Dr. David Morens is still employed by the government.
A top U.S. government official bragged that he had learned of a way to make emails vanish after receiving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, messages made public on May 22 show.
“I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe,” Dr. David Morens, senior adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote in an email on Feb. 24, 2021.
In another missive, Dr. Morens advised friends to try to send emails to his Gmail address. “But if something goes to my govt mail by accident it’s OK, I have spoken to our FOIA folks and am managing my stuff after emails are sent or received, such that I should be safe from future FOIAs. Don’t ask how…”
In a third message, Dr. Morens said he “learned the tricks from an old friend, Marg Moore, who heads our FOIA office and also hates FOIAs.”
The emails were obtained by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and released to the public on Wednesday. They were sent by Dr. Morens using his personal address after he detailed that was one way to avoid FOIA.
Dr. Morens, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Institutes of Health, the institute’s parent agency, did not respond to requests for comment. An email sent to Ms. Moore bounced back.
Dr. Morens is still employed by the government, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, told a congressional panel earlier this month.
Federal law makes it illegal for any custodian of a public record to “willfully and unlawfully” conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify, or destroy the record.
Each count can land a violator up to three years in prison.
