After Aaron Swartz died, Jason Leopold FOIAed Secret Service, since that’s the agency that was investigating Swartz when he died.
Curiously, contrary to the FBI — which at least claims to have treated Swartz as they would any other deceased person and turned over all but two pages of his PACER investigation file — Secret Service denied Leopold’s FOIA.
“Disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” they said.
Or, to translate from FOIA-speak, the investigation into Aaron Swartz, who died weeks and weeks ago, is an active investigation.
Most interesting came when USSS’s FOIA officer claimed there was nothing segregable from this “open case.”
We were then transferred to Latita Payne, the Secret Service’s FOIA disclosure officer, who explained to Truthout, “we did a search of our offices [for responsive records] and they responded that it’s an open case.”
Payne said there weren’t any segregable portions of records on Swartz that the Secret Service could release.
Secret Service doesn’t want to turn over Swartz’ file — any of it — because any little bit of it might reveal its investigation into … something. Someone. Presumably not Swartz, since he’s dead.
Now, since USSS first responded to Leopold, they seem to have decided that this answer — the claim they can’t release any files on an investigation into a deceased person — isn’t going to fly, so they’re going to reconsider that answer.
We’ll see how forthcoming that response is.
One other detail. Notice how FBI released its response to Swartz FOIA just long enough before this response so distracted people might think the FBI file is all there is (as if a huge indictment would leave no tracks)? Nice timing.