Patterns
The Response
When a record threatens an institution, the documents show the same moves in every subject and across decades, from agencies, companies, courts and platforms. It states what was done and by whom, not why.
The pattern
The largest group is records withheld, delayed, redacted or classified. Next come acts against the person who raised the issue: sanctions, public attacks, restricted distribution and legal threats. The authors' own side also acted, mostly by suing for records. Some records were destroyed.
The record needed to check a claim is usually held by the party the claim concerns, and the first response is to keep it from view. Release came under compulsion (a court order, an ombudsman ruling, a subpoena, a guilty plea) only after a request was refused, delayed or redacted. Until then, the public argued without the record.
An act appears here only where a document records it. The absence of a record is not treated as evidence. Where an item rests on one side's own account, such as an author's complaint or a producer's press release, the item says whose account it is.
| Type | Medicine | Defense | Politics | Food | Religion | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Records withheld, delayed, redacted or classified | 23 | 17 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 60 |
| Records destroyed | 1 | 5 | 6 | |||
| Release or action only under compulsion | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 10 | |
| The messenger sanctioned or removed | 8 | 8 | ||||
| The messenger or the work discredited in public | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
| Legal threats and suits | 10 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 23 |
| Distribution restricted | 6 | 4 | 10 | |||
| Pressure on a third party | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 7 | |
| Oversight that acted late or in part | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Other documented acts | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Mechanism | Information | Medicine | Defense | Politics | Food | Religion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oversight paid for by the overseen | 1 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ||
| The study not run | 4 | 18 | 16 | 2 | 2 | |
| Known inside, disclosed late | 1 | 20 | 7 | 9 | ||
| The liability shield | 1 | 8 | 1 | |||
| Managing the narrative | 32 | 6 | 2 | 16 | 2 |
Records withheld, delayed, redacted or classified
Records were denied, delayed, redacted, classified or never produced. The documented forms are FOIA denials, missed deadlines, heavy redaction, data that stopped being collected, and releases made in pieces over years.
- ICAN says it submitted a FOIA request on 26 June 2020 for 'All documents in the CDC's possession which compare the health outcomes of children that have received vaccines with children that have never received any vaccines'. CDC's final response letter, dated 29 July 2020 and answering a request dated 13 July 2020, states: 'A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request. The CDC has not conducted a study of health outcomes in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations.' ICAN reports that CDC had objected on 6 July that the request was 'Broad' and 'Vague' and on 9 July that the narrowed request was 'not sufficiently quantified'.
- ICAN and Mississippi Medical Professionals for Informed Consent sued the CDC and HHS in the Southern District of Mississippi (No. 1:25-cv-135) under FOIA. The complaint states that their 9 April 2025 request for 'All data in the Vaccine Safety Datalink database. Alternatively, provide access to the database' was acknowledged the same day as 25-01124-FOIA and that, as of filing, the agencies had made no determination, given no completion date and produced nothing.
- USDA (Stoody, for the departments) told a 2019 meeting that it would not adopt NASEM's recommendation to publish a list of provisional Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee appointees for public comment, citing privacy of provisional appointees; the coalition letter says the departments named no alternative method of disclosing members' conflicts after appointment.
- HHS and USDA released a four-page aggregate report of conflicts on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee that does not attribute them to individual members. Senator Grassley stated the individual OGE 450 reports were not released and that the departments had not answered his March 2023 request for ethics-waiver information, and asked that DGAC suspend its writing until conflicts were resolved.
- CDC answered a June 2021 ICAN request for V-safe data (ICAN's number IR0519) with a statement that a search of its records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to the request; ICAN appealed, and a follow-up request (IR0547) drew the same answer.
Show more
- CDC denied the Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice's request of 3 Jan 2023 for expedited processing (letter of 4 Jan 2023, stating the requester had not shown it was primarily engaged in disseminating information), denied a fee waiver, and invoked 'unusual circumstances' to extend its time to respond. The court later held the expedited-processing denial wrongful and ordered a full fee waiver.
- CDC issued a final determination withholding all V-safe free-text response entries, on the stated grounds that many contain unsolicited personally identifiable information (names, birthdates, social security numbers) and that CDC lacked the resources to review the data manually and segregate non-exempt portions.
- CDC did not resolve the plaintiff's administrative appeals within the statutory time limits. On 3 July 2023 it notified the plaintiff that it would stop processing the final-determination appeal because suit had been filed, and gave untimely notice that it had closed the fee-waiver appeal as moot; the court records that CDC's 12 Apr 2023 email on the fee-waiver appeal was undeliverable and CDC did not try again for nearly three months.
- In litigation CDC moved for summary judgment and argued that review of about 7.8 million free-text responses was unreasonably burdensome. Its FOIA officer's declaration estimated 59 years for one analyst, and CDC stated its FOIA office has thirteen analysts. It also argued that its MedDRA-coded data would inform the public better than the free text. The court denied CDC's cross-motion and ruled that blanket exemption claims covering a mass of records are impermissible.
- CDC redacted personal identifiers inside the released free-text responses; the redactions appear in the data as '(b)(6)' (the FOIA personal-privacy exemption marker), which the book states on printed p. 8 and which recurs throughout the printed entries (868 lines of the book's text contain the marker). The book also replaced names, phone numbers and emails that CDC left unredacted with [name], [phone] and [email].
