William & Mary Petraeus correspondence

Dear Mr. Pardo:

This is to acknowledge your request dated November 8, 2013, for information pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Specifically, you have requested "any and all correspondence, written or electronic, dated between November 9 2012 and November 4 2013, between officials, employees, and/or staff members at the College of William & Mary and David Petraeus or his representative Robert Barnett."

The university is a vast enterprise and Virginia FOIA in Code Section 2.2-3704.B requires that requested records be identified with “reasonable specificity.” While your request does identify a scope in terms of a timeline, it would still need require significant streamlining to meet the “reasonable specificity” test provided by FOIA. A search to produce “copies of all correspondence between November 9, 2012 and November 4, 2013 between employees of the College and David Patraeus or Robert Barnet” would be very broad in scope. In an institution the size and complexity of W&M, responsive documents could be found in any – or none – of thousands of places.

I have reached out to W&M’s Department of Information Technology to determine how they would manage a search of this magnitude and they recommend that we narrow the search parameters. To our knowledge, at W&M, no one has ever requested correspondence between an individual and the entire campus. Moreover, a scan of electronic communications would not reveal potential handwritten or typed letters to/from General Petraeus or his representatives. Records that exist only in hard copy could be located only after contacting all 2,500 employees of the College. The College has the right to charge for such search costs, and to require payment in advance of the estimated costs. You would have to agree to cover production costs, including $200 up front, with no assurance that W&M possesses documents that are responsive to your request.

Please confirm your Virginia mailing address and let us know whether you are willing to narrow your request in order to be more specific.
Best,
Lillian Stevens, FOIA Officer, W&M

Hello,

Please confirm your Virginia address and we will get back with you as soon as possible.

Best.

Dear Mr. Pardo:

I am writing to confirm that none of the individuals you identified in your revised request below has initiated or received any correspondence with David Petraeus or Robert Barnett between November 9, 2012 and November 4, 2013. Given the scaled back nature of your request, there will be no production costs assessed because the time spent to conduct a search was minimal.
Best,
Lillian Stevens
FOIA Officer