Conservative site sues Pentagon for climate records

By Andrew Restuccia - 06/27/11 12:35 PM ET

A conservative online news site is suing the Defense Department in an effort to gain access to the travel records of U.S. officials who went to Copenhagen in 2009 to attend international climate talks.

Republicans and conservative groups have blasted the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations as a failure and criticized President Obama and other U.S. officials for attending the talks, arguing the trip was a waste of taxpayer money. The 2009 talks in Copenhagen ended with a voluntary nonbinding accord that many activists called too weak.

Judicial Watch, the conservative government transparency group, said Monday that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on behalf of Pajamas Media for the travel records.

Pajamas Media is a conservative news site that features reporting and commentary. The site is perhaps best known for sending “Joe the Plumber” (actual name Joe Wurzelbacher) to Israel as a reporter. Wurzelbacher gained notoriety after questioning then-Sen. Barack Obama about his tax policy during the presidential contest and then being embraced by Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign.

The site filed a FOIA request with the Air Force in 2009 for the travel records and received “four pages of almost entirely redacted material” in May 2011, according to Judicial Watch.

“What happened to the transparency that candidate Obama promised? It has taken almost a year for this administration to turn over a flight manifest and then that document was heavily redacted,” Pajamas Media CEO Roger Simon said in a statement.

The lawsuit calls on the courts to force the administration to release the full flight manifest from the Copenhagen trip or explain in detail why certain portions must be withheld.

“The Conference not only failed to enact worldwide ‘climate’ action, but the airlift of President Obama and other government officials must have resulted in huge, wasteful costs for the American people,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “No wonder [Pajamas Media] can’t get anything out of the administration about that disastrous conference.”