- The first two productions (780,000 entries, about 523,000 people) carried no submission dates. The plaintiff's lawyer said the group was asking CDC for the dates, and a CDC spokesperson declined to answer many questions from the reporter, including those about entry dates. ICAN's later 'updated' files carry a response date.
- SIGAR denied the Post's 24 August 2016 FOIA request for the Lessons Learned interview of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in January 2017 under Exemption 5; the Post appealed, SIGAR's appellate authority remanded in May 2017, SIGAR did not respond on remand, and the Post sued in October 2017 (No. 1:17-cv-2114).
- SIGAR produced the Flynn record of interview to the Post redacted in December 2017, with fewer redactions in January 2018, and the audio in February 2018; the first suit was dismissed by stipulation on 27 February 2018.
- SIGAR's general counsel John Arlington wrote to the Post on 23 and 28 February 2018 that SIGAR is 'prohibited by law' from identifying sources who want anonymity and would remove the names of interviewees from the notes before release, citing the Inspector General Act. The Post's 17 April 2018 letter answered that the cited provision applies only to reports made through an inspector general's website link.
- SIGAR is alleged to have produced records of 35 interviews by April 2018 and 42 of 47 'on the record' interviews, 7 of 17 audio recordings and 86 of 363 'on background' interviews by 31 August 2018, and not to have answered the Post's letters of 17 April, 31 August and its email of 14 May 2018 asking for a production timetable. These are the plaintiff's allegations.
- By June 2019 SIGAR had produced hundreds of records with redactions and withholdings under FOIA exemptions; CRS reports that the final batch arrived in August 2019 after other federal agencies reviewed it for classified material.
- SIGAR redacted the names of 366 of 428 interviewees and identified 62, and in court filings called the interviewees whistleblowers and informants who might suffer professional or other harm if named.
- SIGAR referred interview records to the State Department and other agencies, and the State Department classified portions under Exemption 1; its declarant stated that the documents 'may not have been classified before the agency received the Post's FOIA request' and cited Executive Order 13526 section 1.7(d), which permits classification after a FOIA request. Whitlock states that the State Department, Defense Department and Drug Enforcement Administration classified material after the fact.
- The court granted SIGAR summary judgment on the records withheld under Exemptions 1 and 3 (State Department classification), identifying information in off-the-record, on-background and non-attribution records, interview codes, interview locations for 44 records, six audio recordings, and the names of low-ranking officials, private citizens (116) and foreign nationals (146) and of third parties named in interviews. It denied SIGAR's deliberative-process withholdings and ordered release of several passages withheld under the presidential communications privilege. SIGAR's declarant stated that a copy of the master list of interview codes and names may have been removed from SIGAR's offices by a former employee.
- The Rumsfeld snowflake of 17 April 2002 to Doug Feith (Secret, 'Help!') carries a 'DECLASSIFIED IN PART' stamp from the Chief Records Declassification Division, Washington Headquarters Services; the book's endnote dates the partial declassification to 22 September 2010. The text withheld is not identifiable from the OCR.
- Sopko told the Senate subcommittee that most indicia of measuring the Afghan military's training were 'now classified or we do not collect it', that 'we allow the Afghan government to classify what I can tell you', that SIGAR has a list of what has been classified that 'keeps growing', and that 'every time we find something that looks like it is going negative, it gets classified or it is no longer relevant.' He agreed with Sen. Hawley that metrics showing negative progress are abandoned or classified.
- Sopko told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that 'when there's too much failure, classify it or don't report it.'
- The Church Committee reports that the CIA denied it access to the names of its media agents and of the organizations involved, to records on media relationships before 1967 (other than screened files), and to certain titles and authors of propaganda books published after 1967; the Committee saw summaries and about 20 files screened by the Agency with names removed by agreement. It states it has 'far from the full picture'.
- The CIA released the 'Family Jewels' compilation in 2007 in a version the National Security Archive describes as substantially excised, in response to a National Security Archive FOIA request the Archive says was 15 years old.
- In response to a 1999 National Security Archive FOIA lawsuit, the CIA cited foreign government information and foreign relations and released all but a single sentence of Donald Wilber's 200-page internal history of the 1953 Iran coup. The New York Times obtained the history by a leak and posted it in April 2000. The CIA released a version in 2013 that states the agency planned and helped implement the coup. The Archive's 2013 essay also reports the State Department's Iran retrospective volume of Foreign Relations of the United States was still unpublished and describes CIA and British objections.
- The CIA answered FOIA requests on its 1954 Guatemala operation with 'neither confirm nor deny'. A 1979 FOIA lawsuit led to the assassination-planning records being gathered and withheld on national security grounds. On 23 May 1997 the CIA released about 1,400 pages of an estimated 100,000 or more, and removed the 58 names on its list of targets and other names.
- National Security Agency officials tried to block release of the Hanyok Tonkin study. The National Security Archive says release came on 1 December 2005 largely through FOIA requester Matthew Aid, who requested the study in April 2004 and told the New York Times of the attempt; the Times reported on 31 October 2005 that NSA had kept the study secret since 2001.
- The CIA returned the Senate study's Executive Summary on 1 August 2014 with proposed redactions. The Committee states significant alterations were made to reach a releasable version: dates replaced by general time frames, true names replaced by pseudonyms, then all pseudonyms and some job titles redacted by the executive branch. The full 6,700-page study remains classified.
