纽约时报：一场与证券交易委员会漫长的拉锯战

nicholasxw

　　奥巴马在正式就任总统的第一天【译者注：2009年1月21日】曾作出表态支持新闻自由和信息公开。由于他的前任布什政府往往以机密为由隐瞒信息，因此奥巴马的这一表态反响积极。
　　“民主需要问责，而问责需要透明”，奥巴马说道。“正如大法官路易斯· 布兰迪斯（Louis Brandeis）曾写道的那样--'阳光是最好的消毒剂'。在我们这样一个民主社会，国家就政府的开放性许下了深远的承诺，《信息自由法案》便是这一承诺最杰出的表现形式，它鼓励通过提升透明度来实现问责。同时，这一承诺的核心理念是实行问责符合政府与公民的利益。”
　　奥巴马用散文般的措辞传达了一个重要讯息：官僚机构正在垒起一道越来越高的藩篱以阻止公共信息的公开，而他对如何消除这一藩篱深表关注。
　　奥巴马说道，“信息自由法案”的实施必须遵循这样一种假定：透明公开能够释疑。“奥巴马为此签署的行政命令中说到：
　　政府不能仅仅因为披露某些信息可能会使官员陷入尴尬、使错误和失败暴露、或出于心存侥幸或恐惧心理而选择保密。信息不公开不能够建立在保护官员个人利益而牺牲他们服务对象利益的基础上。当有人依据信息自由法案提出相应要求时，行政机关应当迅速作出反应并积极配合，应当意识到自身是为公众服务的。所以政府机构都应该对信息公开采取积极态度以重新认识和履行关于建立一个开放性政府的承诺，从而开启一个开放性政府的新时代。这种精神应当贯彻在所有与信息自由法案相关的决策中。
　　作家和记者们尤其依赖于该法案来获取信息--例如文件、证言、电子邮件和各种报告，而联邦政府部门是在调查过程中以传票的方式（或是威胁以该方式）获去这些信息。毋庸置疑的是，获取此类信息通常是还原历史和现实事件细节的重要途径，并且帮助我们中的所有人更加接近事实真相。信息自由法案中的请求一旦被提出，那么相关的职能机构将于20个工作日做出回应，从而信息的公布也就进入了倒计时。
　　自从在2004年成为全职作家后，我已经利用信息自由法案提出了无数的请求，其中绝大部分是提交给美国证券交易委员会的。该委员会是众多有关华尔街各大公司相关资料的大本营。我的两本书曾以华尔街的大公司为写作对象。一本是关于拉扎德投资银行（Lazard Frères & Co.）的《最后的大亨》，而另一本《纸牌屋》则记录了贝尔斯登公司（Bear Stearns）瓦解的过程。我还向证券交易委员会提出了请求，希望从该机构获得关于高盛集团（Goldman Sachs）的信息，这正是我目前在写作的第三本书的内容。（相比之下，国会却并愿不受信息自由法案的限制；国会不时将其掌握的文献信息公开，其实大多是基于政治考量的故意之举。）
　　我多么希望我可以向大家报告，从证券交易委员会获取关于华尔街投行信息的过程已经变得顺畅和简便，或者有了一丁点儿效率提升的迹象；或者向大家报告，自从奥巴马总统的行政命令发出之后，信息的公开更加充分，或者整个过程不那么荒诞了。
　　遗憾的是，证券交易委员会的信息公开办公室似乎非常擅长敷衍和拖沓，很明显是希望我被官僚作风的障碍挫败，或是希望无限拖延后错过信息公开的截止日期。事实上，2009年9月公布的一份长达60页的审计报告关注的正是证券交易委员会履行信息自由法案的力度，结论发现，该机构倾向于不公开信息，并且”在查明是否有申请者所要求的信息的过程中，以及判定该信息是否属于信息自由法案所规定的可不公开的例外的过程中，该机构所采取的程序要么不完善，要么不合规定。“
　　为了写作那本关于拉扎德投行的书，我基于信息自由法案向证券交易委员会提交了一份申请。委员会曾经调查过拉扎德投行在那起臭名昭著的美国国际电话电报公司（ITT corporation）与哈特佛火灾保险公司(Hartford Fire Insurance Co.)合并案中所扮演的角色。这起合并案始于1968年，最终到1981年才结束。我想从委员会那里获得相关的一些信息。
　　起先，委员会回复我，他们不能公开关于这起合并案任何信息。当我提醒委员会他们曾经在大约20年前公开过相关信息时，委员会做出了让步。他们允许我查看40个没有索引、完全混乱的文件箱。不过在委员会的一个位于华盛顿的会议室里待了几个小时之后，我被告知查看文件的时间已满。最后，我说服委员会让我把这些文件箱自费运往他们在纽约的一个办公室，这样我可以在接下来的三个月里每天去查看。出于某些未知的原因，我不能复制这些文件。不过还好，我还是得到了我想要的信息。
　　2006年11月，我正在写一本至今尚未出版也尚未完成的书，是关于戴维·威蒂格（David Wittig)那段官司缠身的经历的。威蒂格以前是华尔街的一位投资银行家，后来担任了堪萨斯州的维斯特马能源公司（Westar Energy）的首席执行官。我向证券交易委员会提交了一份信息公开申请，希望得到委员会当年对威蒂格的调查文件。然而直到今天我也没从委员会那里收到只字片言，而委员会的请求索引上却可以找到我当时的申请记录。
　　2008年4月，开始写作新书《纸牌屋》后不久，我再次向委员会提交了一份申请，希望得到他们就贝尔斯登公司的两家对冲基金公司的崩盘所做的调查报告，以及”证券交易委员会任何有关2008年贝尔斯登公司股票的卖空者及可能的操盘行为的调查。“
　　当年5月8日，证券交易委员会的丹尼斯·穆迪（Denise Moody)有保留地回应了我的请求。在给我的回信中，他写道：“我们需要一个书面的承诺，证明你将会支付我们处理你的请求所产生的搜索和查阅的费用”。同一天，我回信给穆迪女士说，我愿意支付不超过2,500美元的相关费用。第二天，她回信称证券交易委员会将继续处理我的请求。
　　然而此后我就再没有从委员会那里等到更进一步的消息了。委员会既没有公布任何关于贝尔斯登公司崩盘事件中卖空操盘有关信息，也没有公布究竟是谁在崩盘前夕掷出上千万美元购买极价外期权和看跌期权从而导致了贝尔斯登迅速崩盘。2008年12月18日，我向委员会重申了我的请求，但依然杳无音讯。《纸牌屋》 于2009年3月出版，去年10月又出版了平装版，其中更新了后记。
