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Appeals court denies request for list of exporters
By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 7, 2001
A federal appeals court has denied the St. Petersburg Times' efforts to learn the names of U.S. companies that are being allowed to do business with Cuba despite the United States' economic embargo against the Communist-led island.
In 1999, the U.S. Department of Commerce denied a Freedom of Information Act request from a Times reporter asking for exporters' names and what they had been selling to Cuba since 1996.
Exporters must get licenses from the Commerce Department before shipping goods.
The Times called the department's refusal "secrecy for the sake of secrecy" and said the public had a right to know when the government made an exception to its embargo. The Times sued the Commerce Department seeking to compel release of the information. The Tampa Tribune joined the lawsuit last year.
The department argued the records were confidential because the Export Administration Act specifically barred their release. The export act expired in 1994, however.
The Commerce Department then argued that a presidential executive order also made the records confidential. But last June, a federal judge in Tampa agreed with the newspapers that an executive order doesn't carry the same force as a statute passed by Congress. The judge ordered the department to release the information.
However, this past week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that the information was not subject to FOIA. The appeals judges noted that Congress had renewed the export law that keeps such records confidential.
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