- The Intercept requested the EcoHealth grant records from NIH on 3 September 2020. NIH's records show the year-four progress report (due April 2018) was submitted on 16 September 2020, less than two weeks later. The first release omitted the year-five report, and The Intercept sued under FOIA for the missing reports.
- NIH released 2016 internal emails of its ad hoc committee that reviewed EcoHealth's Wuhan experiments to U.S. Right to Know only as a partial production, filed in USRTK v. NIH, No. 24-cv-02785 (D.D.C.), a FOIA suit still open in 2025.
- FDA proposed to release the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine licensing records at 500 pages a month, which the plaintiffs said meant about 55 years for more than 329,000 pages. Judge Pittman rejected it and ordered 12,000 pages by the end of January 2022 and 55,000 pages every 30 days, permitting redaction only where a 'privilege, exemption, or exclusion' applies. He wrote the request 'is of paramount public importance'.
- CDC declined a FOIA request from the Informed Consent Action Network for v-safe data, while giving deidentified v-safe data to its contractor Oracle. ICAN sued; under a court order CDC released the check-box fields of over 10 million users and withheld the free-text responses.
- CDC withheld about 7.8 million v-safe free-text responses (October 2020 to December 2022), citing personal-information review that a CDC declaration put at 59 analyst-years for its 13-analyst FOIA office. Judge Kacsmaryk found the burden claim unpersuasive, granted summary judgment to the requester and ordered production with exempt personal information redacted.
- Roche declined Cochrane reviewers' request for its Tamiflu trial data on 8 October 2009, saying 'a similar meta analysis is currently commencing'; on 8 December 2009 it proposed a confidentiality agreement that the reviewers declined because it barred disclosing 'the existence and terms of this Agreement'.
- Roche supplied partial reports for ten trials in early 2010 and wrote on 20 August 2010 that 'around 3,200 pages of information have already been provided', asking for the reviewers' 'full analysis plan for review by Roche' before releasing more; it wrote on 26 April 2011 'You have all the detail you need to undertake a review' and on 20 January 2012 that it 'has made full clinical study data available to health authorities around the world'. The authors report these were subsets of the full reports.
- Cochrane withdrew its 2009 Tamiflu review in February 2010 after a query about its reliance on a Roche-sponsored meta-analysis of ten trials, eight unpublished; the NAO describes a 'prolonged dispute between the Cochrane team and Roche concerning access to the original data, conducted increasingly in the public domain'. In April 2013 Roche told Cochrane it would release the reports of all Tamiflu trials it sponsored, edited for patient confidentiality and commercial interests.
- Roche announced on 27 February 2013 that it would set up an independent expert body to assess requests for patient-level data and said health authorities 'need to remain the gatekeeper for drug assessment and approval'; Sense About Science director Tracey Brown (an AllTrials initiator) said 'Does Roche expect applause for announcing that it will continue to keep clinical trial findings hidden?', and Carl Heneghan said confidentiality clauses would likely apply.
- The European Medicines Agency refused the Nordic Cochrane Centre's request of 29 June 2007 for clinical study reports and protocols for orlistat and rimonabant (decisions of 20 August and 17 September 2007, citing commercial interests) and maintained the refusal on 26 February 2009; the European Ombudsman inspected the documents on 6 October 2009, found no commercially confidential information, and on 19 May 2010 found the refusal maladministration. EMA accepted the draft recommendation on 31 August 2010 and undertook to grant access within three months.
- Roche declined Cochrane reviewers' request for Tamiflu trial data on 8 October 2009 ('a similar meta analysis is currently commencing'), proposed a confidentiality agreement barring disclosure of 'the existence and terms of this Agreement' that the reviewers declined, supplied about 3,200 pages of partial reports in 2010, and wrote on 26 April 2011 'You have all the detail you need to undertake a review and so we have decided not to supply any more detailed information'; Roche's Donald MacLean refused to answer clarification questions sent by Chris Del Mar on 13 April 2011.
- The Cochrane update states that GSK offered the reviewers individual patient data and answered their queries, 'but Roche did not provide us with complete clinical study reports'; Roche stated it had provided 3,200 pages and that more detailed reports were on a password-protected site for investigators. The reviewers report that Roche supplied the full clinical study reports for its oseltamivir programme during 2013.
- After the RIAT researchers asked on 14 June 2013 whether GSK intended to restore any of its trials, GSK did not signal an intent to publish a corrected version of Study 329; it later made all 275 case report forms (about 77,000 pages) available only through a remote-desktop portal open to users approved by GSK, and did not supply contemporaneous documentation of a claimed analysis plan 'despite having repeatedly requested it'.
- GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty to failing to report Avandia safety data to FDA, one of three counts in the plea it entered under the $3 billion resolution announced by the Department of Justice.
- DOD's FOIA office took the Times request of 28 April 2006 for records on the Pentagon's interactions with TV and radio military analysts through a series of interim releases, the first on 19 October 2006 (687 pages), before the suit and the last on 30 April 2008, ten days after publication.
- DOD's Initial Denial Authority for the Office of the ASD(Public Affairs), the Deputy ASD(Public Affairs) for Internal Communications/Public Liaison who ran the analyst outreach, withheld parts of 34 pages under the deliberative-process exemption, 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(5).
