FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST
Dear Ms. Reed:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 522, as
amended and 10 C.F.R. 9.8 of the Commission's regulations,
Greenpeace requests that NRC provide us with any and all documents
in the possession of the NRC, including the office of the Executive
Director of Operations, the NRC Chairman and all NRC Commissioner's
Office's, especially that of Commissioner McGaffigan regarding the
President's 2003 State of the Union address. Specifically
Greenpeace seeks any and all information concerning the President's
assertion that, "(w)e have found diagrams of American nuclear power
plants…" in the caves of Afghanistan.
Please consider "documents" to include reports, studies, test
results, correspondence, memoranda, meeting notes, meeting minutes,
working papers, graphs, charts, diagrams, notes and summaries of
conversations and interviews, computer records, e-mail and any
other form of written communications including internal NRC
memoranda.
Pursuant to and in compliance with 10 C.F.R. 9.41 of the
Commission's regulations governing requests for fee waivers,
Greenpeace provides the following information.
Greenpeace seeks the requested information solely to contribute
to and help shape the public debate concerning NRC's role in the
regulation of the nuclear industry. The information provided by the
NRC will be analyzed and extracted for use in our analysis of the
NRC's on going efforts to secure our nation's nuclear reactors from
terrorist attack.
Greenpeace is a nationally known non-profit public interest
organization founded in 1971. We will use these documents in
preparation of our analysis of the NRC's oversight process and the
significance determination process. As Greenpeace's nuclear policy
analyst I have over a decade of experience deciphering NRC
documents and making the information contained in them more
understandable to the public.
The requested information and Greenpeace's analysis will greatly
contribute to the public's understanding of the Commission's role
in regulating the nuclear industry. We plan to broadly disseminate
the information contained in our analysis to the press and the
general public. For several years now our publications, comments
and press releases have been made available free of charge on our
web site.
Our past publications have attracted attention in the local,
national and trade media. Copies of the reports have been
distributed to members of the public, the nuclear industry, citizen
groups, federal & state governments and members of
Congress.
Greenpeace has neither a commercial nor a private interest in
the agency records sought. Since "disclosure of the information is
in the public interest because it is likely to contribute
significantly to the public understanding of the operation or
activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial
interest of the requester" (5 U.S.C. 552 (a)(4)(A) (iii)), we
request a complete waiver of any processing or duplicating costs
you might incur in providing these records to us. If you rule
otherwise, please notify us before filling the request.
If all or any parts of this request are denied, please cite the
specific exemptions on which you rely in refusing to release the
documents. Further, since the Freedom of Information Act provides
that the remainder of a file must be released if only portions are
exempt from disclosure, we request that we be provided with all
non-exempt portions that are reasonably segregable. Of course, we
reserve our right to appeal the withholding or deletion of any
information.
As provided in the Freedom of Information Act Amendments, we
will expect to receive the requested records or a final
determination within twenty working days. If your office is unable
to fully respond to this request in that time, please send us a
written estimate of when the request will be completed.
If you have any questions about this request, please telephone
me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Thank you for your attention to this request.
Sincerely,