From CREW:
On Wednesday, CREW filed suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department of Defense ("DOD"). CREW’s lawsuit, brought under the FOIA, was based on DOD's refusal to release any documents in its database of ethics opinions concerning post-employment ethics letters written by DOD ethics officers for senior DOD acquisition officials.The letters are required by law; pursuant to Section 847 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, certain high level DOD acquisition officials accepting post-employment compensation from DOD contractors must first seek an opinion from their ethics official. DOD is further required to maintain these ethics letters in a centralized database. As of the summer of 2010, DOD had not completed the creation of the database according to DOD’s own inspector general.