- DOD withheld the transcript of the 18 April 2006 Rumsfeld-Pace briefing to analysts, then released it in its entirety on appeal.
- DOD redacted the releases under exemptions (b)(1), (b)(2), (b)(3), (b)(5) and (b)(6), including 331 CENTCOM pages redacted as classified under Executive Order 12958 section 1.4(a), (b), (d) and (g); three Joint Staff pages were referred to the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Joint Staff e-mails on a classified server remained under review as of 31 March 2008.
- DOD Inspector General withdrew its 14 January 2009 report finding no competitive advantage for contractor-affiliated analysts, with a memorandum from the Deputy IG for Policy and Oversight, and declined further work because the program had ended and the officials had left; the report and work papers are not in the public record.
- DOD did not provide GAO its legal views and gave no formal written response to GAO's request for information; the Office of General Counsel referred GAO to OASD-PA and the Comptroller.
- The Board of Governors denied Bloomberg's FOIA request of 7 Apr 2008 for Bear Stearns loan-collateral records on 30 Sept 2008, stating staff 'found no documents that are responsive,' and denied Bloomberg's appeal on 7 Nov 2008.
- The Board answered Bloomberg's 21 May 2008 request for loan records on 9 Dec 2008, after Bloomberg had sued, saying it held 231 responsive pages and withholding all of them under FOIA Exemptions 4 and 5, and asserting that records held by the New York Fed are not subject to FOIA; it had extended its response time on 19 June 2008.
- Congress, in Dodd-Frank sec. 1103 (new Federal Reserve Act sec. 11(s)(6)), made borrower and counterparty information for discount-window lending and post-enactment open market transactions confidential, including under FOIA Exemption 3, until a mandatory release date of the eighth calendar quarter after the transaction (or one year after a facility terminates), unless the Chairman orders earlier release.
- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered an interim report with all references to any petitioner redacted, each marked 'REDACTED -- ONGOING APPELLATE LITIGATION,' with release by 14 August 2018; the released PDF carries the notation on many pages.
- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court (Justice Todd; Baer and Dougherty concurring; Chief Justice Saylor dissenting) made the redaction of the identifying information of 11 petitioners permanent.
- The Diocese of Scranton produced no records on Fr. Joseph Hammond in its initial response to the 1 September 2016 subpoena and told the grand jury through counsel it had none.
- The Commission recommended that its report on Case Study 28 (Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat), Case Study 35 (Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne) and Case Study 42 (Anglican Diocese of Newcastle) be tabled with redactions, and Volume 16 applied the same redactions; the Commission stated the ground as its Terms of Reference duty not to prejudice criminal proceedings.
- The Commission recommended that its reports on Case Study 43 (Maitland-Newcastle) and Case Study 44 (Armidale and Parramatta) not be tabled or published until criminal proceedings ended.
- Copeland overview: Eagle Mountain International Church filed the property-tax-exemption list of salaries and board payments with Tarrant County until the church, according to the overview, 'convinced a former Tarrant County appraiser' that it need not; the former appraiser told staff he made that decision. The salary list is no longer public. The church's 2008 aircraft exemption claim was denied for incomplete information and the county settled the suit in March of the year of the overview.
- White overview: the consolidated audited financial statements of Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries for 2004 to 2006 were submitted to the Committee and 'at one time' posted on the ministries' websites; the overview says they are 'no longer publicly available'.
- Counsel for World Changers Church International told the Committee the church would not provide information voluntarily and raised a subpoena (letter to Grassley and Baucus on or before 6 December 2007); counsel's later letter of 5 June 2008 recorded the Committee's position on First Amendment rights.
- The FBI refused to produce or confirm records of payments to Twitter in response to a Judicial Watch FOIA request, produced 44 redacted pages after suit, and the D.D.C. upheld withholding of the quarterly payment totals for 2016 to 2023 under Exemption 7(E).
Records destroyed
Records were destroyed, deleted or lost. The documents record who gave the order, on what date, and what was destroyed.
- 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.
Show more
- 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.
Release or action only under compulsion
Records or action came after a court order, an ombudsman ruling, a subpoena or a guilty plea. These acts move toward disclosure, and the gap between the request and the order is part of the record.
- CDC released the V-safe check-the-box data to ICAN under an agreed scheduling order entered in ICAN v. CDC, No. 1:22-CV-481-RP (W.D. Tex.), after two lawsuits; CDC's 30 Sept 2022 letter supplied download links for that data only, and the free-text fields stayed outside the release.
- Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk (N.D. Tex.) granted the plaintiff summary judgment and ordered CDC to produce all free-text responses with registrant numbers, first-in first-out, on a minimum monthly schedule from 390,000 by 15 Feb 2024 to a cumulative 7,800,000 by 15 Jan 2025. The order allows CDC to bank excess processing, directs good-faith cooperation and joint filings on disputes, and requires joint status reports on 1 April, July, October and January.
- Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted each side's summary judgment motion in part: she upheld SIGAR's withholdings under Exemptions 7(A), 7(E) and 7(F), held that interviewees and named third parties had a privacy interest outweighing the public interest in their identities except for 'on the record' interviews, and ordered the State Department and SIGAR to justify the Exemption 1, 3 and 5 withholdings, the interview codes, locations and audio.