　　2009年, 奥巴马带着他关于信息自由法案的新指令上任了。于是8月初，我向证券交易委员会提出申请，要求查阅高盛公司的相关资料。随后我收到了一份确认表格。9月9日，研究专家杰森·雷特肯豪斯（Jason Luetkenhaus)写信告诉我说我的请求未能“合理地描述”相关记录。12月初，我再次提出申请，再次收到确认表格。2010年1月，我发出若干电子邮件，询问为何在六个月之内，除了确认表格之外，委员会无法提供其他任何信息。1月12日，我与分支负责人布兰达·福勒（Brenda Fuller)谈话，在她表示我的申请“依然过于笼统”之后，我们一同缩小了关于高盛的这项请求的范围。我也同意支付224美元的费用，以供工作人员搜索相关资料。1月20日，我收到来自委员会的信件，就说了一件事儿──鉴于该机构的“先进先出”政策，他们将在12个月“或者更长的时间”之后才能“开始处理这项请求”。

　　2月份的时候，证券交易委员会寄来了一份新的公文。在信中费丽莎·泰勒说，“由于包含调查记录的文件箱并没有根据内容进行标记，所以在我们查看这些文件箱，寻找相关资料之前，无法向您提供有关高盛记录……因为记录浩卷繁帙，所以必须按照'先进先出'的原则处理它们，就像我们在之前的回复中向你解释的那样。需要注意的是，您的请求已被关闭，并且已经从我们的待处理清单上移除。”我被邀请重新启动这一整套的程序。对此，我难以置信，于是给泰勒女士打电话，却最终发现我的申请已不知所综，我估计已经不复存在了吧。
　　4月18日，也就是证券交易委员会向高盛提起那个如今家喻户晓的民事诉讼的两天之后，我发出了一份新的请求，申请获得委员会关于此案的文件，包括证言的复印件。9天之后，我收到了回信，信中写道：“您要求的记录是非公开的。”信中还引用了一条规定──应“保护那些因为法律执行缘故而不被公开的记录，因为有些信息公开之后可能会干预到法律执行”。2009年的那份长达60页的审计报告曾经指出，在被证券交易委员会以“信息自由法案所规定的例外情况”为由拒绝的信息查询申请中，有三分之二得到的是“可能干预法律执行”的解释。
　　分管有关信息自由法案申请的主管戴夫·亨索尔（Dave Henshall)写信建议我六个月之内再试一次。要不是参议院在几天后，也就是4月2日，公布了长达900页关于高盛案的、所谓“可能感遇到法律执行”的文件，亨索尔的建议还算有点意义。
　　当我继续度亨索尔的信后，我在此陷入困惑之中。“处理这个请求的总花费为28.00美元，随信附上了收据，”亨索尔继续写道，“请把您的付款以及付款凭证寄到我们的财务办公室。”
　　不用费心了。

英文原文：


Stonewalled by the S.E.C.
By WILLIAM D. COHAN
New York Times Opinionator
On President Obama’s first full day in office, he struck a much-needed symphonic chord in favor of press freedom, openness and a willingness to err on the side of sharing too much information rather than too little.
“A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency,” Obama argued. “As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, ‘sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.’ In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the government and the citizenry alike.”
One got the distinct impression from Obama’s well-crafted prose that he cared deeply about whittling down the increasingly high bureaucratic walls that seemed to be thwarting the release of public information:
“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails,” Obama’s executive order continued:
   The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public. All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.
Authors and journalists are especially dependent on the FOIA to get access to information — like documents, depositions, e-mails and reports — that federal agencies obtain through subpoenas (or the threat of their use) as part of ongoing investigations. Needless to say, getting access to this information is often essential to fleshing out the details of historical or current events and allows us — collectively — to get that much closer to the truth. Once FOIA requests are filed, an agency has 20 business days to respond and to start the clock ticking on the actual release of information.
