The U.S. Department of State has perfected an art form: the selective loss of Freedom of Information Act appeals. Not all appeals, mind you—just the ones seeking records the agency would prefer to keep hidden.

Between September and December 2025, Covenant for Forgotten Warriors—a veteran advocacy organization—filed multiple FOIA requests seeking records related to U.S. Army veteran Sgt. Kelvin Blas, who has been stranded in Togo for over six years. The State Department’s response reveals a pattern of obstruction so systematic it strains the definition of “administrative error.”

Three appeals, filed on three separate dates, all claimed “never received.” Six other appeals from the same batch? Acknowledged immediately.

The pattern suggests something more troubling than bureaucratic incompetence: the deliberate targeting of transparency requests from organizations seeking government accountability.

This is the story of how the State Department loses FOIA appeals—and what they’re trying to hide.

The File They Don’t Want Released

At the center of this obstruction sits FOIA request F-2025-28025, filed by Covenant for Forgotten Warriors on August 4, 2025. The request is remarkably specific: one file, created by U.S. Chargé d’affaires Ronald E. Hawkins Jr. at Embassy Lomé in 2024, after Hawkins was contacted by Michael Burleson—Sgt. Blas’s former commanding officer.

According to information provided to Covenant through intermediaries in Togo, this file contains damaging remarks about Blas made by Burleson, whom Blas himself had identified as a contact. The existence of this file raises serious questions about whether U.S. Embassy officials allowed a former commanding officer to influence their treatment of a stranded American veteran.

The State Department didn’t respond to F-2025-28025 until September 11, 2025—ten days past the statutory deadline. When the response finally arrived, it exhibited several unusual characteristics:

• It was routed to the spam folder rather than the inbox where other State Department correspondence appeared
• The email format provided no way to respond directly
• It invoked “unusual circumstances” for needing to consult “other offices or posts”—despite seeking a single file from a single embassy

Covenant for Forgotten Warriors filed an administrative appeal on September 24, 2025, documenting the late response and questioning the unusual circumstances claim.

The State Department’s response to this appeal? Silence. For three months.

On December 15, 2025, after 82 days without response, Covenant filed a second appeal for F-2025-28025.

The September 24 appeal—complete with email headers, timestamps, and delivery confirmation—had simply disappeared.

Three Separate Requests, Three “Lost” Appeals

The obstruction of F-2025-28025 might be dismissed as an isolated incident if it stood alone. It doesn’t.

On December 23, the State Department sent an email to Covenant for Forgotten Warriors addressing three FOIA requests: F-2025-28025, F-2025-30284, and F-2025-30610. The email’s phrasing—”As it pertains to F-2025-30284 and F-2025-30610″—suggested confusion about whether these were related requests.

They are not. These are three completely distinct FOIA requests seeking different categories of records from different offices:

F-2025-28025 seeks one specific file from Embassy Lomé created in 2024.

F-2025-30284 (filed September 24, 2025) seeks case escalation tracking logs and spreadsheets from the Bureau of Consular Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C. This request targets the internal tracking systems used to monitor cases of stranded Americans—specifically, how Sgt. Blas’s case was categorized, escalated, or deprioritized within those systems.

F-2025-30610 (filed September 29, 2025) seeks all consular section records from Embassy Lomé from March 2020 to present—duty logs, emails, cables, memos, consular notes, and call records mentioning Sgt. Blas.

These requests target different record systems, different offices, and different types of documentation. The State Department’s apparent confusion about their scope is itself revealing.

What these three requests have in common is not their scope—it’s their fate. All three have appeals the State Department claims “never to have received.”

The Smoking Gun: Selective Acknowledgement

Here’s where the pattern becomes undeniable.

These appeals were filed simultaneously, sent to the same office, from the same organization. Six were acknowledged. Three were not.

Two weeks later, the State Department claimed they had “never received” an appeal for F-2025-30284—one of the three that wasn’t acknowledged.

When six appeals from an identical batch are acknowledged while three are ignored, this ceases to be an administrative error. This is selective processing.

Timeline of F-2025-30284: Closed Twice, Appealed Repeatedly, Never Processed

A FOIA request cannot be closed twice unless someone is manipulating the records. The dual closure dates for F-2025-30284 suggest either catastrophic record-keeping failures or deliberate tampering with case status to obscure the processing timeline.

F-2025-30610: Closed in 24 Hours, Appeal “Lost” for Months

The appeal filed November 27—nearly a month before the State Department’s claim—had vanished from their system.

What the Pattern Reveals

When viewed in isolation, each incident might be explained away:

• A late response routed to spam (F-2025-28025)
• A lost appeal (September 24)
• An administrative closure (December 8)
• Selective acknowledgements (6 of 9)
• A duplicate closure date (F-2025-30284)
• A 24-hour denial (F-2025-30610)

But these incidents don’t exist in isolation. They form a pattern—and that pattern targets a specific case.

The State Department is not losing appeals randomly. They are losing appeals systematically, and those appeals all seek records the agency clearly does not want released.