- After the 2020 order SIGAR released some previously withheld material by 30 October 2020, including Exemption 5 passages from nearly forty records of interview, two audio recordings (Audio Nos. 2 and 8), most interview locations, and later 63 records in full after a line-by-line review.
- The Defense Department held most of Rumsfeld's snowflakes, an estimated 59,000 pages, confidential until the National Security Archive's FOIA lawsuit led it to release them on a rolling basis from 2017; it had made a selected number public in 2011 with Rumsfeld's memoir.
Show more
- The House Select Subcommittee subpoenaed Margaret Moore, the former head of NIAID's FOIA office, for deposition on 4 October 2024. Her counsel said she would invoke the Fifth Amendment, and Fox News reported she did.
- The Fed released 2007-2010 discount-window borrower names, amounts and dates on 31 Mar 2011, ten days after certiorari was denied, after notifying each affected institution; borrower names for the emergency facilities and TAF had been withheld until 1 Dec 2010.
- Supervising Judge Krumenacker accepted Report 1 for public filing (orders of 27 April and 22 May 2018), let named individuals file responses within thirty days, and on 31 May and 5 June 2018 refused to redact individual findings, writing that no provision permits redaction of an accepted report.
- The Diocese of Erie, on advice of counsel, withheld material in response to the grand jury subpoena; the Office of Attorney General obtained the documents with a search warrant.
- The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the Stanford Internet Observatory, which ran the Election Integrity Partnership named in the court record, and stated that Stanford did not produce the Jira ticket data by the 28 Apr 2023 return date. The Committee's June 2024 letter states that, according to public reporting, the Observatory would be discontinued.
The messenger sanctioned or removed
A person or body lost a post, a membership, a budget, an appropriation or an account after raising the issue.
- HHS suspended EcoHealth Alliance on 15 May 2024 and debarred it for five years, and moved to debar Peter Daszak, on grounds that include the late year-five report and a lockout claim that NIH's forensic review contradicted. EcoHealth ended Daszak's employment effective 6 January 2025.
- Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson wrote to Gøtzsche that he had breached Cochrane's Spokesperson Policy in two of three complaints (a letter on Cochrane paper requesting data from the Stanley Medical Research Institute, and a power of attorney giving the Nordic Cochrane Centre's address for a complaint to a Dutch disciplinary court) and that failure to comply in future 'will result in disciplinary action, which may include... the de-registration of the Nordic Cochrane Centre'.
- Cochrane's Governing Board met on 13 September, voted on 25 September unanimously to end Gøtzsche's membership of Cochrane and his posts as Board member and Nordic Cochrane Centre director, and issued a statement on 26 September; it found by eleven votes that he breached the Trustees' Code of Conduct and gave as grounds 'an ongoing, consistent pattern of disruptive and inappropriate behaviours', presenting personal views as Cochrane's (including as an expert witness in a criminal trial), and public statements that breached his confidentiality obligations.
- Denmark's Health Minister Ellen Trane Nørby ordered an evaluation of the state-funded Nordic Cochrane Centre (about 18 million DKK a year in the 2019 finance bill), saying it had been funded for 25 years without any evaluation; she told the press she had started it about a month earlier. Her letter to Gøtzsche of 19 December 2018, as he quotes it, dates the decision to August 2018 and says the evaluation would run in 2019.
- The Danish Ministry of Health sent Rigshospitalet a letter announcing that payment of the Centre's finance-act appropriation would be withheld from the fourth quarter of 2018 until Rigshospitalet had created the basis for compliance with the grant's conditions, including that the Centre may be part of the international Cochrane Collaboration (the letter is Appendix 6 to Gøtzsche's complaint; his description). The minister's letter of 19 December 2018, as he quotes it, says the funds 'are no longer being withheld' and payment had resumed.
Show more
- Rigshospitalet's management suspended Gøtzsche during an official call, barred him from his office and barred staff from contacting him, according to Gøtzsche; he states the hospital offered a 'mutual agreement on resignation' with ten months' extra pay and a clause that 'the content of the agreement is not communicated to third parties', which he declined.
- Rigshospitalet announced in a press release that it relieved Gøtzsche of his post as head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre 'indtil videre' (for now); deputy director Karsten Juhl Jørgensen became acting head. The Ministry of Health had stated that the centre must meet the conditions for its funding.
- Rigshospitalet recommended Gøtzsche's dismissal to the Capital Region on 7 January 2019, and the Capital Region decided on dismissal on 31 January 2019, the last weekday of the month; his employment ended on 30 April 2019. Rigshospitalet's stated ground, as he quotes it, was that it had lost confidence that he could continue to manage the Centre.
The messenger or the work discredited in public
An institution, a company or its staff attacked the credibility of a person, a work or a source in a statement, a column, a press release or a review.
- Steven Milloy (JunkScience.com) published a Fox News opinion column on the first edition the day of publication, disputing three figures in the book and stating that Nestle omitted 'her five-year stint as a CSPI board member'. The column cites no board record, and no board record was found.
- Three anonymous Amazon.com reader reviews of the first edition were posted two weeks before publication, attacking the author for ignoring 'will power' and 'personal responsibility'. The author's 2013 preface reproduces a statement by Sheldon Rampton that these reviews and Milloy's were posted on 22 February 2002. The posting dates and authorship are the author's and Rampton's account; no platform record was read.