Since I became a full-time writer in 2004, I have made numerous FOIA requests, mostly to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the home of documents relating to the Wall Street firms that have been the subjects of my two books, “The Last Tycoons,” about Lazard Frères & Co., and “House of Cards,” about the collapse of Bear Stearns. I have also filed FOIA requests with the SEC in the hope of prying information out of the agency about Goldman Sachs, the subject of my third book, which I am still writing. (Congress, by way of contrast, is not subject to FOIA or to FOIA requests; the documentary information Congress obtains and then releases occasionally is done deliberately or leaked — often for political reasons.)
I wish I could report that the process of getting information from the S.E.C. about Wall Street investment banks has been smooth or easy, or the slightest bit productive. Or that since President Obama issued his executive order, the flow of information has improved or become less Kafka-esque.
Unfortunately, the FOIA office at the S.E.C. seems to have perfected the art of obfuscation and premeditated delay, apparently with the hope that I will grow frustrated by bureaucratic hurdles or because, by delaying, a publication deadline can pass. Indeed, a September 2009 60-page audit of the S.E.C.’s compliance with FOIA found the agency had a “presumption of non-disclosure” and that “there are inadequate or incorrect procedures for determining whether potentially responsive documents exist and how exemptions . . . are applied, which have the effect of creating a presumption of withholding, rather than disclosure, as required by the FOIA.”
For my Lazard book, I filed an FOIA request with the S.E.C. relating to the commission’s investigation into the firm’s role in infamous merger between ITT Corporation and Hartford Fire Insurance Company. At first, the S.E.C. responded that it could not release any information about the case, which began in 1968 and ended in 1981. When I reminded the agency that it had done so previously — some 20 years before — it agreed that I could see the 40 un-indexed, completely disorganized boxes of documents. After a few hours in a S.E.C. conference room in Washington, though, I was told my time with the boxes was up. Eventually, I prevailed on the S.E.C. to ship them — at my expense — to the S.E.C.’s office in New York City, where I spent every day of the next three months going through them. For reasons not entirely clear, I was not permitted to copy the documents. But I got what I needed.
