Free Republic

It’s not often that a U.S. government agency gets caught red-handed abiding by its charter and performing its publicly-avowed and legislatively-approved duties. But last week the AP "broke" a long and breathless story from Havana that nailed the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) for just that. In their own words, "a secret plan aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government," was courageously exposed by the AP’s intrepid Havana bureau. Such is the magnitude of the scandal that a red-faced and snarling Senator Patrick Leahy is now chairing hearings on Capitol Hill where he grills USAID director Rajiv Shah on...

As U.S. officials dealt with the fallout of the government’s once-secret “Cuban Twitter” program, they had one thing on their side: notorious delays in the federal Freedom of Information Act. The government didn’t have copies of the documents, which formed the basis of an Associated Press investigation detailing a program on which taxpayers spent millions. But officials were worried that asking the contractor to hand over copies would risk making the details even more public. […] USAID’s calculus — realizing that the nation’s public-records law can be so slow as to border on unusable — comes amid new data showing...