- SIGAR Inspector General John Sopko wrote to the Post that the Afghanistan Papers is 'not a "secret" history'. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said the Pentagon would 'quibble with the idea that we weren't providing' accurate information, Defense Secretary Mark Esper called the idea of a large-scale conspiracy 'just, to me, ridiculous', and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the assessments 'were never intended to deceive neither the Congress nor the American people.' CRS records no Army statement.
- The CIA issued a press release when the book appeared saying Weiner had the sources to write a balanced history but his bias 'overwhelms his scholarship'.
- CIA historian Nicholas Dujmovic reviewed the book in the CIA's journal Studies in Intelligence, calling it 'a 600-page op-ed piece masquerading as serious history' and factually unreliable, and the title scene invented.
Show more
- ABPI chief executive Stephen Whitehead, at a PharmaTimes debate with Goldacre, accused him of using 'The Big Lie' and conceded the ABPI had never set up a system to check that members followed existing data-disclosure rules, while agreeing summary results should be published for all trials: 'It's not about what, it's about how'.
- Goldacre published a post (14 December 2012) saying the ABPI chief executive and president had falsely told MPs and journalists over many years that he refused to engage with them, described an 'energetic personal smear campaign' by the ABPI, and published his letter to Whitehead asking for a list of the people misled. This is an act by the author's side.
- Cochrane's leadership (Steering Group co-chairs Lisa Bero and Cindy Farquhar, CEO Mark Wilson, Editor in Chief David Tovey) published a statement that Gøtzsche's views on the benefits and harms of psychiatric drugs 'are not those of the organization', after his MailOnline article of 15 September 2015 'Prescription pills are Britain's third biggest killer'; Cochrane's letter of 9 June 2015 had already asked him to stop using the title 'Director, Nordic Cochrane Centre' when writing or speaking on projects that are not Cochrane reviews or methodology.
- Cochrane's Editor in Chief David Tovey and Deputy Editor Karla Soares-Weiser published a response to the 27 July 2018 BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine article by Gøtzsche and Tom Jefferson on Cochrane's HPV vaccine review, stating that the article 'substantially overstated' its criticisms and that the review did not miss nearly half of the eligible trials.
- Chairman Bernanke sent letters to the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee chairs and ranking members enclosing a Board staff memo, 'Correction of Recent Press Reports Regarding Federal Reserve Emergency Lending During the Financial Crisis,' stating that recent articles 'contained a variety of egregious errors and mistakes'; the letters do not name Bloomberg.
- Cardinal Wuerl sent a letter to priests of the Archdiocese of Washington disputing the report's account of his Pittsburgh tenure, with a fact sheet stating the report does not distinguish between allegations and proven facts.
- Attorney General Shapiro (the report's presenting office) wrote to Pope Francis on 25 July 2018 and said at the 14 August 2018 press conference that petitioners had 'concealed their identities through sealed court filings' and sought to 'bury the sexual abuse'; the petitioners cited these statements as prejudicial.
Legal threats and suits
Cease-and-desist letters, lawsuits and disciplinary complaints, brought by either side.
- Henry Ford Health states it has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the makers of an upcoming 'documentary', saying the film 'falsely and dangerously claims the health system suppressed a draft of a research paper'. The statement gives no date for the letter and does not describe its demands.
- Michigan Public reports that Henry Ford Health sent the cease-and-desist letter to the makers of 'An Inconvenient Study' and quotes it as condemning 'the purposeful twisting of information and the spread of disinformation'. The report gives no date or demands and records no reply from ICAN.
- A Substack reviewer of the film quotes the Henry Ford letter as alleging 'false, misleading, and defamatory statements' that 'violate Michigan and federal law'. The reviewer gives no date or demands.
- The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and others sued the Secretary of Agriculture under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Freedom of Information Act over the appointment and operation of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for Year 2000 (No. 99-3107, D.D.C.); Judge Robertson decided the case on 30 September 2000. Only the opinion's first paragraph was read, so the records sought and the holdings are not stated here.
- The Post wrote to SIGAR on 31 August 2018 asking SIGAR not to force a second lawsuit and stating that it would request attorney's fees and costs if it had to litigate. This is an act by the work's own side.
Show more
- The Washington Post Company sued SIGAR in the D.D.C. for the full Lessons Learned interview records and audio (No. 18-2622), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. This is an act by the work's own side.
- Children's Health Defense sued Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, the Poynter Institute and Science Feedback over Facebook's warning labels, fact-checks and donation-button restrictions (filed August 2020). The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal 2-1, holding that the harm came from Meta's own policy and that CHD alleged no government coercion or agreement; Judge Collins dissented in part. Press reports (Mealey's, MediaPost) say the Supreme Court later denied certiorari.
- Kennedy and Children's Health Defense, as plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden, moved for a preliminary injunction against federal officials' contacts with platforms. The district judge held the motion pending Murthy, found Kennedy likely to succeed against the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI and CISA defendants, denied it as to State Department, NIAID, FDA, Treasury, EAC and Commerce defendants, and stayed the order until the Supreme Court acted in Missouri v. Biden.