In November 2006, in the midst of writing a still-unpublished and uncompleted book about the trials and tribulations of David Wittig, a former Wall Street investment banker who became the C.E.O. of Westar Energy in Topeka, Kan., I filed an FOIA request with the S.E.C. asking for documents about the S.E.C.’s investigations of Wittig. To date, I have not received a single page about Wittig from the agency, as is noted on an S.E.C. index of requests from that time period.
In April 2008, soon after starting “House of Cards,” I made an FOIA request in hope of obtaining information about the S.E.C.’s investigation into the collapse of the two Bear Stearns hedge funds, as well as “any S.E.C. investigations related to short-sellers and the potential manipulation of the Bear Stearns’ stock in 2008.”
On May 8, in a partial response to my request, Denise Moody, at the S.E.C., wrote: “We need a written commitment to pay search and review fees associated with processing your request under the FOIA.” That same day, I wrote back to Ms. Moody and explained that I would pay for all the S.E.C.’s research expenses up to $2,500. The next day, she wrote back to say the S.E.C. would continue processing my request.
That is the last I’ve heard from the S.E.C. about this request, which has still not been filled. Nor has the S.E.C. released any information about the role short-sellers played in the collapse of Bear Stearns, or who it was that spent millions of dollars buying far-out-of-the-money, short-dated puts the week Bear Stearns collapsed. On Dec. 18, 2008, I reiterated my request to the S.E.C. but received no answer. “House of Cards” was published in March 2009; the paperback edition, with a new afterword, came out in February 2010.
The year 2009 brought Obama to office, and his new FOIA directive. In early August, I made an FOIA request to the S.E.C. about Goldman Sachs. I then received an acknowledgment form. On Sept. 9, Jason Luetkenhaus, a research specialist, wrote to tell me that my request failed to “reasonably describe” the records I requested. I tried again in early December and, again, received an acknowledgment form. In January 2010, I sent several e-mails wondering why it had been six months and I had not received anything from the S.E.C. except acknowledgment letters. On Jan. 12, I spoke with Brenda Fuller, branch chief, and together we narrowed the scope of my Goldman request after she told me that my request was “still too broad.” I also agreed to pay $224 to have the S.E.C. staff research documents that might be responsive to my request. On Jan. 20, I received a letter from the S.E.C., with regard to one specific request, saying that because of the agency’s first-in, first-out policy, it would be 12 months “or more” before “we can process this request.”
In February came a new missive from the S.E.C. relating to my request for documents about Goldman. “The boxes containing the investigative records are not labeled for their contents so we will not be able to provide the records relating to Goldman Sachs until the boxes have been reviewed for responsive material,” Felicia Taylor wrote me. “Because the records are voluminous, they must be processed on a first-in, first-out track as explained in our response to you. Note, your request has been closed and removed from our pending caseload.” I was invited to start all over again. Incredulous, I called Ms. Taylor, but honestly have no idea where my request stands. I assume it is dead.
On April 18, two days after the S.E.C. filed its now-famous civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, I sent in a new FOIA request seeking the S.E.C.’s documents about the case, including copies of transcripts of depositions. Nine days later, I received a letter from the SEC: “We are withholding the non-public records that are responsive to your request,” it read, and then cited a regulation that “protects from disclosure records compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement activities,” an exemption the S.E.C. cites two-thirds of the time in denying access to records, according to the September 2009 audit. In his letter, Dave Henshall, the FOIA branch chief, invited me to try again in six months. Except for the fact that, on April 27, the U.S. Senate released some 900 pages of Goldman documents that could also “reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement activities,” Henshall’s letter made sense to me.
Of course, as I kept reading his letter, I became flummoxed again. “The total cost incurred for processing this request is $28.00, as indicated on the enclosed invoice,” Henshall continued. “Please send your payment and the enclosed invoice to our Office of Financial Management.”
Thanks for nothing.
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