounting' for Copeland, Dollar and Long were never delivered to the Committee (memo pp. 1-2; Copeland overview pp. 1, 8, 16; Dollar overview pp. 1, 7; Long overview pp. 1, 6, 8; Q&A memorandum 7 July 2008). The submissions that were delivered by Hinn, Meyer and White are not among the documents posted with the 6 January 2011 release, which attached the memo, four overviews, the Hinn and Meyer reform letters and two items of correspondence; the Committee said on 7 July 2008 that responses would not be made available until staff completed its review.
Destroyed
These records no longer exist. The documents give the order, the date and what was lost.
- CIA Director Helms ordered the working papers of the CIA Inspector General's 1967 study of the Castro, Trujillo and Diem assassination allegations destroyed when the study was complete (memorandum for the record, 23 May 1967, as cited by the Church Committee).
- The State Department cabled the CIA station in the Dominican Republic to destroy all records concerning contacts with dissidents, except the contingency plans and the 29 May 1961 cable. The Committee also records that Harvey's notes of White House urgings to develop an assassination capability had been destroyed.
- The retiring head of the Office of Technical Service, with the authorization of DCI Helms, destroyed the MKULTRA behavioral-modification files in 1973; Adm. Turner told the Senate it had been believed all such files were destroyed until a set of financial records was found in 1977.
- Poindexter destroyed the signed December 1985 Iran arms Finding on 21 November 1986, and North testified he destroyed the ledger of the contra fund in October or November 1986 at Casey's direction (Independent Counsel could not corroborate the Casey instruction).
- The CIA destroyed 92 videotapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri on 9 November 2005, the day after the Senate rejected an amendment to create a detainee commission. The destruction became public in December 2007. Special prosecutor John Durham closed his investigation on 8 November 2010 without recommending charges.
- NIAID senior adviser David Morens wrote in February 2021 that he had learned 'from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I'm FOIA'd but before the search starts', and that he had deleted earlier emails after forwarding them to Gmail. The House Select Subcommittee released the emails in May 2024; Morens testified on 22 May 2024 that he had not realized his government emails were federal records, and said Moore gave him no advice on avoiding FOIA.
Scope
A record is listed only where a document records its withholding, sealing or loss. Absence is never assumed. How a Record Gets Managed shows the sequence of acts behind these gaps, and The Response counts them by type.