By C. Powell
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
The Federal Reserve can keep secret most of the gold documents at issue in GATA’s freedom-of-information lawsuit against it, a federal judge ruled today. But the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the Fed to disclose to GATA a potentially crucial document by February 18.
Judge Huvelle ruled that most of the Fed’s documents were exempt from disclosure under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act for being “pre-decisional or deliberative” or for containing privileged or confidential commercial or financial information obtained from a person or corporation.
Among the documents so exempted, the judge found, is “an email exchange” among Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of New York staff members “discussing what information to include in response to requests from Congress regarding the Federal Reserve’s involvement in gold.”