- AbbVie asked the EU General Court to annul EMA's January 2013 decision to release three Humira clinical study reports; the Court's President granted interim measures blocking release on 25 April 2013, and the Vice-President of the Court of Justice overturned that order on 28 November 2013. EMA and AbbVie then agreed a redacted release in 2014. (The Ombudsman's decision also covers the parallel InterMune case only in outline; InterMune is named in press reports of the same April 2013 orders.)
- Pari Pharma, PTC Therapeutics and MSD Animal Health each sued EMA to stop it releasing documents they had submitted (a clinical study report in PTC's case); the General Court dismissed all three challenges on 6 February 2018 because the companies gave no concrete evidence of commercial harm.
- Lawyers for LBC sent Goldacre a letter in early February 2009 demanding he remove from his Bad Science blog a 44-minute clip of a Jeni Barnett broadcast, claiming it infringed the station's copyright; Goldacre removed it. This concerns the author's earlier blog, not the book.
- Gøtzsche, through a Dutch attorney, filed a complaint against Professor Anton Loonen with the Regional Disciplinary Court for Healthcare at Eindhoven, an act by the author's own side that Wilson's e-mail lists as one of the three complaints considered.
- Gøtzsche wrote in Politiken that he and his lawyer would assess lawsuits for damages against Rigshospitalet for unjustified firing and against Cochrane for 'seriously defamatory statements', an act by the author's own side; on 21 June 2019 he filed a complaint with the Danish Ombudsman about the dismissal.
- The Times sued DOD in S.D.N.Y. (No. 07 Civ. 7481, RJS) over the request; GAO records that documents were released under court order. The filing date is given as 23 August 2007 by GAO's docket citation and as 12 September 2007 by Columbia Journalism Review.
- After the district court's 24 Aug 2009 judgment for Bloomberg, the Board appealed to the Second Circuit, and the Clearing House Association (the banks' joint association) intervened and appealed; the court affirmed on 19 Mar 2010 and held the Board's mission-impairment ground is not an Exemption 4 basis.
- The Board and the Clearing House Association petitioned for rehearing en banc on 3 May 2010; the Second Circuit denied the petitions on 20 Aug 2010.
- The Clearing House Association petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari on 26 Oct 2010; the federal respondent filed on 18 Feb 2011 saying the Second Circuit erred on both Exemption 4 holdings and opposing review because of Dodd-Frank; the Court denied the petition on 21 Mar 2011, Justice Kagan taking no part.
- Dozens of individuals, mostly clergy, filed petitions in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court challenging release of Report 1; the Court stayed the 23 June release by order of 20 June 2018 (per curiam opinion 25 June).
- The Diocese of Pittsburgh filed a response contesting the report's attribution of 'circle of secrecy' to Bishop Wuerl and its secret-archive, euphemism and investigation findings.
- Petitioners wrote to the special master (Judge John M. Cleland) alleging the Attorney General leaked grand jury information twice despite the redaction order; the Attorney General denied it.
- Copeland overview: attorneys for Eagle Mountain International Church / Kenneth Copeland Ministries contacted former employees after the Committee investigation began and reminded them that they had signed confidentiality agreements; several former employees told staff they feared being sued.
- White overview: Without Walls International Church requires employees to sign a confidentiality agreement; at least one former employee received a letter from the church's attorneys reminding them of it; several former staff who wanted to talk to staff were afraid of being sued.
- Committee memo and Q&A: some of the four churches warned informants that they would be sued if they breached confidentiality agreements, some informants were too frightened to speak even anonymously, and former employees received phone calls reminding them of their agreements and threatening suits; staff decided against subpoenaing informants for that reason.
Distribution restricted
Platform removals, advertising rejections, delistings and outages that limited how a work or a person reached readers.
- ICAN says Verizon customers who tried to reach AnInconvenientStudy.com and related pages received a 'server cannot be found' error, and that ICAN is collecting screenshots and account details from affected users. The release carries no Verizon statement; it is labeled a paid press release.
- Instagram permanently removed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account. A Facebook spokesperson said: 'We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.' Facebook left his Facebook page up.
- Meta removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Children's Health Defense, the organization Kennedy chairs and that carries the book in its series. A Meta spokesman said: 'We removed these accounts for repeatedly violating our policies.'
- The New York Times declined Skyhorse's advertisement for the book. Skyhorse's publisher Tony Lyons quotes the Times as first saying 'We cannot accept ads that contain ad hominem attacks', later 'we can't accept the ad due to misinformation', and then 'The Times retains the right to decline an advertisement offered to us'.
- Twitter refused to let Skyhorse advertise the book, and YouTube took down a televised book signing and discussion of it. The source is Lyons's own account; no platform statement was found.
Show more
- Amazon rejected a Skyhorse promotion for the book, with the message that the ad 'contains content that is not allowed for advertising' and asking Skyhorse to remove 'any content related to political campaigns, elections, or political issues of public debate'. Skyhorse is the source of the account.
- Twitter blocked users from sharing links to the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented users who had already shared it from tweeting until they deleted the tweets; Facebook 'temporarily demoted' the story pending fact-checking.
- Twitter suspended the account of Joe Hoft, brother of plaintiff Jim Hoft, after a post of Hunter Biden photographs, citing its rule against sharing private intimate media without consent (the stated rule comes from Hoft's own declaration as quoted by the Court).
- Facebook fact-checked plaintiff Jill Hines's posts from October 2020, restricted her account in May 2022 and issued a warning in April 2023; the Court found only some of these linked to government communications.
- Twitter, under Musk, throttled or labeled links to Substack, Taibbi's publisher; Substack's chief executive said links were severely throttled and Taibbi announced he was leaving the platform. Musk replied that Substack links were never blocked and that Taibbi's statement was false.
Pressure on a third party
Pressure on a body that was not the target: a government on a platform, an industry on a regulator or on an international organization, a funder on a recipient.
- The Sugar Association wrote to WHO Director-General Brundtland that it would ask Congress to 'challenge future funding' of the U.S. contribution of $406 million, over the WHO/FAO report TRS 916 that the book cites (afterword, para 1677). Senators Craig (R-ID) and Breaux (D-LA) wrote to two cabinet secretaries, as quoted by CSPI.
- A coalition of food industry groups asked HHS Secretary Thompson on 20 March 2003 to intervene against the WHO/FAO report, Senators Breaux and Craig asked him on 28 March, and the senators also wrote Agriculture Secretary Veneman. AP reports Thompson had not responded before the report's 23 April release; Sugar Association president Andrew Briscoe wrote to the WHO director-general attacking the report.
- White House officials pressed Facebook in 2021 to remove the accounts of the 'disinformation dozen', twelve people that include Kennedy. The Supreme Court recorded the request and held that the plaintiff before it had not shown a link between it and the moderation she experienced; it did not decide the First Amendment question.
- Meta's chief executive wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that in 2021 senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, 'repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire'.
- Gøtzsche's complaint states that Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson, in e-mails to the Ministry of Health and Rigshospitalet obtained under Danish freedom-of-information law by his lawyer Poul Heidmann (Appendix 2), requested his dismissal, and that neither authority examined whether Wilson's explanations were correct.
Show more
- The Alliance Defense Fund organized a May 2008 meeting with Grassley attended by representatives of the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and National Religious Broadcasters; staff report the group raised concerns including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and describe 'a very high level of distrust' between churches and the government.
- An IRS revenue officer visited Taibbi's New Jersey home on the day of his House testimony and left a note. The IRS told him the reason was identity-theft rejections of his 2018 and 2021 electronic filings; Taibbi said neither he nor his accountant received the 2019 and 2020 letters the IRS cited. The Judiciary Committee's letter states the IRS production shows the 2018 examination opened on 24 Dec 2022 and that the IRS did not produce the cited letters. The Committee's letters stated the visit 'could be interpreted' as intimidation; the IRS stated its identity-theft reason.
Oversight that acted late or in part
An oversight body or regulator acted years afterward, or only in part.
- The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine published an expression of concern stating that three myocardial infarctions, all in the rofecoxib group, 'were not included in the data submitted to the Journal' for the VIGOR report.
Other documented acts
Documented acts that fit none of the types above.
- ICAN's film response page, which answers criticisms from Henry Ford, The Conversation and STAT, does not mention the cease-and-desist letter; no ICAN reply to the letter was found in any document.
- A CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times that V-safe participants who reported medical care after vaccination were called and encouraged to file a VAERS report, that CDC 'attempted to obtain additional information' for serious events, and that VAERS data is analyzed for unusual patterns.
- CDC, through Dr. Hause's HRSA slide deck, told the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines that V-safe free text was 'challenging to analyze', that NLP results were 'nonspecific', and that coding it to MedDRA required a new contract. This is CDC's own account of why the free text was not analyzed and is not a statement about the book.
- CIA maintained covert relationships with about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations until it announced a new policy in February 1976 (documented by the Church Committee from summaries the CIA supplied).
- CIA personnel searched the Senate Intelligence Committee's side of a shared classified network and Senate staff email. The CIA Inspector General's summary found five CIA employees (two lawyers and three computer specialists) accessed the Committee's computers, that a CIA security office reviewed staff email after Director Brennan ordered a halt, that three showed 'a lack of candor', and that the CIA's criminal referral of Senate staff to the Justice Department rested on inaccurate information. Brennan told reporters in March 2014 'We wouldn't do that' and apologized in July 2014. The Justice Department declined charges.
Show more
- Four Cochrane Governing Board members resigned after the 13 September vote; Board co-chair Marguerite Koster told STAT and Retraction Watch that the decision was not based on Gøtzsche's criticism of the HPV review and cited his use of Cochrane Nordic letterhead for personal views, including in a homicide trial.
- The Principal Deputy ASD(PA) suspended the analyst outreach program after the article.
- Bloomberg News stated that it stood by its reporting and published a point-by-point response to the Fed memo (act by the work's own side).
- The Commission tabled unredacted Case Studies 28 and 35 and an unredacted Volume 16 Book 2 after the criminal proceedings concluded.
- The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia declined to accept Recommendation 7.4, the removal of the confession exemption from mandatory reporting.
- The Holy See, answering the recommendations forwarded by the bishops, stated that the seal is inviolable and that celibacy has no direct cause-and-effect link to abuse, and said a requirement to retain secret-archive records for 45 years 'might not be practicable in all cases'.
- Discovery in Missouri v. Biden ended without merits findings: standing discovery allowed on 8 Nov 2024 was stayed on 3 Feb 2025, and the court entered a consent decree on 25 Mar 2026 releasing all claims and stating it is not evidence or an admission.